Jewish Voice For Peace Comes to NYU
After being rejected by the Bronfman Center, NYU JVP receives approval from the Student Activities Board.
This post has been updated to accurately reflect Rabbi Sarna’s position on academic boycotts.
NYU Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has earned official club status after the group received recognition from the Student Activities Board (SAB) Oct. 8. JVP — a left-wing Jewish and anti-occupation organization — originally planned on joining forces with the Bronfman Center, NYU’s Hilllel, or Jewish community center.
In the group’s application to gain SAB’s stamp of approval, NYU JVP outlined their ethos as a left-wing Jewish organization that fights for Palestinian rights and against the Israeli occupation.
But the group did not always plan on seeking the SAB’s validation. Originally, NYU JVP leadership planned on teaming up with the Bronfman Center, similar to the Center’s partnerships with TorchPac and J-Street U, center-right and left-wing Israel-oriented groups, respectively.
According to NYU JVP, their purpose and practices are inextricably linked to Judaism, which led the group’s founders to explore collaborating with the Bronfman Center.
“Our commitment to social justice and human rights is informed and shaped by our Jewish identities and values, and we believe that our work, which is grounded in Judaism, should happen within the Jewish community and its institutional spaces,” NYU JVP explained in a statement to NYU Local, authored by several of the club’s founding members.
As the fall 2017 semester approached, the group’s leadership emailed the Bronfman Center’s Executive Director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. In response to their inquiries, he raised concerns about the potential JVP group’s positions. The Bronfman Center, in NYU JVP’s telling, engaged in ideological gatekeeping by excluding left-wing voices.
“Unfortunately, we have since been formally institutionally excluded from the Bronfman Center because of our politics, which refuse to ground our critiques of Israel and its decades of human rights violations and ethnic segregation in a discourse of nationalism and unquestioning support for a Jewish state, in addition to our support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement for Palestinian human rights,” the group’s leaders wrote in their SAB application. “We are deeply concerned about our communal leadership’s deliberate rejection of Jewish students who do not identify as Zionists or are willing to deeply engage in questions of our community’s participation in white supremacy and colonialism.”
“Although the Bronfman Center touts its pluralism, it was made clear to us that there is no room within it for Jewish people committed to justice in Palestine,” NYU JVP continued.
“The Bronfman Center’s exclusion of our club implies that we do not have a legitimate or valid place in the Jewish community,” NYU JVP wrote in the statement to Local. The sole remaining choice for them, therefore, was to apply for recognition under the SAB, the club said.
Rabbi Sarna rejects this narrative. Reached for comment, Rabbi Sarna said his reservations stemmed from JVP’s support for boycotts of Israeli academics.
“We do not believe in academic boycotts — period,” Rabbi Sarna wrote in a statement to Local. “We believe that they run counter to the mission of a liberal university and the values of free inquiry. We would not support any club or organization in its efforts to silence scholars based on their nationality, be they from Palestine, Israel, Iran, Russia or the United States.”
Rabbi Sarna added in a follow-up email that while he would not be partnering with the newly minted club, the Bronfman Center would not exclude individual students involved in the JVP chapter at NYU. “JVP members have been welcomed, are welcomed and will be welcomed in our community, regardless of their political views.”
Notably, several of JVP’s founding members are active in the Bronfman Center and regularly attend its events. Rabbi Sarna went on to once again clarify that his opposition to partnering with JVP was because of their Israel Boycott, adding “We cannot make an exception for a group just because they are Jewish.”
Nevertheless, NYU JVP voiced frustration with the Bronfman Center giving them the cold shoulder, which they believe is part of an all-too-common pattern in mainstream Jewish spaces. “As many of us have experienced, speaking critically of Israel is a fast way to be ostracized and mistrusted by institutional Jewish communities.”
Still, JVP’s NYU chapter plans to continue with their mission. “We hope to provide a space for pro-Palestinian activists inspired by Judaism to proudly exist, advocate, and organize.”
Indeed, in its fledgling stages, the group has started a “Return the Birthright” campaign, with the goal of urging Jewish NYU students to avoid Taglit-Birthright, an organization that brings Jewish young adults on a free, ten-day trip to Israel, in defiance of what NYU JVP describes as Israel’s “systemic racism and daily violence” at Palestinians’ expense.
In early November, the group will host a panel on Israel-Palestine in the age of Trump and will co-host an anti-semitism workshop at Columbia University. “We’re also planning casual mixers and Shabbat dinners,” NYU JVP said.
Correction: This post previously stated Rabbi Sarna had concerns about JVP due to the organization’s support for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). Rabbi Sarna opposes academic boycotts in general, but did not mention BDS by name in his statement to Local.
