Explorers on Campus: A Model for Education, Relationship, and Reconciliation on the Day After
Benjamin Berger
Benjamin Berger is Vice President for Jewish and Israel Education at Hillel International.
Credit: Sources Montage
If we have learned anything this year, it’s that it is hard to imagine the day after when the pain of right now feels so present. In Israel, envisioning the day after the war remains among the most vexing challenges. And yet we hold onto our hopes of the hostages coming home, the suffering abating, and the rebuilding of Israel and Gaza commencing.
On college campuses, we are similarly immersed in a present of chaos and worry. As I write this, universities have endured months of protests, encampments, and dozens of disrupted or cancelled graduations. Many of us are now looking at these institutions, places where Jews in America have historically invested so much of our aspirations, capital, and trust, with a sense of profound loss.
As a Hillel professional, I look at these campuses—places where my colleagues and I have given so much of our lives and energy and hopes for the future of Jewish life—and I wonder if we might have been wrong to ever see the college campus as a healthy place for Jewish development. We are asking ourselves hard questions right now, even while we try to hold our campuses and our students together. Have our efforts to engage and to educate about Israel, to celebrate and grapple with it, been stymied by forces much more intent on demonizing and dismantling it? Have our attempts to be open-minded, to listen deeply to a range of approaches and narratives, even while drawing some boundaries, been a fool’s errand? Have our strategies to train and hold administrations accountable for the alienating and antisemitic behaviors on their campuses been in vain?
And while we ask these hard questions about our past choices and actions, I also believe it’s critical that we hold onto a vision of a day after that is better than today: a more peaceful campus where Jewish students are free to do the things that all students are there to do—learn new ideas and skills, connect to others, and grow toward (Jewish) adulthood. This requires reinvestment in guiding Jewish students toward engaged relationships with Israel and with one another that are enduring and well-informed.
Given our profound sense of loss and alienation, asking about the day after reminds me of the famous story of Rabbi Akiva walking on the ruins of the destruction of the Second Temple (bMakkot 24b).
In this tale from the period of the destruction of the Second Temple, a coterie of rabbis walks on Mount Scopus—ironically today the home of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—gazing down at the smoking ashes. Seeing a fox trotting on the ruins of their beloved spiritual home, they weep. But Rabbi Akiva laughs. While the other rabbis see his response as callous, Akiva only sees possibility. In his understanding of the prophecies of the past destruction of the First Temple and the rebuilding of the Second Temple, he understands that Jerusalem will be built once again. The fox is a sign to him that God’s presence will return to Jerusalem once again. His hope brings comfort and hope to his colleagues too.
A parallel text on the preceding page of the Talmud (bMakkot24a) feels even more prescient. Here, too, Rabbi Akiva and those same rabbinic luminaries walk along a road, this time a hundred miles away from the burning Temple. Even from this distance, they hear the conquering masses reveling in their spoils. Again, the other rabbis weep, while Akiva laughs. They question his laughter, bemoaning the idol worshippers in the distance, who bow and burn incense to false gods as they sit securely atop the destruction of the House of God. But Akiva explains that if they, these sinners, are rewarded for the few good deeds they might have performed, so too, will the righteous, the Jewish people who perform God’s will, be rewarded one day.
I wish, like Rabbi Akiva, I could find signs of redemption in the photographs and videos of protesters smashing the windows of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and defiling the walls of UCLA’s Royce Hall. But I don’t think it is enough to trust that things will be better. We must actively envision the day after, what we want to see on campus when the dust settles, whether that is this fall when the students return or in some yet-to-be-realized future.
In this essay, I offer a framework for thinking about Israel education in the context of campus Hillels, one that I hope might re-center us and remind us of our educational priorities, especially at this pivotal moment of re-orientation and re-evaluation.
When I use the term Israel education, I am drawing on Defining Israel Education, a 2012 study by Bethamie Horowitz, among other explanations. Horowitz writes that:
The purpose of Israel education is to build a relationship between the learner and Israel, and to create a sensibility that Israel in its varied aspects figures centrally in the experience of being a Jew. Three features distinguish it from other related undertakings. First it is directed towards Jews, rather than others, thus it is rightfully a part of Jewish education. Second it is an enterprise that involves children and teens as well as adults; consequently, Israel education requires educational strategies that are developmentally attuned. Finally, because fostering a personal connection between the person and Israel is its main purpose, it involves a broader set of efforts than formal schooling and subject-matter knowledge alone.
In the context of Hillel-based education on campus, Israel education is distinct from traditional classroom or academic learning. For instance, it typically includes robust, multi-session, cohort-based learning that takes place in a Hillel setting and is taught by professional Hillel educators who themselves hold deep, and often complex, relationships with Israel. More informally, it also takes place in conversations over coffee, and in text messages. It often includes immersive trips to Israel. These learning experiences focus on history, narratives, geography, culture, conflict, and other aspects of the story of Israel and of the Jewish people. Beyond transmitting knowledge, Hillel-based Israel education also aims to support the learner as they develop or deepen their own relationship to the state, both as an idea and as an actual place with enormous consequences for its people and those in its proximity. Finally, Israel education can be relevant to both non-Jewish and Jewish students, as we see through our campus-based trips for both populations.
Regardless of the exact setting or context, I find that there are two primary mindsets from which and to which we might educate: the Explorer and the Defender.
The work of each mindset is distinct and complex, and they often overlap and conflict with each other, though we cannot rely entirely on one or the other. Both are instinctive and each is necessary. I want to consider each and the unique place it plays in our educational efforts in more ordinary times and in moments of crisis like the one we face now. After that, I will apply them to the three aims or aspirations I believe Israel education must now have: educational, relational, and reconciliatory.
The Defender sets out to protect what is already within. They are inspired by fierce loyalty, love, and care. The Defender guards against threats to what they hold precious. When encountering difference, the Defender clamps down, and reacts physically, emotionally, and intellectually. In their desire to protect, the Defender may demand that others ignore or reject the complexities raised by competing narratives and focus instead on a more limited set of established facts. The Defender might shut out new information or new ideas as they struggle to protect what already exists.
An Explorer is someone who sets out with the goal of learning something new about an uncharted (or at least unknown to them) part of the world. They set out with curiosity and empathy; they seek knowledge and connections to ideas, people, and stories that they have not yet encountered. In exploring, they find both harsh realities and inspiring vistas; in fulfilling their own dreams and yearnings, they engage with the dreams and yearnings of the people they encounter. The Explorer recognizes the distance between them and those they encounter but strives to see themselves and their own stories in other stories, and to bring others into their own stories. Though they might in fact have profound disagreements, the Explorer remains open to learning from the other and might expect to be changed by their encounter with the other.
From the Defender mindset, an Explorer can learn about self-preservation, inward reflectiveness, and re-commitment to core aspects of their own identities. By acknowledging precarity and fragility, the Defender mindset can serve as an important reality check. Because it acknowledges a set of deeply held beliefs in a time of equivocation and extreme universalism, the Defender mindset might ground a person in what they hold to be true. Thus, the Defender mindset gives comfort that can in turn create room for exploration, while the Explorer mindset can inspire in the Defender a confidence to engage in hard issues without feeling threatened.
I suspect that many of us have spent a lot of time since October in a Defender mindset, recommitting to our entrenched beliefs in response to our duress. For example, despite having studied Palestinian narratives in writing and in person for years, since October 7, I have had a great deal of difficulty listening to Palestinian voices or stories of Palestinian suffering. While I share this with some trepidation because it contradicts my sense of myself as someone with compassion for Palestinians, I’d like to believe that this is a reasonable and maybe even responsible reaction to a life-threatening event. Yes, even one that didn’t directly endanger my own life. Although shutting out those voices kept me from being the empathetic human that I aim to be, my Defender mindset created a sense of safety when I was overwhelmed with information, telling me that everything that I hold to be precious is a lie.
Now, though, I am asking myself, and I am asking you: how can we hold two things at once, our deep and abiding commitments to Israel and our deep and abiding commitments to be Explorer-minded learners and educators? On campus, maintaining a commitment to an Explorer mindset has been exceedingly difficult, and yet, it is just as important as ever.
Given what’s happened, I believe Hillels must have three specific day-after aims when it comes to Israel, and each requires an Explorer mindset: building a deep well of knowledge through nuanced education, resiliency through building connections and relationships, and a recommitment to every Jewish student through a process of reconciliation.
Educating about the Israel-Palestinian Conflict
This past spring, many Jewish students on campus found themselves confused and uncertain about how to react when a close friend or roommate started advocating loudly for Palestinian rights in a way that seemed to imply the destruction of the State of Israel. At this moment—and at others like it in the future—the choice between a Defender mindset and an Explorer mindset will affect both the content and the delivery of the education that is so desperately needed.
When I was a student leader and then a young professional working for Hillel at the beginning of the Second Intifada, I was told that educating students about Israel was a matter of hasbara, explanation. While many students were passionate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they lacked knowledge of its history. All we had to do was learn the “myths and facts” and effectively relay them to the ignorant who would then be humbled and embrace Israel. Using hasbara today, a Hillel professional might explain to the confused student that their friend was ignorant of Israel’s many attempts to offer land and peace, offers that Palestinians rejected.
This urge toward hasbara stems from a Defender mindset, which risks reinforcing already entrenched beliefs. This is precisely why many consider hasbara to be little more than propaganda.
In contrast, educating from an Explorer mindset entails moving from “hasbara to hazmana, from explanation to invitation,” as Abi Dauber Sterne and Robbie Gringas have suggested with their initiative, For the Sake of Argument. Dauber Sterne explained to me in an email that “hazmana is about inviting people into a mutually challenging conversation about Israel. It involves a to-and-fro, mutual listening and mutual contending. It is not the attempt to convince the other of your rightness.”
In a similar vein, Hillel International’s Center for Jewish and Israel Education trains campus educators in a methodology called the “Inquiry Centered Model for Israel Education.” This pedagogical framework and curricular model emphasizes learner engagement through grappling with universally relevant and “perpetually arguable” (essential) questions, multiple perspectives and narratives, conflicting values, and personal reflection.
This way of thinking also works in informal settings between student and educator. Consider the student who comes to their Hillel professional struggling to understand how to feel when their roommate displays something they think might be offensive, a banner with the slogan “Free Palestine.” Taking an Explorer mindset, an educator can engage with the confused student in exploring the phrase, “Free Palestine.” They might begin with a basic but essential question: can a symbol or phrase that is odious to some be empowering to others? They might consider other symbols embraced by Palestinian activists or from other contentious contexts. Together, they come to understand that “Free Palestine” can have multiple meanings, and that different people can both intend it and experience it in radically different ways, from a call for human rights for Palestinians within the State of Israel and the West Bank to demanding expulsion of all Jews from the land of Israel. This conversation can also provide an opening to discuss how the legal status of Palestinians in Gaza is different from the legal status of Palestinians in the West Bank and the legal status of Palestinians in the State of Israel.
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The role of good questions that are earnestly asked is critical to engaging the Explorer mindset. In her 2017 book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, journalist Krista Tippett speaks profoundly about our capacity to ask and respond to questions that are expansive rather than simple:
Questions elicit answers in their likeness… it’s hard to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. It’s hard to transcend a combative question. But it’s hard to resist a generous question. We all have it in us to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity, and revelation. There is something redemptive and life-giving about asking a better question.
After helping a student understand the multiple meanings of “Free Palestine” as well as their own view, the Hillel professional can guide them in developing non-threatening questions to ask their roommate and ways of inviting them into conversation about a contentious issue.
Tippett adds:
Listening is more than being quiet while the other person speaks until you can say what you want to say… It involves a kind of vulnerability—a willingness to be surprised, to let go of our assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s best self.
With an Explorer mindset, Hillel professionals support students in reflecting on how they are reacting to a slogan like “Free Palestine,” and what this tells them about their own relationship to Israel. Acknowledging multiple perspectives and diverse narratives is not only important for understanding the complexity of a situation; it is also critical to gaining credibility with the learner. When we provide diverse, even painfully opposing narratives, we endorse and empower the learner rather than ourselves. The outcome of this conversation and learning opportunity is not pre-determined, but it gives the student agency to be a learner rather than a fighter.
Hearing the stories of others and understanding their values opens the learner to better understand their own narratives and values. Engaging the Explorer mindset gives the learner the opportunity to be both humble and present; they emerge with greater clarity about themselves, about others around them, and about the world. On the day after, we have to reclaim the ability to engage with openness, humility, and care. If we are to attempt to repair our campuses and our students, committing to educating with an Explorer’s mindset will give space for our students to grow as learners and in their relationships to Israel.
Building Resilient Relationships with Israel
The Explorer mindset assumes a relational approach to engaging with students. Consider a student who tells a Hillel professional on their campus that “I don’t know that I like Hillel’s position on Israel, it feels too strident and too sure that Israel is in the right, but I also know I don’t like the position of the protesters camping out on the lawn.” The Hillel professional might be inclined to react defensively, and it’s easy to understand why. They’ve been working tirelessly to be inclusive, to engage with students who have complex reactions to the war in Israel, they feel they’ve been highly nuanced while also supporting students who feel under assault, and they feel a large responsibility to hold a line that maintains and celebrates a personal and institutional core commitment to a relationship with Israel. Perhaps, though, this student is looking for someone from “their camp” who can both sympathize with the Palestinian protests and with those who see the protests as irredeemably anti-Israel. Approaching the wary and weary student with an Explorer mindset can be the difference between sending that student toward a relationship with Israel or running from it.
In 1851, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described the desire for human relationships as resembling a group of freezing porcupines, who in an attempt to warm themselves, slowly inch toward each other, seeking to benefit from their collective body warmth. “But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another.”
Many Israel educators are motivated by a desire to help young people build relationships with Israel that are shaped by affection, positive memories, and caring. But when that motivation leads to education that is neither nuanced, balanced, nor honest, it risks creating a porcupine-like revulsion between students and the very idea of the state. We need to build relationships with Israel that are resilient, not only loving.
Resilience is built from knowledge, yes, and also from vulnerability. Resilient relationships have space for complexity and pain. The learner must be able to withstand encountering those aspects of Israel that are most painful, and the more we create space for grappling with those aspects, the more we build resilient learners.
The risk of repulsion is especially real now, as students on campuses throughout North America face a daily barrage of messages telling them that everything they’ve ever learned about Israel is a lie, leaving them isolated from Israel. In Witness, his 2018 book about teaching with Elie Wiesel, Ariel Burger quotes one of Wiesel’s metaphors for teaching.
David, on his way to fight Goliath, was offered the king’s armor. For a battle this unequal, with life-and-death stakes, armor made sense. But David removed the armor, for it didn’t fit him. This image has stayed with me, as a symbol of a key concept: that vulnerability is the greatest weapon if you are brave enough to use it.
I always teach with an open heart. Not just for moral reasons, but for pragmatic ones—a teacher’s open heart makes it possible for students to open their hearts as well. When evil threatens the weak, we must fight back. And yet it is true that sometimes the only way to disarm a threat is to be vulnerable, to share our common humanity, in hopes of awakening the humanity of the other.
Despite the pain of the moment, when every instinct within us is pushing us to fight back, we must look for opportunities to respond with an open heart and find ways to share in our common humanity. That is exceedingly difficult at this moment, but a commitment to doing so despite the difficulty remains critical. In an organization like Hillel that revolves around relationship-based engagement, maintaining closeness despite potential disagreement is the key to our success. The day after will require a re-commitment to this essential task.
Rebuilding Our Hurting Communities
Finally, consider the student, long active in Hillel, who is also actively involved in the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel movement on her campus. This is a student with a strong sense of Jewish identity who feels driven by what she senses is a moral duty to protest Israel’s actions during the war. The morning after she slept in her campus encampment this May, she reached out to a Hillel professional. Responding with her Explorer mindset, the professional said to this student: “I’m so glad you’re here, and it hurts my heart. Let’s talk.”
In 1908, a grieving father wrote to Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, who was then serving as the Chief Rabbi of Jaffa. The letter writer, himself a prominent rabbi, had two sons who had embraced communism and the Polish revolution. They had completely abandoned their religious roots. Kook writes in his Iggerot Ha-Reiyah:
Yes, my friend, I understand well your heart’s grief. But if you think, like the great majority of [Torah] scholars that in our times it is fitting to abandon those children who have [been] turned from Torah ways and the faith by the raging currents of the times, I state emphatically that this is not God’s way.…
They are coerced in every sense of the word and heaven forbid us from judging the compelled as we do the self-willed. There is, then, future and hope for all of them. The inner soul of Israel’s holiness is hidden in the depths of their hearts, [and evident] in the many good characteristics found among them, and the only holds evil grasped in their hearts were on the side of the inner tendency to good and lovingkindness. For this reason, when they were shown the injustices perpetrated, in their view, by the system of government, they became fighters for the common [good]. Even though they are, from every aspect, totally mistaken, they cannot, at any rate, be compared to the wicked, who act only in accordance with their animal appetites without any righteous goal. And if we do not trample these fallen, but rather draw them as close to us as possible, then, when the current of time is overthrown, they will see the great error inherent in the idea for the sake of which they abandoned their homes.…
The principal way to instruct such young people at this time is to awaken them so that they do not abandon the love for their people from which they were hewn.… And by means of awakening a love for their people, the feeling of faith and inclination to holiness hidden in the depths of the Jewish soul will be set ablaze.
With this answer, Kook models an openness that is as admirable as it is difficult. While his description of these young men as under an ideological compulsion can be seen as patronizing, I think his intention is pure: he wants to keep them within the Jewish community. To do so, he chooses to see their rebellion, as misguided as he believes it is, as emerging from the depths of their Jewish souls. It is a Jewish rebellion, not a rebellion away from Jewishness.
We, too, need to make decisions about whether and how we want to keep these young Jews in our communities. I am part of Hillel because this is an organization that strives to inspire every Jewish student toward an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning, and Israel. To walk away from these students cannot be our way. After a spring that exposed deep fissures in many campus Jewish communities, we must make communal repair our goal.
So, what, given our pain and theirs, is the right path to reconciliation? The work of repairing our communities will take an enormous amount of effort to listen and to hear each other. The simple words of the Hillel professional who says, “I’m glad you’re here and it hurts my heart. Let’s talk,” are an invitation, not a refutation. For a professional who is likely critical of the protests and their effect on the campus community, saying these words requires skill, practice, and a lot of self-control.
Committing ourselves to exploration—genuine questioning, deep listening to diverse narratives, inviting those with whom we disagree into dialogue, treating each other with a certain amount of grace and being willing to forgive—will be the challenge of the day after. To walk away from the effort, to only engage only as Defenders, would be a terrible mistake—it will doom a generation to a deep internal split and push more away from Israel than it will draw near. Maintaining a sense of dignity and forthrightness about our commitment to Israel will be particularly challenging. Engaging the Explorer mindset can come only from a place of strength and fortitude. The day after will require that we all have such courage.
