Beren Scholar fellows attending a seminar provided by the program. Photo: Sinai Temple
A new “intensive” seminar based in the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and described as the “first of its kind” will prepare Jewish high school students to withstand and resist campus antisemitism, The Algemeiner has learned.
Announced in the shadow of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the Beren Scholars Program will educate cohorts of students in 11th and 12th grade about the history of antisemitism across the ages and its latest manifestation in higher education, steeling them against a wave of hatred that university administrators have failed to stop.
A key component of Beren Scholars is a lecture series featuring the world’s leading Jewish and non-Jewish antisemitism experts, including Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Dr. Pastor John Paul Foster, and Sarah Idan, a former Miss Iraq winner and leading Muslim supporter of Israel. Connecting Jewish students with leaders drawn from every culture and faith will, Sinai Temple says, expand their network of support and hone their ability to serve as ambassadors of the Jewish community on and off campus.
“The program will culminate with a trip to Sacramento where students will practice their news skills, meeting with state lawmakers to advocate for Jewish causes,” Sinai Temple said earlier this month.
The establishment of the Beren Scholars Program comes amid an eruption of antisemitism on college campuses unlike any in US history.
According to a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published last month, there was a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena during the 2023-2024 academic year. The report revealed a bleak picture of a higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate, noting that 10 campuses alone accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Violence was most common at universities in the state of California, where, for example, anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
It is this harrowing reality which prompted Sinai Temple and the Robert M. Beren Family Foundation to equip Jewish students with the tools they will need to overcome a hostile world, Rabbi Erez Sherman, co-senior rabbi of the synagogue, told The Algemeiner during an interview.
“What might have began as a defensive idea will be turning into a proactive vision,” Sherman said. “Looking back now post-Oct. 7, it’s clear that programs like this should have been with us many years before, but we became a bit too complacent. They used to say ‘we have to teach our college students’ and then they said ‘we have to teach our high school students.'”
Sherman added that numerous incidents going back years portended the crisis Jewish students face today. But he explained that Oct. 7, its suddenness and cruelty combined with the higher education establishment’s indifferent response to it in some cases, convulsed the Jewish community, forcing it to accept that even institutions reputed to be the most tolerant and diverse can, either through intentional neglect or incompetence, become bastions of antisemitism. Moreover, he explained, the community recognized the urgency of mobilizing allies in non-Jewish communities.
“Little things were creeping up,” he continued. “But I don’t think we understood the magnitude of what lied beneath the surface. When it exploded on Oct. 7, we realized that we had to address it, and Sinai Temple and this community was very fortunate to, number one, already be in a space of Israel activism — so we didn’t have to recreate anything — and two, to also be in a space of allyship creation, wonderful relationships with our Catholic Church, Faithful Central Bible Church, the Mormon Church.”
Sherman hopes the work in which the Beren Foundation and Sinai Temple is engaged will spread to synagogues across the country.
“What’s unique is that this is coming out of a synagogue and not any other organization that’s just fighting antisemitism or just working on college campuses,” he said. “We want people to realize that their own houses of worship have value beyond just worship and praying to G-d. They can also take action.”
Julie Platt — the daughter of the late Robert M. Beren, a generous supporter of the Orthodox community who died last August — called it a “great blessing to carry on our father’s legacy knowing that our work will support the next generation of Jewish students.”
She added, “In a world where Jews are thinking to retreat, our Beren Scholars will not hide. Instead, they will stand tall, speak out, and create a world of empathetic, intellectual, strong, joyful Jewish leaders.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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