President Dye, how long will we have to explain ourselves?

I sent the following letter to Nancy Dye letter during Commencement Weekend regarding her response to Hillel's funding cuts and her comments during a meeting. I received a reply in mid-August telling me that I need not fear; that my concerns, as well as many others on campus, were being taken into consideration. I have since talked with Hillel co-chairs and have learned that Hillel still does not have all the funding it needs for core programming. So I have taken the liberty of publishing this letter. Dear President Dye:

I am writing to express my hurt, dismay, and deep disappointment regarding the outcome of your meeting on May 12 with four student representatives of the Oberlin Jewish community. I have learned of the exchange through two students who were present, whose politics and integrity I fully trust.

What I heard disturbed and shocked me in its level of ignorance and unwillingness to address issues crucial to Jewish life on campus. What I heard made me feel unsafe, unwelcome, and completely silenced as a proud Jew at Oberlin College. If the President's Office can refuse to financially support the only Jewish student organization on campus, then discrimination and prejudice against Jews here run thicker than I feared. I don't feel I can say I would recommend this college to students for whom Judaism is important to their lives.

True, funding was refused on the premise that the President's Office is not a religious institution. However, this was an emergency request; the student who brought it before you did their best to represent the cultural and intellectual importance certain Hillel programming has on this campus.

To hear that these requests were dismissed, and to hear the rationale, caused me more enormous pain. It is the pain of history; of constantly having to prove ourselves as a people with an identity and ethnicity to those who have never had to know about us, or have never been challenged to overcome their assumptions; of hearing over and over again that our religion is "only" a religion, hearing it equated with Christianity with no contextual framework of Christian dominance in Oberlin, the U.S.A, and North America.

How long will we have to explain ourselves? How many times can we let these words, and ideas behind them, bounce off, before they sink in? In many cases, they already have; this campus has a huge Jewish population numerically, and yet sentiments on campus - echoed so eloquently in this meeting - discourage cultural pride . Jews are not a cultural or ethnic group; and their needs are not the same as those Jews who do not speak up, who have the courage to present their concerns as Jews, are told that their problems a) don't exist, or b) aren't as serious as other problems.

To suggest, as you did, that Jews drive to Shabbat services (meanwhile Oberlin College funds a chaplain in addition to three local churches - while the nearest synagogue is a twenty minute drive), or that Hillel charge Jews money for services (i.e., Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur - which had approximately two hundred and fifty attendees this year - and Shabbat) on campus suggests a painful lack of awareness of even the basic tenets of Judaism . Shabbat is a holiday on which driving and exchanging money are not allowed; it is a time of rest.

Shabbat, on this campus, is also one of the only times when Jews can unite as Jews - an ethnic group- to observe a holiday that is not only religious but is also historically and traditionally fundamental to Jewish survival.

Perhaps this is all semantics to you. Religion culture, whatever. What's the point? Hillel should just find separate funding and be done with it.

The point is at least to let you know that your response to an honest appeal for cultural understanding was not sufficient. You, as a leader on this campus and one of the most important definers of Oberlin's reputation and politics, have a responsibility to acknowledge this gap in your understanding. If for nothing other than my own peace of mind as a proud, anti-racist, Creative Writing and Judaic Studies major, former LGBU co-chair Third World Co-op member and active student on campus, I must let you know that I feel betrayed and hopelessly misrepresented by your office and by you in particular.

The assumption, of course, is that Jews can afford the money. What's a few dollars to a wealthy Jewish alum or student? The truth is that the Jewish community on this campus is extremely diverse - economically, culturally, in terms of religious background, sexual orientation, and political convictions. Assuming that the community can easily come up with the money perpetuates a stereotype, and lifts the responsibility of the President's Office, even though that fund has historically provided emergency money for student's in need.

To deny the problematic nature of giving enough to the Ultimate Frisbee team and not enough to Hillel (a situation that occurred through SFC and was supported in your May 12 meeting) is to ignore roughly twenty percent of the campus - if not physically, then in spirit. That distribution of funds is neither equal nor equitable, and it tacitly prioritizes which communities will have a healthy life at Oberlin College.

I wrote this letter not even as a member of Hillel per se (I have maybe attended three meetings ever), but as a Jewish student extremely dismayed with the implication of the funding cuts to Hillel and the outcome of my peers' meeting with you to request emergency funding for next year. In fact, I rarely go to Hillel events and yet the ones I do attend, the core ones, are being cut. Many other Jewish students are in a similar position. Hillel is all that we have on this campus.

I write to let you know that this situation is unacceptable and creates a dangerous climate at a school whose reputation for progressive thought, action, and community have so many times fallen short.

I hope that this letter properly conveys the problems I set out to underscore, and although I am terribly optimistic about the cultural tolerance for Jews on this campus, especially given the paucity of funds left to give Jewish life a presence here, at this point all I can do is hope and speak for what I cannot swallow in silence.

-Chana Rothman, College senior