This post originally appeared at JewSchool.com

After Swarthmore Hillel's decision to break from Hillel's rules regarding conversation about Israel, I sent a letter to Hillel's President and CEO, Eric Fingerhut by clicking send on a message as part of Open Hillel's campaign to open Hillel. The response was swift, cordial, perhaps prepackaged, and it suggested I take a look at Hillel's Israel Guidelines page.

So I did and I came across this wonderfully written paragraph:

Political Pluralism

Hillel welcomes a diversity of student perspectives on Israel and strives to create an inclusive, pluralistic community where students can discuss matters of interest and/or concern about Israel and the Jewish people in a civil manner. We encourage students’ inquiry as they explore their relationship with Israel. We object to labeling, excluding or harassing any students for their beliefs and expressions thereof. As an indispensible partner to the university, Hillel seeks to facilitate civil discourse about Israel in a safe and supportive college environment that is fertile for dialogue and learning.
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A version of this appears at JewSchool.com

I’ve been reading an array of obituaries and reflections on Mandela and his legacy since late Thursday night when I heard that he had died. When I had a chance to reflect on the news as I traveled from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv last night my thoughts turned to my parents and a shoe museum in Toronto, where I grew up. I also thought about why I came here in the first place.

When I was 13 years old, freshly Bar Mitzvah’d with an older teenaged brother spending weekends looking for fights with neo-Nazis, I first became aware that my mom was (and on some fronts still is) a politically active human being. She was a New York Jew of the baby boom generation, a Woodstock attendee, and she had, in those turbulent years of which I have no first hand knowledge, gotten involved in struggles for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam, and toward a feminist future. 
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This originally appeared at Jewschool.com

Last year a friend who had just finished participating in a Birthright program was telling me of his harrowing journey and mentioned that they had gone to the City of David. I said something along the lines of, "Right, Silwan. The tour through people's backyards" in a tone that implied that I thought my friend, a fellow politically active organizer, would know what I was talking about. But, instead, he said something like, "Wait, that was Silwan?"

It became clear at that moment that the JNF's aim via subsidiary support for ELAD to dispossess Palestinians of their homes in Silwan and replace them with settlers and a tourist site at the City of David was working. The process is barely noticeable to those who don't know to look, which is most people. What's worse is it all seemed (seems) normal to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Birthright participants and other tourists who visit the neighborhood without ever meeting a Palestinian resident whose  land is systematically being taken.  
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