March 10, 2025
A Change in the Weather?
As much as I love snow and cold and never complain about winter weather, I am super happy when I start to feel spring in the air. Although snow is still covering my garden, I know that very soon I’ll start to see my daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths poking their beautiful heads above the soil. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m starting to feel that, along with the blue sky and melting snow, even the news is giving me glimmers of hope and reasons to celebrate.
For the past year, like everyone reading this, I have been infuriated and frustrated by the outrageous levels of antisemitism that Jewish students have been facing on university campuses across this continent. It’s one thing for us, as adults, to see the antisemitism growing around us, but for bright, young, idealistic, impressionable students who are actually barred from attending classes, well, I can’t even imagine what they must be feeling.
As an alumna of New York’s Columbia University (which was a fantastic school when I was there, by the way), I have been especially disgusted by the way Columbia’s leadership has allowed the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas voice to take over. But here, now, is my glimmer of hope. On Friday, Columbia lost USD $400 million (that’s almost half a Billion) of federal grant funding “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”. Wow. But wait, there’s more. And it gets better. Other schools are now scared. Other schools are starting to weed out the terror. Other schools are beginning to suspend or expel dangerous, threatening, and physically aggressive Hamas-supporting students. Revoked visas and deportations of these local terrorists are coming.
Is it the weather? The news? Do you feel as hopeful as I do? Israel’s entry for Eurovision was just announced, a song called “A New Day Will Rise” sung by Yuval Rafael, who survived the Nova Festival Massacre by playing dead under a pile of her friends’ corpses. (Click here to watch her tell her spine-chilling story.) I believe that a new day is indeed rising. Let us rise with it. Here’s why (I just read this yesterday):
A woman was complaining to G-d, “Dear G-d, the world is in a terrible state. Why can’t you send someone to help?!”
G-d replies, “I did send someone. I sent you.”
That’s us, folks. Let’s keep going. Write letters, sign petitions, attend rallies, speak out, wear your “Bring Them Home” dog tag necklaces, read up on Israel/Palestine history. Do not remove your mezuzahs. Be a proud Jew. There’s a change in the weather. And a New Day Will Rise.
Am Yisrael Chai!