Wouldn’t you know it. An interest group — “Open Hillel” — that demands an open mind has a closed mind itself.
Who is “Open Hillel?” What does it demand? Open Hillel is an interest group of Jewish students who are members of Hillel and say:
Jewish students who support boycotts of, divestments from and sanctions against Israel have the same right to voice their opinions within the Hillel framework as the majority of Jewish students, who support Israel’s right to exist.
International Hillel says: Opinions or policies that are tantamount to a denial of Israel’s right to exist have no place in the Hillel framework. Open Hillel responds: Be open-minded! Be inclusive. Reach out to all Jewish students. Allow anti-Israel Jewish students into the conversation within Hillel.
Naive us. We thought that when Open Hillel demanded equal rights within Hillel for Jewish students who support BDS, the point was a consistent openmindedness. We thought that when Open Hillel rejected international Hillel’s rule that participation in Hillel was predicated on Israel’s right to exist, the point was greater inclusiveness.
We thought that Open Hillel was saying that a sizable number of Jewish students today are not even minimally pro-Israel (defined as accepting Israel’s right to exist, free of BDS), and we should not exclude these students. We should not send them away. Rather, we should include them in the hope of solidifying their identification with Israel and the Jewish community.
Now comes the news that Open Hillel is not consistently open-minded. It wants international Hillel to accept one minority viewpoint, but, it turns out, not another one. The inconsistency came to light in Open Hillel’s rejection of $22 million in funding facilitated by an Israeli leader who holds a minority opinion that Open Hillel disagrees with. Open Hillel’s openmindedness extends only so far as anti-Israel Jewish students, but not so far as the opinions of Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Naftali Bennett.
Open Hillel is very adamant about its ironically restricted view of openmindedness. International Hillel must not exclude Open Hillel’s views — well, of course! But, says Open Hillel, International Hillel must exclude Minister Bennett’s views and funds — well, of course!
Here is what Minister Bennett proposes: a $22 million grant from Israel to International Hillel to build Jewish identity in the Diaspora. Open Hillel is deeply offended by this proposal — and demands that International Hillel reject it — because Minister Bennett holds political views at odds with what Open Hillel takes to be International Hillel’s mission.
Bennett, for example, opposes legalization of same-sex marriage. Open Hillel says that funds facilitated by someone who holds this view must be excluded from International Hillel. In effect, Open Hillel says that the “big tent” that it demands for anti-Israel Jewish students is really a small tent, excluding Bennett’s Jewish-identity building project. For Naftali Bennett, Open Hillel’s inclusiveneness really means: Include him out.
Open Hillel’s hypocrisy is blatant, ironic, unacceptable. It reveals that “Open Hillel” really isn’t interested in openmindedness or inclusiveness at all; only in its own tolerance for anti-Israel viewpoints.
Here you have two viewpoints — acceptance of BDS and rejection of same-sex marriage — that, rightly or wrongly, are taken to reside outside the American Jewish communal consensus. The advocates for the first viewpoint demand a “big tent,” an outreach to Jewish students who do not share in the communal consensus. Then, however, these very advocates reject a big tent when another viewpoint outside the communal consensus comes along. Selective tolerance is actually intolerance.
Suddenly, the same narrowness that Open Hillel ascribes to International Hillel’s Israel policy, Open Hillel itself adopts about another policy that challenges International Hillel.
Not to mention, Open Hillel’s objections do not even concern any policy that Israel’s Naftali Bennett wishes to foist on Hillel. Rather, Bennett wants to steer $22 million to Hillel in order to strengthen Israel-Diaspora ties by promoting Jewish identity. But, says Open Hillel, the money is tainted because of Bennett’s views. It is not even Bennett’s identity-building project that renders its funding unacceptable to Open Hillel. Objectionable, rather, is a viewpoint held by the facilitator of the funds unrelated to the project. What Open Hillel demands is Big Brother: thought control, pure and simple. Bennett thinks differently from Open Hillel,as if his thoughts, incidentally, are not directly grounded in Jewish sources.
Open Hillel would close any project with the potential to do a world of good for a segment of the Jewish student community that Open Hillel claims to value. This is more than hypocrisy. It is intellectual disfiguration. It is Animal Farm.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
