In Every Generation: The Passover Protests of 2024

In Every Generation: The Passover Protests of 2024

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 26, 2024

In the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s I participated in anti-Vietnam-war protests. Granted, UCLA and SMU weren’t exactly the political hotbeds that Stanford and Berkeley were. But still, it was a heady feeling to be part of this movement. At UCLA I remember forming a “penny lane” along one of the main walks that led to the Student Center, holding placards and staffing tables with information that we took at face value—the number of American soldiers killed, the number of Vietnamese civilians killed, and the amount of money that went into what we saw as an unjust and brutal war.

Nationwide however, as the protests evolved, they became more violent. As I recall it, the terrible climax came with the killing of four students at Kent State University. After that, the song “Ohio” by, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young became the theme song that united us. I was a student at SMU at the time, and as I left of one of my classes, I walked right into the middle of a protest on the quad in front of the iconic rotunda. It was a symbolic funeral for the four students, and I somehow found myself one of the pallbearers, helping to hold up an improvised black-painted, cardboard casket.  It was a powerful moment that left me feeling dazed, sensing unification with everything and everyone around me, all of us part of a huge movement to make the world better, to accept and love one another despite our color or race, the shape of our eyes, or the faith we professed.

The protests of the 60’s and 70’s weren’t only against the war, however, and they didn’t only happen on college campuses. After the Stonewall Inn riots in June 1969, gay men and women mobilized to lay the foundation for what is today the LGBTQIA+ Community. Native-Americans rallied to reclaim their stolen identity. The Women’s Lib Movement—mocked probably more than any other group at the time and still so to this day—took its first steps towards gender equality (it was only in 1974 that women were first granted the right to open credit cards in their own name, not in their husband’s name).

There was no Jewish-lib movement that I was aware of. There didn’t seem to be a need for one. Jews—myself included—were involved in everything that took place. A full half of the Freedom Riders—Americans who took part in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, who marched alongside Rev. Martin Luther King, and who traveled to Southern states, to help Black men and women claim their voting rights—were Jewish. Jews were active in every liberation movement, visionaries and trailblazers who often rose to leadership positions—like Harvey Milk in San Francisco and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in Selma.  

How different is all that from what I see today: the anti-Israel “tent encampments” at Harvard, Columbia, USC, the University of Texas at Austin, George Washington University and elsewhere. 

And what’s different about this so-called protest movement, what’s so frightening and maddening, is that it isn’t inclusive, as ours was. It doesn’t aim to unite, but to divide. It isn’t driven by love, but by intolerance and hate. Today’s protests don’t embrace—they reject. What’s so shocking today—and maybe shouldn’t be—is that these protests are directed against one group, one which until now saw itself as an equal and integral part of the larger whole: Jews. In fact, the “tent encampments” are singularly and specifically aimed against Jews, meant to violently exclude Jews from any part of our society and culture. Of all Americans, the one group that’s been most active in liberation and inclusion movements; who more than most others have stepped up to free the oppressed, paying with their blood, time and money; the group that has contributed immeasurably to the advancement of art and music, science, education, health and lifestyle in America, particularly considering our number (less than 3% of the general population): the Jews. 

When the protesters today call for globalized intifada—what they actually mean is the murder of Jews all over the world. 

The naïveté and ignorance of these protesters is astounding. They don’t even mention—or when they do, then it’s with excuses and even support—the worst atrocity committed against Jews since the Holocaust, when Hamas terrorists broke the ceasefire on the morning of October 7 and butchered over 1000 civilians—men, women and infants—and took more than 200 others hostage. Instead, what they rail against is Israel’s reaction and its rightful determination to defend itself. 

Unlike past protests, today it isn’t Israel’s “disproportionate” reaction that’s being denounced. The chants, the signs, the violence, the forced segregation of Jews from public, open spaces, are all aimed against Israel’s right to exist in the first place. The “tent encampments,” the slogans and speeches, aren’t for anyone. Rather, they only advocate exclusion, hatred and violence. What they protest is the Jewish People’s legitimate right to define and defend itself, to live in peace and safety just like any other nation and country in the world. 

The campus protests broke out like a plague in the middle of Pesach 2024. But they were anything but spontaneous. They were actually preceded by decades of multi-million-dollar donations to universities, made by oil-rich, antisemitic countries. It was money that went to hire—and grant tenure to—those professors who towed the line, who mocked or punished Jewish students, who taught only the Arab-endorsed, revisionist and antisemitic narrative, without any reference to what really happened. 

For decades now, pro-Arabist activists infiltrated academia and liberal causes. It’s easy, they found, to brainwash students, naïve, ignorant, with hearts of gold. It’s easy, they discovered, to activate long-dormant prejudices and use them for their own vile purposes. 

If, as Shakespeare wrote, “all the world is a stage,” then from now on we need to be extra watchful about who the playwright is, who the director, and who finances the production. 

Year after year we read in the Passover Haggadah, “In every generation [they] rise up to destroy us.” For most of us, it’s been little more than a line from an ancient play, written at a different time, for a different generation. This Passover, however, this reminder is poignant, epic and current.

We Jews are awfully good at forgiving. But we never forget. Passover 2024 will remain in our collective memories forever. It will be years before we are able to look at former friends and colleagues without suspicion. We will remain wary of groups we once were proud to be part of. Trust is hard to rebuild.

For our sake as a people and as a nation, we pray: May healing come soon. May we learn to embrace one another as we once did and look forward with love, not hate. May we once again see not what divides us, but rather look for what we have in common. 

May God give us strength, may God bless us with peace.

© 2024 by Boaz D. Heilman