A.B. Yehoshua challenges WUJS students at annual Congress

In his talk, Yehoshua covered Jewish identity, Zionism, and Israel with a mix of far-right and far-left views.

By LEV GRINGAUZ
A.B. Yehoshua (photo credit: ARIELSON / WIKIPEDIA)
A.B. Yehoshua
(photo credit: ARIELSON / WIKIPEDIA)
On the last day of the World Union of Jewish Students Congress earlier this year, the annual Jerusalem-based gathering of roughly 160 student activists from 40 countries, A.B. Yehoshua confronted the hall of young Jews.
“For five years we lost a third of our people,” the preeminent Israeli author growled. “Not because territory, not because ideology, not because religion, not because [of economic] reasons. We had been murdered like microbes.”
“These are the people that didn’t understand what is homeland. All his history, already from the Babylon exile, he preferred to stay in other people’s land and not to come [to Israel]… and for this we paid the most expensive price ever a people got in history. The Holocaust is not a Holocaust, it is a failure. Failure of the Jewish people.”
The students shifted uneasily in their seats, caught between awe and shock. Their past five days, from the end of December to early January, had been filled with speakers, seminars, panels, New Year’s, and schmoozing. There had been a gala dinner and party the night before, and many of the students had struggled to get out of bed that morning. Now, everyone was wide awake.
 
In his talk, Yehoshua covered Jewish identity, Zionism, and Israel with a mix of far-right and far-left views. He called for Israel to be a binational Jewish and Palestinian state, but insisted that Jews living outside Israel could only ever be half-Jews, and that they must still make Aliyah.
But when Yehoshua took questions, the students fought back.
“I think it is terrible to say to a room of young and proud Jewish students that they are half-Jews because they are in the diaspora,” said Alina Brickman, the president of the European Union of Jewish Students, herself from Romania. “It is terrible to say that the Holocaust is a failure of the Jewish people.”
Applause broke out, and another student, Joanna Bakon, found her voice.
“I am Joanna from Poland, and I’d like to ask: what, according to you, will happen if everyone in this room will make Aliyah? What will happen with the legacy of our grandparents and great grandparents that are buried… who built active Jewish communities in Poland, in Romania, in Germany. What will happen with our legacies?”
“Why, here is not a legacy?” Yehoshua exclaimed. “You don’t know even the language of the Jews!” Bakon yelled back with Polish-tinted Hebrew: “Ani medaberet ivrit! [I speak Hebrew!]”
“You want a museum, or you want a life?” Yehoshua asked. “My country is not [a] cemetery,” Bakon said, and the room applauded again. He was unfazed. “Poland was cemetery for the Jews,” he raged.
“Before [the Holocaust], it was the biggest home for Jews in the world,” she responded. “And it still can be.”
Avigayil Benstein, the president of WUJS, stepped in. We had run out of time.
The hall burst into a frenzy of conversations. Two groups gathered in the chaos: one around A.B. Yehoshua, and another around Bakon. The young Polish Jew was crying, the blood pumping into an enraged and defiant face.
On January 9, 2015, a gunman affiliated with ISIS stormed a kosher supermarket in Paris, murdering four Jews and taking fifteen hostages. He was killed later that day when police stormed the building. The Charlie Hebdo shooting, where two Al-Qaeda affiliates attacked the satirical newspaper’s headquarters and murdered 12 people, had been just two days earlier.
French Jews had little to comfort them, and many looked to Israel as an escape from the country’s antisemitism. Jewish students, however, had a different view.
“It was really difficult for many students, and the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) had a voice at this time; a voice of hope, a French voice,” said Naomie Madar, the national secretary of UEJF, who became more involved in the union after the attacks.
“When everybody was saying ‘do Aliyah, do Aliyah,’ the French union was like, ‘if you want to do aliyah, so do it, it’s your choice,’” she said. “‘But if you want to stay in France, we will do everything in our power to make you stay and make you be able to be a student in France.’”
Madar put in words the mostly unspoken assumption of WUJS: that despite anti-semitism around the world and Israel’s open arms, young diaspora Jews can do more than simply leave, and they can be Zionists at home just as much as in Israel.
“We are activists, we are not just students,” Madar said. “The power of unions - and this is the case for all the unions that are here - is that this is students, for students, by students. This is what is strong. We don’t say to students ‘don’t do Aliyah.’ We involve them, and they involve themselves to be sure that they can have a future in France.”
The Congress was in the Leonardo Hotel in east Jerusalem, taking up the conference rooms two floors down from the Lobby. As Madar talked I could hear students mill around refreshments and chat after a session about best practices for student unions.
Many of the unions represented are older than the state of Israel itself. The French union was founded in 1944, and the Union of Jewish Students of the UK and Ireland in 1919.
And since 1924, the World Union of Jewish Students has made its mark, bringing organized Jewish student life across Latin America, Europe, Australasia, Africa, and India under one umbrella.
“All the unions are here,” Madar said. “Small unions, big unions, new unions, old unions. But they all have the same values, and when you see [the WUJS Congress], the expression ‘Jewish people’ is not just an expression anymore. It became a reality.”
THE CONGRESS a hit, and member unions, as a whole, are thriving amidst the challenges of rising anti-semitism and global instability. But WUJS has struggled since poor money management nearly bankrupted it a decade ago, leading to infighting between current president Avigayil Benstein, elected in 2018, and the WUJS board about the organization’s future.
Tensions came to a head when snap elections were called for the Congress’ General Assembly. Two last-minute candidates (one of whom didn’t show up for the elections, while the other called in from the U.S. via Skype) competed with Benstein for the presidency.
Avigayil Benstein, the president of WUJS (photo credit: LEV GRINGAUZ)
Avigayil Benstein, the president of WUJS (photo credit: LEV GRINGAUZ)
Students weren’t happy to play in internal WUJS politics, and Benstein was reelected by a strong majority. The rest of the GA was spent on a motion to create a new constitution, and resolutions to be adopted by WUJS supporting a two-state solution in Israel, for a responsible environmental policy, and against anti-semitism and far-right populist politics around the world.
“The General Assembly was a really important development, both for the structure of WUJS and the strengthening of it, and also for setting policies that I can now act on,” Benstein said. “All of this enables me to act much more powerfully when I am out there advocating for students, because I know they voted on this and this is what they believe. It strengthens my voice and it strengthens their voices.”
Though students support Benstein, member unions are frustrated that the voice of WUJS, and the organization itself, seems to exist only once a year at Congress.
“Nowadays, nobody doubts that WUJS is important,” said Gabriel Nissan, former president of the Mexican Federation of Jewish Youth (FeMeJJ). “But everybody is questioning ‘okay, what does WUJS do?’”
Students want WUJS to help bring unions together more than once a year, and to advocate on behalf of young Jews worldwide in forums that they otherwise wouldn’t reach. But unions also need to stay realistic about the organization’s current state, said Alina Brickman, the president of the European Union of Jewish Students.
“Member unions need to understand what are WUJS’s capabilities,” she said, “and align with that to understand how can we best use this platform in a way that benefits Jewish students all over the place. There are bodies that WUJS should be accessing that would be particularly relevant, such as UNESCO, such as the Knesset, and different world student bodies.”
But no one is about to back out of WUJS. “We all know that WUJS is not in the state that it could be,” said Bini Guttman, co-president of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students, though “I really think that WUJS could be one of the most amazing Jewish organizations, as it was before. That’s one of the reasons why I’m involved: that it can come back to be that.”
Benstein gets it. Being president of a 95-year-old organization means a lot of expectations, but she is singularly focused on institutional infrastructure. First comes financial stability and a new constitution. Then, WUJS can really play on the world stage.
After Congress, Benstein had a moment to talk, and more importantly, to think. Between fundraising, networking with organizations like the Jewish Agency, handling WUJS’ non-profit status under Israeli law, and keeping 160 students organized and more or less on schedule, she was exhausted.
 
Still, the past five days had gone well.