Inspired by the Israeli tent protests, Hillel, a militantly pro-Israel Jewish campus life organization, is going to put up tents on 20 campuses this fall for students to talk about Israel. The quote in my headline, from Hillel’s president, at the end of excerpt, is another sign that the Jewish mainstream realizes it is losing the young, who want to base their lives on progressive values, and see that Israeli society has intolerant rightwing tendencies. From JTA (and thanks to Magnes Zionist):
”The purpose of the tent is to grapple with the challenges that Israel is facing and that will play out on college campuses,” said Sharon Ashley, head of the recently formed Center for Israel Engagement, which operates under Hillel’s auspices….
“The tent has got flaps, but at the same time it’s open,” Wayne Firestone, Hillel’s president, said in his plenary address at the conference. “It’s open in the sense that we want to be open and inviting to students that want to engage in conversations about Israel that we are so passionate about, and we refuse to allow ourselves to be marginalized and polarized by those on the edges and outside the tent.”
