After Bombing, Some Students Cancel on Reform Program in Israel

The Hebrew University bombing and other Palestinian terror attacks have led at least 18 aspiring rabbis and cantors to skip a year in Jerusalem at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

In most circumstances, the Reform movement’s college requires rabbinical, cantorial and Jewish education students to spend the first year of their program in Jerusalem. Given the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence, however, HUC leaders have allowed for exceptions — and more students are taking advantage of them.

That comes after HUC officials had noted, just more than a month ago, that almost all members of the entering class were choosing to attend the Israel program.

“I do believe that the bombings at Hebrew University made a significant difference in the minds of some students,” said Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC’s president, noting that some students were friends with some of the five Americans killed in the July 31 attack.

Sara Yellen, 24, was childhood friends with Marla Bennett, who died in the bombing. After learning of her death, Yellen decided not to go on HUC’s Israel program.

“She was my Israel mentor,” Yellen said of Bennett, who was doing joint graduate work at Hebrew University and the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies.

Yellen had resurrected their friendship when she learned Bennett was studying in Israel.

“The way she lived there was the way I was going to model my life there,” Yellen said.

But Bennett’s death “hit close to home,” Yellen said. Although she already had resolved not to take buses or visit pedestrian malls in Israel, she began to question whether she would be safe at all in Jerusalem.

Ultimately, she decided to stay in the United States.

“I do feel I’m going to miss something,” she said. “But at the same time, I feel I will have opportunities to go to Israel, and life is a balance.”

Ellenson said he anticipates that a few more students may choose to stay home before the rest depart for Israel next week, but that close to 50 will go to Jerusalem.

He said there will be programs in one of HUC’s stateside campuses for the students who choose to remain in the United States, and an effort will be made to bring all the U.S. students together, though details have not yet been worked out.

“It means that for some of these students, the type of community that had been experienced in previous years won’t be as strong,” he said.

Stacey Nolish, 25, said she’s still going to Israel next week for the year of study, but that the experience will be different without some of her peers.

“It’s disheartening,” she said. “There was a sense of solidarity, that you were all in this together.”

Many of those who chose to stay in the United States had “been on the fence the whole time,” and seeing others choose to stay stateside impacted their decisions, Nolish said.

“I definitely think that people who were friends talked to each other and influenced each other,” she said.

Ellenson said it was important for HUC to keep its program in Israel this year, but allow students to make their own decisions. Choosing to move the program to the United States would be “tantamount to handing a victory to murderers, and that’s something we are unwilling to do,” he said.

“Each individual has to make a choice and we respect those choices,” he said. “Similarly, we feel HUC as an institution must fulfil its own commitments at this moment.”