It is and always has been extremely hard to rattle my now 22-year-old daughter. As a kid, she’d smack on the pavement after falling off her bike and immediately pop up to proclaim, “I’m OK!” So when I tell you that she left her own graduation early, holding back tears, it’s serious.
We had gathered in UCLA’s famed Royce Hall in mid-June for the Division of Humanities commencement, eager to honor her hard work as an art history major. The bulk of her scholarly endeavors centered on the repatriation of antiquities and cultural artifacts to countries of origin as well as the repatriation of Nazi-looted art.
Graduates and faculty paraded in, including the invited keynote speaker, writer and UCLA alum Carribean Fragoza, who wore a kaffiyeh.
Fragoza launched her keynote speech with critiques of Trump and ICE, political positions that I happen to share. Still, I grew uncomfortable. Every graduation ceremony that weekend had begun with an instruction to keep focused on the graduates and their accomplishments. Fragoza ignored that.
I held my breath and, as I feared, the speech shifted. Fragoza moved on to international conflicts, telling stories of drawing watermelons (a symbol that has come to represent the Palestinian flag) with her 5-year-old daughter as she taught her the meaning of “Free Palestine.” Students and audience members hooted in support.
No, I thought. Please no.
For many, the “Free Palestine” mantle has provided an avenue to express antisemitism, resulting in horrific acts of violence against Jews. In recent months, innocent American Jews have been killed by gunshot and by firebombing — simply for being Jewish.
Fragoza continued, to more cheers. As she spoke of the land “between the river and the sea,” I voiced my dismay. “STOP,” I said, louder than was polite. “Please, STOP.”
I texted my daughter, sitting 30 rows up, picturing her with her head bowed amid the anti-Israel rhetoric: “I’m sorry. This is awful.”
I couldn’t believe her four years of hard work were ending with this vitriol. As a UCLA student, my daughter had already dealt with pro-Palestinian encampments and bullying from a professor who demanded to know what protests she’d attended, and who then changed the course syllabus midway through the quarter requiring students to write a paper on a Palestinian artist.
To be clear: I don’t begrudge Fragoza her views, many of which I agree with. But she was wholly out of line to use the privilege of speaking at that ceremony to espouse them.
When the speech finally ended, I booed — something I have never before done in all my 57 years.
The graduates lined up to receive their recognition, and my daughter texted, “I think I want to leave.”
Art history was the first major to be called, and she was one of the first students in line. As she exited the stage, she established eye contact with me, my husband, my son, my sister and my parents, and pointed to the exit. We followed her out, all of us on the verge of crying.
We are Reform Jews, some of us secular and even atheist, but we are proud to be Jewish. We’re proud of the joyful Jewish heritage of family, of survival, of humor, of the tradition to “repair the world,” of the amazing contributions Jews have made to society. We lost relatives in the Holocaust. Antisemitic rhetoric, symbols and actions hurt.
The pro-Palestinian movement presents as a left-leaning movement, but its propaganda ignores critical historical facts. (I recommend Noa Tishby’s book “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.”) According to many accounts, the pro-Palestinian movement is not about “justice for all” or human rights; it’s about opposing the existence of the only Jewish state in the world.
Here’s what it’s like to be Jewish right now, when the antisemitism we’d naively thought was long gone has come out of the woodwork:
• We feel abandoned by the communities we’ve long supported. Jews have proudly supported every civil rights movement. Yet no one is standing up for us now. In fact, the pro-Palestinian movement uses intersectionality as a tactic to create a wedge between Jews and other social justice movements.
• We feel misunderstood. Not all Americans agree with Trump, right? Well, not all Israelis and certainly not all Jews agree with Benjamin Netanyahu. But now you blame us all?
• We feel sad. Have you secretly hated us all along and now it’s socially acceptable to be overt about it? A grand total of two friends have reached out to me during this time of violence against American Jews.
The night of the graduation, my 85-year-old dad announced that he was proud of our family for walking out of the ceremony. We all looked at each other and nodded. It was a take I hadn’t considered. I am secular and atheist, but I am a proud Jew, and I will die on this hill that is standing up against antisemitism.
The day before my daughter’s ceremony, singer and UCLA alum Sara Bareilles spoke at the universitywide commencement. She took a sophisticated approach, encouraging graduates to embrace the “both” of complicated situations. She emphasized that two things can be true at once. (For example, you can be Jewish and disagree with policies of the current Israeli government while still supporting the right of Israel to exist.) She encouraged students to embrace the gray areas, “the messy middle,” to stay curious.
On our last day in Los Angeles, we had brunch with my daughter’s roommates and their families, a mixture of Jews and Christians (including a Southern Baptist), liberals and a handful of Trump supporters. It was a delightful celebration of the girls’ accomplishments and friendship.
Afterward, my son remarked, “This is what life should be like: We interact and socialize peacefully with people with varying views, have a nice time and then go on our way.”
Then he reminded me about a guy he met during college who became a friend. “When I realized we had different views, I had a choice. I’m so glad I didn’t dismiss him outright because of politics. College would have been different — and not nearly as good.”
I vowed in that moment to be more like my son, to embrace curiosity rather than chasing certainty, to seek the “both” in complicated situations.
“You know,” I said, “there’s an essay there — you should write about it.”
He chuckled, replying, “I’m good, thanks.” He knows writing is how I process the world. “You’re the writer,” he was projecting, “you write about it.”
So I did.