U.S. Rabbinical Students Agonize Over the Risks of Studying in Israel

In the aftermath of the terrorist bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem that killed seven students, including five Americans, Jewish families and rabbinical students across the United States are torn between their love of and loyalty to Israel and fears for their safety.

As devastating as Wednesday’s explosion was, most rabbinical students who were scheduled to study in Israel are still going despite the danger, the heads of two leading U.S. rabbinical schools said Friday.

But some students have decided to defer their Jerusalem studies. Whatever their decision, the renewed violence has made their decisions agonizingly difficult.

“It’s a crazy, emotional thing to be going when you start knowing the people who are dying. It’s truly insane,” said Jennifer Flam, 27, who is sticking to her plans to study in Israel next year as required by the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, a Conservative seminary at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

Sara Yellen, 24, has come to a different decision. She decided Thursday to cancel her study year abroad. One of the Americans killed Wednesday, Marla Bennett of San Diego, was a childhood friend.

“This has been a huge struggle for me all year,” said Yellen, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “My family has begged me not to go all year, begged me to defer it, begged me to stay here. I really wanted to go. I had doubts about my personal safety, about my own ability to live and study under such duress.”

She said Bennett’s death precipitated her decision to wait.

As the cycle of terrorist attacks and Israeli retaliations have escalated, whether to travel to Israel has been a growing source of concern among Jews. For example, the number of American students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has dropped to 150 this year from 1,500 two years ago.

Last year, the president of the largest U.S. Jewish denomination, the Reform Movement, came under fire within his own movement after suspending youth trips to Israel that summer.

“Our religious and Zionist commitments run deep and are known to all,” Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said at the time. “But this movement never uses other people’s children to make a political or ideological point.”

The violence is testing mandatory requirements by the two rabbinical schools that their students complete a year of study in Jerusalem as a condition of ordination.

In Los Angeles, students at the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies succeeded several months ago in persuading the school to allow students to defer study in Israel for one year.

In New York, Rabbi David Ellenson, president of the four-campus Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said nine of 68 students have chosen to put off their studies in Israel for a year. Four more students have left the seminary to attend schools with less demanding overseas study requirements.

“There were huge protests and comments that this was not fair, that you’re forcing us to endanger our lives,” said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler school in Los Angeles. “This year things got so dangerous that the students wanted a greater say in going or not going.”

But in a surprise, all 14 students who were scheduled to go to Israel decided to go anyway.

“I think what they wanted was to take responsibility for their own lives. Once I allowed them to do that, they rose to the occasion,” Artson said.

Ellenson said that even with a travel deferral, his institution is committed to its philosophical and political commitment to Israel.

“For individuals who would qualify as rabbis and leaders among the people of Israel, the commitment to stand in solidarity with Israel at this time is, I believe, an absolutely fundamental commitment that cannot be compromised,” Ellenson said in a telephone interview Friday.

Artson and Ellenson, both of whom are fathers, said they understand the fears of parents for their children.

“Of course I have anxieties and concerns about my son’s presence in Israel at this moment,” Ellenson said. “No one who would be reasonable would not have any fears or anxieties. But at the same time, theirs is an absolute ... commitment to the central role the state of Israel plays in contemporary Jewish life.”

One parent who knows better than most about the dangers is Amram Hassan. He was in Jerusalem in 1975 when a bomb exploded just outside a store he was visiting. Sixteen people were killed.

Hassan’s daughter, Chava, leaves for Israel this week. She is 21, the same age he was when the bomb went off in 1975. His youngest daughter, Deena, 18, leaves for Israel on Aug. 28.

“I’m basically torn because it’s the safety of my daughters that is going to be in Israel’s hands. I won’t be able to do anything from here,” said Hassan, who is executive director of B’nai David-Judea Congregation in West Los Angeles, an Orthodox congregation.

Still, beneath the determination and resolve to be support Israel, human emotions can be raw in the face of the reality of Israel as a war zone.

Yellen spoke Friday of Bennett, her friend who died this week.

“Marla was my connection there,” Yellen said. “I always e-mailed her when I was afraid. She would send me back advice. We had lunch a few months ago in San Diego. She reassured me. I know she was nervous there, but she had a way of going about her life that I was going to model my own life after. When she died, we were just devastated. She was like my Israel mentor.”