As events to remember the victims of the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7 unfolded this week on college campuses across the country, Jewish students were reminded that they still face exclusion and harassment. More campus protests featured and spread rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel and extolling terrorism. 

Thousands of Jewish students have modeled courage and strength in the face of that adversity over the past year. Here are the stories of five such Jewish college students. 

Claiming a Seat at the Table

Shoshana Aufzien, 18, had been attending a Jerusalem Torah study program for only a month when Hamas terrorists turned her post-high school gap year into one of the most formative years of her young Jewish life.

Shoshana, another graduate of AJC’s LFT program, had been to Israel a dozen times growing up so when the sirens sounded on the morning of Simchat Torah and the seminarians rushed into bomb shelters, she presumed it was one of the routine rocket attacks from neighboring Gaza or Lebanon that rattle Israelis’ daily lives.

But not long after the sunset and she began to grasp the horror that had unfolded, the goals of her gap year suddenly shifted. In addition to studying the Talmud, she spent the rest of the year volunteering at Israel Defense Force bases.

“It was a formative year and a tumultuous one,” she said. “I learned so much about myself and Jewish unity it took a lot of introspection to get to that point. It was difficult pushing through what is challenging for even the toughest people. I’ve been to so many funerals in the past year.”

Facing Hamas hate in Israel steeled her to face Hamas supporters when she arrived at Columbia University’s Barnard College, where students and faculty routinely stand outside the gates calling for jihad, quoting terrorists, and calling her epithets popularized by neo-Nazis.

She knew Columbia had been an epicenter of the anti-Israel student protest movement with a protest encampment on campus that set off a nationwide movement. She knew the campus climate would be hostile, but that didn’t discourage her.

“I think it’s imperative that Jewish students have a seat at the literal and proverbial table,” she said. “That’s ultimately why I decided to attend.”

Shoshana claimed her seat earlier this fall when anti-Israel protesters took over tables inside Columbia’s main library, draping them with keffiyehs and covering their faces with the Middle Eastern scarves too. Shoshana joined the protesters. But draped over her shoulders was an Israeli flag emblazoned with a yellow ribbon in honor of the hostages.  

 

Twice As Many Zionist Friends

While Shoshana is encountering hate on Columbia University’s campus for the first time, Columbia graduate Noa Fay spent most of the last school year wading through it – from students and faculty, inside and outside the classroom.

Outside the academic buildings, students chanting “Burn Tel Aviv to the Ground” and “Death to Israel” set up tent encampments in order to be there morning, noon, and night. Meanwhile, inside, Noa was forced to sit through a guest lecturer who denied the rape of Israeli women, celebrated a protester who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy, and accused Israel of committing genocide.

For Noa, who is Black, Native American, and Jewish, it’s difficult to fathom that people don’t believe Jews are indigenous to Israel. So she raised her voice too – at press conferences, on-air interviews, and even on stage at the March for Israel in the nation’s capital. That level of activism might’ve earned her a few enemies. But it won over plenty of friends too.

“For each friend I lost to antisemitism this year, I gained at least twice as many in Zionists,” she told an audience at AJC Global Forum 2024 while accepting AJC’s Sharon Greene Award for Campus Advocacy. The award was established by the family of the late Sharon Greene to recognize college-based advocates who combat antisemitism while supporting vibrant Jewish life on campus.

Noa assured the audience that her generation did not and will not yield to those who hate Israel.

Listen to Noa share her first-hand account of Jewish life on Columbia’s campus during the months that followed the October 7 attack

A Better Version of Myself

Jake Stone, 25, learned he was Jewish when his mother sat him down on his 19th birthday and revealed the secret. But he didn’t truly understand what it meant to be Jewish until he got an opportunity to visit Israel with Birthright.

On that first trip to the Holy Land, he celebrated Shabbat on a rooftop overlooking the Kotel and met Israelis whom he now considers family. He extended that first trip for several weeks and has visited a dozen times since. 

“I always come back from Israel such a better version of myself,” Jake said. “The fear of attack and the fear of danger I don’t really think about while I’m there. Israel and the Jewish people have done so much for me. I have this unpayable debt of gratitude.”

Now a senior at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Jake has volunteered for the Israel Campus Coalition, the Jewish National Fund, and American Jewish Committee’s Campus Global Board. He chose college in Boulder because of its vibrant Jewish life and peaceful environment in Israel. But that changed after October 7. 

“Post October 7, the culture changed overnight,” he said. “We didn’t have a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, but within three or four days, a chapter had registered on campus with 100 to 150 active members slapping Free Palestine stickers all over campus.”

The ethnic studies department released a strong anti-Israel statement, groups of professors accused Israel of genocide, and a student-run cultural events board used tuition money to invite Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who stoked the hostility even more. 

So, to commemorate the first anniversary of October 7, Jake helped organize a private dinner for Jewish campus leaders and more than two dozen non-Jewish student leaders to ask candid questions. He also invited a survivor of the Nova Music Festival to share his story.  

While students of different Jewish denominations on Boulder’s campus often occupy their own bubbles, the trauma has unified the community as a whole.

“All those divisional walls came down and our community is stronger than it’s ever been. We’re all looking after each other.”

The Light We Should See After October 7

Sabrina Soffer, a senior at George Washington University, clearly distinguishes Jewish life before and after Oct. 7, 2023. That separation was very much on her mind when she and other students observed Havdalah earlier this month, on Saturday, Oct. 5.

“The word ‘lehavdil,’ meaning to separate, calls us to distinguish between light and darkness and the sacred from the everyday,” Soffer wrote in a blog for The Jerusalem Post. “In the same way, we must separate the darkness of October 7 from the light we will carry forward in its memory.”

Fully aware that the hostility expressed against Israel is part of a larger struggle that Jewish students face on campus, Sabrina was already determined to break the silence about campus antisemitism before Oct. 7. Last year, the GW Student Association tapped her to lead a Special Presidential Task Force to Combat Antisemitism on campus. 

University administrators at GW are now working to foster dialogue and create a healthier campus climate by bolstering policies on free expression restrictions; establishing faculty working groups to address free speech and inclusion issues; and launching plans to create the New Center for Interfaith and Spiritual Life that promotes cross-cultural dialogue.

They also suspended the groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) during the 2024-2025 academic year. Soffer hopes a new group that formed in their absence called GW Student Coalition for Palestine (GWUSCP) will participate in programs that bring Arabs/Palestinians and Jewish Israelis together for meaningful conversations.

Listen to Sabrina Soffer and another student talk about implementing recommendations from the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism at their colleges and beyond before October 7.

A Collective Embrace

Eytan Saenger has always been “a decent hugger.” But the terror attack on Israel on October 7 and a singular event he witnessed afterward has changed the way he views the seconds-long interaction and has fueled him to keep fighting for the Jewish people.

Eytan, a graduate of AJC’s LFT program for high school students, is now a Jewish student leader at Binghamton University, the flagship university of New York’s state university system. He said within the first 24 hours of the attack on Israel, more than 700 students gathered for a vigil to stand united. Since then, he has helped organize a tribute to American hostage Omer Neutra who deferred acceptance to Binghamton before spending a gap year in Israel and enlisting in the IDF. He also helped persuade student leaders to rescind a resolution expressing support for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. 

But it was a brief moment in May that left an indelible mark. While interning for U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, Eytan attended an event at the White House marking Jewish American Heritage Month. Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of then-hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, also participated in the event.

Eytan seized the opportunity to thank Rachel Goldberg for modeling such strength in working to bring her son home alive. As they finished their conversation, a group of teenage girls approached the couple and asked if they could give Rachel a hug. Instinctively, Eytan snapped a picture on his phone.

That picture remains on his phone today. But since the murder and funeral of Hersh and the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks, with more than 100 hostages still in captivity, the picture has become a touchstone. Nearly 400 people gathered on campus to grieve together again this week.  

“We have collectively embraced and comforted each other through the grief and agony and continue to embrace the families with loved ones still held hostage in Gaza,” Eytan wrote in a blog for The Times of Israel. “In times of tumult and tragedy, it is our natural responsibility to embrace each other, which is exactly what we have done to the best of our ability these past few days and the last year overall.”

Listen to Eytan and another student at Binghamton discuss the strong sense of community among Jewish students on campus, the value of a supportive university administration, and the power of Jewish student-led movements to counter antisemitism.