When young Jews major in anti-Semitism

AMERICAN JEWRY is experiencing a cognitive dissonance the likes of which it has never known.

To illustrate, consider my recent lecture in Virginia Beach, Va.: "Anti-Semitism at the Universities: What Can We Do About It?"

It is very significant that a mainstream (i.e., largely secular and liberal) Jewish organization (the Jewish Community Center) would fly a speaker from across the country to speak on anti-Semitism at universities.

To understand how significant, one must appreciate how much Jews revere the university.

First, education has a religion-like status in both religious and secular Jewish life. And the university is romantically thought of as the temple of education.

Second, the university is regarded as the key vehicle to professional success, also a great value in Jews' lives.

Third, the university is the most secular of all major institutions, and many Jews believe in secularism as much as Orthodox Jews believe in Judaism.

Fourth, for many Jews, happiness is largely dependent on deriving \o7nachas\f7 (Yiddish for "pride and joy") from their children, and nothing gives them more \o7nachas\f7 than being able to tell people that their child attends a prestigious university.

Yet universities have become society's primary breeding ground for hatred of Israel. This hatred is often so intense that the college campus has become a haven for people who use anti-Zionism to mask their anti-Semitism. Moreover, anti-Zionism itself is a form of anti-Semitism, even if some Jews share it. Why? Because anti-Zionism is not simply criticism of Israel, which is as legitimate as criticism of any country. Anti-Zionism means that Israel as a Jewish state has no right to exist. And when a person argues that only one country in the world is unworthy of existence -- and that happens to be the one Jewish country in the world -- one is engaged in anti-Semitism, whether personally anti-Semitic or not.

Not long ago, on my radio show, I invited a UCLA student who, on the occasion of Israel's birthday, had written a hate-filled article about the Jewish state in the Bruin, the school newspaper. I asked her if she had always been anti-Israel. She said that as a Jewish girl growing up in Britain, she was actually a Zionist who had visited Israel a number of times on Jewish student trips there.

"What changed you?" I asked.

"The university," she responded.