Over the past few years, Indiana University has seen a rise in hate speech against the Jewish community.
The most recent example happened in September with a mezuzah being torn down from the apartment of two Jewish students, and burned.
The students’ response was to replace the symbol that was torn down.
“When this stuff happens, there’s nothing you can do except be more proud to be Jewish,” said President of IU Chabad Maddie Berkley. “This stuff happens and it’s horrible and it’s awful but take that, and spin it to say, ‘you know what? This happens, and the way that we as Jews win the battle is by being prouder Jews.”
Here are shots from the color run
That attitude stretches not only to local acts of anti-semitism, but national ones as well.
Kanye West tweeted anti-semitic comments that left many extremely frustrated, as anti-semitic acts seem to be a back-burner issue.
“I think that that’s an important conversation that we need to start having is that anti-semitism is still, unfortunately, alive,” said Berkley
According to the American Jewish Committee, Jewish people make up to 60% of all religious hate crimes in the United States despite making up just over 2% of the population.
“I don’t think that people take anti-semitism as seriously as they should,” said Berkley. “Sometimes it gets brushed over and the media doesn’t report it as much.”
Sabrina Glaser and Maddie Berkley show IUNewsNet’s Katherine Patterson around the Chabad House on campus.
IU Chabad’s social media manager Sabrina Glaser says that the best way to stop anti-semitism is to actively fight against it.
“If Jewish and non-Jewish people were fighting against anti-semitism, we could tackle it,” said Glaser, “but because it’s not that way yet… it’s dangerous to a whole community of people.”
However, members of IU Chabad say that these acts of hate don’t take away from their community and instead, bring them closer together.
“Something that Rabbi Levi always says is ‘I love being Jewish,'” said Glaser, “but like, he’ll scream it and it’ll echo throughout the whole building and for me, no matter what happens on this campus he will always say that and it’s true! We all love being Jewish and nothing can ever change that.”
