以我们的名义：来自哥伦比亚大学犹太学生的一封信
致哥伦比亚社区：
在过去的六个月里，许多人以我们的名义发声。有些是好心的校友或非会员，他们出现在哥伦比亚大学大门外挥舞以色列国旗。有些是政客，他们想利用我们的经历煽动美国的文化战争。最值得注意的是，有些是我们的犹太同龄人，他们自称代表“真正的犹太价值观”，试图使我们的反犹太主义生活经历非法化。我们在这里，以哥伦比亚大学犹太学生的身份写信给你们，我们与我们的社区息息相关，并深深地融入我们的文化和历史。我们想以我们的名义发声。我们中的许多人在课堂上坐在你们旁边。我们是你的实验室伙伴、你的学习伙伴、你的同龄人和你的朋友。我们和你一样参加学生会、俱乐部、希腊生活、志愿者组织和运动队。我们大多数人并没有选择成为政治活动家。我们不会敲鼓和喊口号。我们都是普通学生，和你们一样，只是想通过期末考试。那些在反犹太复国主义的幌子下妖魔化我们的人迫使我们采取激进主义，迫使我们公开捍卫我们的犹太身份。我们自豪地相信，犹太人民在我们历史故乡的自决权是我们犹太身份的基本原则。与许多人试图向你们兜售的相反——不，犹太教不能与以色列分开。简单地说，犹太复国主义就是这种信仰的体现。我们的宗教文本中充满了对以色列、锡安和耶路撒冷的提及。以色列的土地上充满了几个世纪以来犹太人存在的考古遗迹。然而，尽管几代人流亡世界各地，犹太人民从未停止梦想回到我们的故乡——犹太，我们的名字“犹太人”的来源地。事实上，就在几天前，我们都在逾越节晚宴上宣告：“明年在耶路撒冷！”
我们中的许多人并不虔诚，但犹太复国主义仍然是我们犹太人身份的支柱。我们被赶出了俄罗斯、利比亚、埃塞俄比亚、也门、阿富汗、波兰、埃及、阿尔及利亚、德国、伊朗等国家。我们与以色列的联系不仅在于它是我们的祖籍，还在于它是现代世界中犹太人唯一可以安全掌握自己命运的地方。过去六个月在哥伦比亚大学的经历就是对这一点的深刻提醒。
我们从小就听着祖父母讲述的集中营、毒气室和种族清洗的故事。希特勒反犹主义的本质就是我们“不够欧洲化”，作为犹太人，我们对“优越的”雅利安人种构成了威胁。这种意识形态最终让我们六百万同胞化为灰烬。
当今反犹主义的邪恶讽刺是对我们大屠杀遗产的扭曲逆转；校园里的抗议者将我们非人化，强加“白人殖民者”的形象于我们身上。我们被告知，我们是“所有棕色人种的压迫者”，“大屠杀并不特殊”。哥伦比亚大学的学生高呼“我们不希望犹太复国主义者在这里”，同时高呼“犹太复国主义国家去死”，并要求“回到波兰”，我们的亲人在那里埋葬在万人坑里。
这种病态的扭曲揭示了反犹主义的本质：每一代人，犹太人都被指责和当作当时社会邪恶的替罪羊。在伊朗和阿拉伯世界，我们因与“犹太复国主义实体”的假定联系而遭到种族清洗。在俄罗斯，我们遭受了国家支持的暴力，并最终因是资本家而遭到屠杀。在欧洲，我们是种族灭绝的受害者，因为我们是共产主义者，而且不够欧洲化。今天，我们面临过于欧洲化的指责，被描绘成社会最邪恶的殖民者和压迫者。我们之所以受到攻击，是因为我们相信以色列，我们的祖先和宗教家园，有权存在。我们被那些滥用“犹太复国主义者”一词的人攻击，他们把“犹太复国主义者”一词当成对犹太人的美化诽谤，将其与种族主义、压迫性或种族灭绝性等同起来。我们非常清楚，反犹太主义正在发生变化。
我们为以色列感到骄傲。作为中东唯一的民主国家，以色列拥有数百万米兹拉奇犹太人（中东血统的犹太人）、阿什肯纳兹犹太人（中欧和东欧血统的犹太人）和埃塞俄比亚犹太人，以及数百万阿拉伯以色列人、超过一百万穆斯林和数十万基督徒和德鲁兹人。以色列对犹太人和整个中东地区来说，简直就是一个奇迹。
我们对以色列的热爱并不需要盲目的政治顺从。事实恰恰相反。对于我们许多人来说，当以色列政府的行为有问题时，我们对以色列的深爱和承诺会促使我们反对。以色列的政治分歧本质上是一种犹太复国主义活动；只要看看反对内塔尼亚胡司法改革的抗议活动——从纽约到特拉维夫——就能明白为我们想象中的以色列而战意味着什么。只要和我们喝几次咖啡聊聊，就会发现我们对以色列的看法大相径庭。然而，我们都来自一个充满爱的地方，都渴望为以色列人和巴勒斯坦人创造更美好的未来。
如果说过去六个月在校园里的经历教会了我们什么的话，那就是哥伦比亚社区中大量直言不讳的人并不理解犹太复国主义的含义，因此也不理解犹太人的本质。然而，尽管我们几个月来一直在呼吁反犹太主义，但我们的担忧却被置之不理，被否定了。因此，我们在此提醒您：
10 月 12 日，许多人抗议以色列，而我们的朋友和家人的尸体还未干，我们就敲响了警钟。当人们大喊“不惜一切代价抵抗”时，我们退缩了，他们告诉我们，我们“都是近亲繁殖的”，“没有文化”。当一名“激进分子”举着牌子告诉犹太学生，他们是哈马斯的下一个目标时，我们颤抖不已；当 Sidechat 用户告诉我们，我们在撒谎时，我们难以置信地摇头。当 CUAD 营地的一位领导人公开自豪地说“犹太复国主义者不配活下去”，我们很幸运他们“没有出去谋杀犹太复国主义者”时，我们最终并不感到惊讶。当我们看到学生和教职员工用身体阻止犹太学生进入我们共同拥有的校园，甚至当他们默默地转过脸去时，我们感到无助。这种沉默很熟悉。我们永远不会忘记。有一件事是肯定的。我们不会停止为自己挺身而出。我们为自己是犹太人而自豪，也为自己是犹太复国主义者而自豪。我们来到哥伦比亚大学是因为我们想拓展我们的思想并参与复杂的对话。虽然校园里现在可能充斥着仇恨言论和简单的二元对立，但开始修复裂痕并开始跨越政治和宗教分歧建立有意义的关系永远不会太晚。我们的传统告诉我们，“热爱和平，追求和平”。我们希望你能加入我们，真诚地追求和平、真理和同理心。我们可以一起修复我们的校园。
In Our Name: A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University
To the Columbia Community:
Over the past six months, many have spoken in our name. Some are well-meaning alumni or non-affiliates who show up to wave the Israeli flag outside Columbia’s gates. Some are politicians looking to use our experiences to foment America’s culture war. Most notably, some are our Jewish peers who tokenize themselves by claiming to represent “real Jewish values,” and attempt to delegitimize our lived experiences of antisemitism. We are here, writing to you as Jewish students at Columbia University, who are connected to our community and deeply engaged with our culture and history. We would like to speak in our name.
Many of us sit next to you in class. We are your lab partners, your study buddies, your peers, and your friends. We partake in the same student government, clubs, Greek life, volunteer organizations, and sports teams as you.
Most of us did not choose to be political activists. We do not bang on drums and chant catchy slogans. We are average students, just trying to make it through finals much like the rest of you. Those who demonize us under the cloak of anti-Zionism forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.
We proudly believe in the Jewish People’s right to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity. Contrary to what many have tried to sell you – no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel. Zionism is, simply put, the manifestation of that belief.
Our religious texts are replete with references to Israel, Zion, and Jerusalem. The land of Israel is filled with archaeological remnants of a Jewish presence spanning centuries. Yet, despite generations of living in exile and diaspora across the globe, the Jewish People never ceased dreaming of returning to our homeland — Judea, the very place from which we derive our name, “Jews.” Indeed just a couple of days ago, we all closed our Passover seders with the proclamation, “Next Year in Jerusalem!”
Many of us are not religiously observant, yet Zionism remains a pillar of our Jewish identities. We have been kicked out of Russia, Libya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Poland, Egypt, Algeria, Germany, Iran, and the list goes on. We connect to Israel not only as our ancestral homeland but as the only place in the modern world where Jews can safely take ownership of their own destiny. Our experiences at Columbia in the last six months are a poignant reminder of just that.
We were raised on stories from our grandparents of concentration camps, gas chambers, and ethnic cleansing. The essence of Hitler’s antisemitism was the very fact that we were “not European” enough, that as Jews we were threats to the “superior” Aryan race. This ideology ultimately left six million of our own in ashes.
The evil irony of today’s antisemitism is a twisted reversal of our Holocaust legacy; protestors on campus have dehumanized us, imposing upon us the characterization of the “white colonizer.” We have been told that we are “the oppressors of all brown people” and that “the Holocaust wasn’t special.” Students at Columbia have chanted “we don’t want no Zionists here,” alongside “death to the Zionist State” and to “go back to Poland,” where our relatives lie in mass graves.
This sick distortion illuminates the nature of antisemitism: In every generation, the Jewish People are blamed and scapegoated as responsible for the societal evil of the time. In Iran and in the Arab world, we were ethnically cleansed for our presumed ties to the “Zionist entity.” In Russia, we endured state-sponsored violence and were ultimately massacred for being capitalists. In Europe, we were the victims of genocide because we were communists and not European enough. And today, we face the accusation of being too European, painted as society’s worst evils – colonizers and oppressors. We are targeted for our belief that Israel, our ancestral and religious homeland, has a right to exist. We are targeted by those who misuse the word Zionist as a sanitized slur for Jew, synonymous with racist, oppressive, or genocidal. We know all too well that antisemitism is shapeshifting.
We are proud of Israel. The only democracy in the Middle East, Israel is home to millions of Mizrachi Jews (Jews of Middle Eastern descent), Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of Central and Eastern European descent), and Ethiopian Jews, as well as millions of Arab Israelis, over one million Muslims, and hundreds of thousands of Christians and Druze. Israel is nothing short of a miracle for the Jewish People and for the Middle East more broadly.
Our love for Israel does not necessitate blind political conformity. It’s quite the opposite. For many of us, it is our deep love for and commitment to Israel that pushes us to object when its government acts in ways we find problematic. Israeli political disagreement is an inherently Zionist activity; look no further than the protests against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms – from New York to Tel Aviv – to understand what it means to fight for the Israel we imagine. All it takes are a couple of coffee chats with us to realize that our visions for Israel differ dramatically from one another. Yet we all come from a place of love and an aspiration for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People. Yet despite the fact that we have been calling out the antisemitism we’ve been experiencing for months, our concerns have been brushed off and invalidated. So here we are to remind you:
We sounded the alarm on October 12 when many protested against Israel while our friends’ and families’ dead bodies were still warm.
We recoiled when people screamed “resist by any means necessary,” telling us we are “all inbred” and that we “have no culture.”
We shuddered when an “activist” held up a sign telling Jewish students they were Hamas’s next targets, and we shook our heads in disbelief when Sidechat users told us we were lying.
We ultimately were not surprised when a leader of the CUAD encampment said publicly and proudly that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that we’re lucky they are “not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence. This silence is familiar. We will never forget.
One thing is for sure. We will not stop standing up for ourselves. We are proud to be Jews, and we are proud to be Zionists.
We came to Columbia because we wanted to expand our minds and engage in complex conversations. While campus may be riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries now, it is never too late to start repairing the fractures and begin developing meaningful relationships across political and religious divides. Our tradition tells us, “Love peace and pursue peace.” We hope you will join us in earnestly pursuing peace, truth, and empathy. Together we can repair our campus.
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