68th BIRTHDAY AND CUNY

     So first of all -  CHAG SAMEACH!
     HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ISRAEL ON TURNING 68 - HAPPY HOLIDAY!!
     So why the title? Well, first read this quote from Golda Meir, 4th Prime Minister of Israel.
     Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”
        Israel's soul. So Israel turns 68 and I know someone else who also turns 68 soon. Easy way to remember one's age, is it not!? So once again I spent hours listening, watching, laughing and crying as I toodled thru Facebook, emails sent  to me - all celebrating today and discussing what it means, especially in light of the status of Israel and Jews in the world.
     Israel is actually thousands of years old. Never has there been a time when there were no Jews living there. Never has there been a time that we have not prayed to return, even in the depths of the dirt and the hate of the camps and the ghettoes, when we established clandestine synagogues under threat of death. Never was there a time when Jews did not try to travel to the land, no matter its name of the time, even sometimes dying after they were able to see and touch the holy Western Wall. And from now on and forever, this will be our land and a place of refuge and safety, a place where one can think and develop freely, a country which among all the nations of the world is the ONLY country that is expressly Jewish, that will reach out to rescue Jews no matter where they are, who has them and how far and how hard it is to do, no matter their color or facial features. It is a land of people laughing and crying, growing and regressing, hating and loving, thriving and failing. In other words, it is a land like all others - except that this is a country that is always fighting for its survival even as it stands as a beacon of hope for all Jews throughout the world.
     So what's the deal with CUNY? When in the 1880's there was a large immigrant inflow of Jews fleeing pogroms in Poland and Russia, coming penniless to the "Goldeneh Medina", they brought with them the hope for the future of their children, for a better life for them and with that came the love of learning and culture, much of which transferred also to the love of secular achievement.
     Their children went to school and then to college. But where to go? How to afford it? And thus entered the colleges of CUNY. Free, or of little real cost, the students came and learned and went forth to teach and heal and discover and research and think. My parents went to CUNY. I went to CUNY. My sister did. My friends did. And we knew we had to repay society in return for the benefits that it had given us and so many of us returned as professors and administrators into a growing system that served all the people of the city and its environs. And it welcomed all.
     Today it is a glorious institution but there is a dark spot upon its lungs, a shadow of evil and disease, for today, it is not so healthy to be Jewish and live and learn and work within CUNY. Hunter, John Jay, Brooklyn - my alma mater - City, and Kingsborough, to name a few, are not safe for Jews, not welcoming to Jews, not engaging in fair hiring practices for Jews and one of the worst things about it is the pandering of "Judentrat" Jews, of fellow Jews who would sell out their fellows for the name of their own gain - a temporary gain - for we all know what happens in the end.
     Suddenly it is not so safe to walk around with a kippah on one's head, or a Jewish star hanging around one's neck. Suddenly one is crucified if one is an outspoken Jew (sorry for the analogy but it is quite apt). Suddenly a Jewish kid walking across campus needs to be watchful and at times even be escorted by security. And it is not CUNY alone, for now one of the questions parents ask of university officials all around the country is "how safe will my child be?" They ask about the anti Semitic incidents on campus, how many swastikas have been slashed and painted about and around campus, how many kids beaten up, how strong are the pro Palestinian and BDS groups, how intimidating are the professors that profess those views. These are a few of the questions asked. And why? Why again? Why ever?
      The song that celebrates the land, that it is your land, my land, belonging to you and me - now has other words to it from coast to coast depending upon the university and college. But I feel it most personally as I read about it in CUNY. That was my college. That is the college of some of my grandchildren. If I felt safe there then why not them? Indeed, why can my grandson over there on the West coast have to be asked by a nervous set of grandparents how the situation is?
     So Happy Birthday, Israel and may you live forever. May those who think about destroying you, who sing of taking over the land from "the river to the sea" and sending the Jews into that sea - may they get their deserved desserts and may G-d watch over us. From the prayer that we recite in synagogue for the State of Israel, just as we always recite the prayer  for the government of the United States, I quote:
"Heavenly Father, Israel's Rock and Redeemer.
Bless the State of Israel, the first flowering of our redemption."
   And from its national anthem, Hatikvah, the Hope: "As long as in the heart, within
A Jewish soul still yearns,
....An eye still gazes toward Zion:
 Our hope is not yet lost,
the hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem."