Like many Stern students, I spent a year after high school studying in a seminary in Israel. Like most of my peers, I can reel off a list of indelible memories from that year abroad: meandering adventures in Machaneh Yehudah surrounded by a kaleidoscope of unfamiliar scents and sounds; the peaceful loneliness of an impromptu 2AM prayer at the kotel; the paradoxical experience of feeling “at home” in a place not despite, but because it was so different from the place I’d lived my entire life. Most of these memories are good ones, the sort that I swap with friends when we reminisce about our seminary years. They’re pleasant, unchallenging, and the most difficult emotion they’re likely to provoke is wistfulness.
None of this, however, describes the single most provoking and life-changing moment I experienced during that year. It was Yom Yerushalaim, the day that celebrates the conquest of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Religious Zionist community in Israel celebrates the day with a march from the center of downtown Jerusalem to the kotel. The march enters through Jaffa Gate and winds its way through the Arab shuk while the marchers dance and sing and wave signs that celebrate the religious significance of the day. My friends and I were euphoric. The day was the culmination of a year spent studying in a Religious Zionist seminary. It marked a day in history that most of us viewed as miraculous, the beginning, according to some, of the Messianic Era. I felt, in that moment, like I was experiencing the ultimate of what it meant to be a Religious Zionist and a proud, committed 21st century Jew.
The very next moment, all that changed. We were halfway through the Arab shuk when I saw a group of boys around my age, bedecked in crocheted kippot and exposed tzitzit, gathered around a middle-aged Arab man. They stood aggressively close, chanting “Am Yisrael Chai” in thick American accents, hurling the phrases “Kahana tzadak” and “mavet la’aravim” in his direction. The incident lasted only a minute or two; the boys quickly danced on, and I continued with the march, walking instead of dancing. I went to bed early that night while my friends stayed awake to watch the sunrise. I told them that I didn’t feel well, which was true. I didn’t know how to express what I felt in that moment. Years later I can still only use a jumble of vague words like anger, disappointment, and disillusionment.
Unfortunately, I’ve learned in the years since that incidents like that one involving American yeshiva students are not uncommon. I’ve heard stories about Arabs harassed “in town” by rowdy students fueled by too much alcohol, seen the racist posters and bumper stickers that adorn too many seminary dorm rooms and binders. I felt shock and embarrassment when the Wall Street Journal mistakenly identified a group of young men harassing an Arab woman who’d been evicted from her home in Sheikh Jarrah as Israelis. They boys who appear in that now-internet famous picture are Americans. I know because I recognize several of them from home.
The phenomenon is not a surprising one. Take hundreds of American eighteen year olds, transport them en masse to a foreign country with a complex political situation shot through with religious significance, remove the boundaries and supervision that they are used to, and toss in the added influence of legally obtainable alcohol, and you’re bound to get more than a few who choose racist harassment in the name of religion as their recreational pastime of choice.
What is surprising, however, is that yeshivot and seminaries do so little to curtail the attitudes that underlie such behavior. While principles of respect and sensitivity towards others are taught throughout the year in most institutions, too few make any effort to remind students that these principles apply to people who might instinctively be categorized as “the enemy.” What’s damning are the subtle ways that many seem to encourage such convenient forgetfulness: several popular seminaries take their yearly trips to Hebron with a guide who encourages them to sing “Am Yisrael Chai” outside of Arab homes while he informs them that eventually all houses in Hebron will be occupied by Jews alone.
Not all yeshivot have failed in this responsibility. Some make efforts to remind their students to be sensitive to others, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. I was overwhelmed when I heard that a rabbi at one prominent Religious Zionist yeshiva takes the time to discuss the ethical ramifications of the yearly pilgrimage to Hebron on Shabbat Chayei Sarah, during which Arab residents are confined to their homes for days at a time. The rabbi asks his students to remember that their presence in the city means that families, many with young children, cannot venture outside for days on end and to consider that fact when deciding whether or not to attend. Stories like this make me hopeful, but the fact remains that there are too few of them.
This issue is not a political one. It should be equally pertinent to readers who believe in the Biblical imperative of Greater Israel and those who yearn for a two-state solution. It is fundamentally religious in nature, a question about the sort of Torah that we believe in and choose to teach. My claim is simple: that the same religion that teaches us to value Torah and the Land of Israel demands that we behave as decent people. It’s time we demand that the institutions that educate our children to be committed religious Jews and Zionists educate them to be thoughtful, sensitive human beings as well.