The past academic year has been particularly challenging for Jewish students on college campuses, marked by increasing threats, harassment, and violence during nationwide campus protests and encampments.
AJC Washington connects our community with AJC’s global advocacy work to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel. Our access to diplomats, elected officials, and interfaith leaders advances AJC’s broader global priorities: combating antisemitism, promoting Israel’s place in the world, and countering the spread of radicalism and extremism.
Tisha B’Av has been called the saddest day in Judaism. It is a day of remembrance and mourning, just as Oct. 7 will always be. But it is also a time when we can look forward and reaffirm the resilience of Israel and the Jewish people. We are faced with many challenges, but we have never been better equipped to confront them.
It is too soon to tell whether Tisha B’Av will be elastic enough to include October 7. The horrors of the Holocaust were too vast and required their own day of remembrance. And October 7’s date on the Hebrew calendar, Simchat Torah, among the most joyous of holidays, may prove difficult as an official day of mourning for the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
At AJC Global Forum 2023, Charlotte Aaron, Milton Zerman, and Hannah Krutiansky, leaders of the Jewish Law Students Association at the UC Berkeley School of Law, received the AJC Sharon Greene Award for Campus Advocacy.