By Cathryn J. Prince - October 24, 2022
NEW YORK — Ofek Preis won’t walk to class by herself anymore. She’s afraid of being harassed for being Jewish.
“I’m just so burnt out from this. I just want to go to class and have a normal class. Then I remember that there is so much antisemitism here. It can be really debilitating,” said Preis, a 21-year-old senior at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz.
“It’s shocking and triggering. You start to feel you have no control of your learning environment; you feel unsafe everywhere,” she told The Times of Israel.
Preis isn’t alone: Jewish students across the United States report being excluded from campus organizations, targeted on social media and harassed in classes by students and professors alike. Additionally, they’ve seen dormitories and sidewalks vandalized with swastikas, and buildings plastered with flyers that equate Birthright trips to Israel with genocide and call for Zionists to “fuck off.”
Yet, often lost in the coverage of these incidents is the emotional toll they take on the Jewish students.
Read More: Times of Israel