Anna Krayterman recalls well having a meeting with students, administrators and board members at St. Louis University about ways to create better conversations on campus.

“It was a nice dialogue and it was a great start to talking about issues like Israel,” recalled the former head of the student organization SLU Jews who graduated in May, “but there are a lot of negative feelings on campus as well.”

Some of those feelings came from a steady drumbeat of anti-Israel speakers and events sponsored by pro-Palestinian groups on campus, she said.

“I think it gives a misperception of Israel as a country and it’s very one-sided,” Krayterman said.

It’s a story that could speak to Jews far beyond SLU’s confines. Battles over Israel are being waged by activists on both sides in quads all across the nation, a trend that’s expected to intensify further as a unilateral bid for Palestinian statehood advances toward a vote at the United Nations this fall.

For some, that’s been a clarion call to find a way to promote better campus dialogue. Hillel is working to do that through tents set up across 20 selected campuses across the country. Sharon Ashley, director of Hillel’s Center for Israel Engagement, said the idea is to promote civil discourse over a subject that often sees too little of it.

It’s also an effort to make the Jewish State an integral aspect of Jewish student identity.

“What I want to do through the Center for Israel Engagement is to have what happens in Israel also to be a part of people’s lives,” said Ashley. “In the tents, they can discuss what’s happening in Israel and how they can be a part of that building of Israeli society.”

Ashley said the effort will show the nation as more than just a political issue. They will allow people to see the culture and flavor of the country as well.

“Israel has a normal life,” said Ashley, who lived in the Jewish State for 31 years. “That doesn’t get played out on college campuses. I think just the conflict does.”

The tents are unique in that they are designed to prompt discussion not further advocacy.

“They are to show the campus community and the wider community that Israel can be discussed civilly and must be discussed civilly because the most effective presentation of Israel is going to come when it becomes less the boogeyman of all conversation,” she said. “I hope the Jewish community will look at this and say, ‘Yes, this is a mode of discourse we should all adopt.'”

Making a connection

Campus outreach on Israel can be difficult. Students can sometimes feel intimidated by the complexity and explosive nature of the issue. Some also feel that that reticence could be exacerbated by differences in the way today’s youth feel about Israel.

“There’s less of an innate, immediate connection to Israel among youth, not all youth, but there is a sort of natural generational distancing from Israel,” said Ashley. “They didn’t live through the 1967 war and they didn’t live through the majesty of building the Jewish State. It doesn’t speak to them in the same way.”

At the local Washington University Hillel, president and CEO Jacqueline Ulin Levey acknowledges that effect.

“For sure that’s an issue because the creation of Israel and World War II helped to solidify Jewish identity and engagement for the Baby Boom Generation,” she said. “There haven’t been those areas for this generation to mobilize behind in the same way.”

That said however, Levey notes a great pride in Israel among Jewish students at Washington University and said that organizations like Hillel, Birthright Israel and the Jewish Community Relations Council’s St. Louis-Israel Connection (SLIC) are playing a big role in solidifying that feeling by giving young adults a front row seat to everything from the beauty of the land to the wonders of a dynamic, technology-driven economy.

Rayna Schaff, the local Hillel’s senior Jewish Student Life Coordinator, also understands the dichotomy.

“At the same time, I would say that the Millennial Generation has also seen Israel pretty much since they were old enough to be aware and politically engaged as being in some state of conflict,” said Schaff, 23. “There have been things going on in the West Bank and in Gaza so there has not been the same larger looming threat but there have definitely been terrorist attacks. The Millennial Generation has been getting in touch with Israel in a very different way.”

She said she sees plenty of postings on Facebook sharing news over the Jewish State when there is a crisis.

Rabbi Hershey Novack, director of Chabad on Campus – Rohr Center for Jewish Life at Washington University, said he feels Birthright trips are a big part of that process of getting in touch.

“It’s the first item on a list that doesn’t have a number two, number three or number four,” he said. “The Birthright trips have dramatically changed the climate of so many campuses in America. When you have a campus population where 10, 15, 20 percent of the Jewish students are alumni of the program, it’s that much harder for the detractors of Israel to gain traction with their odious ideas and beliefs.”

Lila Greenberg, 17, is going to be a part of the next generation of students to come to campus. She said her experiences in traveling to Israel were incredible and notes that others tend to have the same reaction. Still, the Ladue Horton Watkins High School senior said that other than a small core of people she knows, many others she talks with don’t keep up with things like the upcoming battle at the U.N.

“They bond with the kids and see the beauty of the land,” she said. “They’re interested in the music, the culture but don’t really follow the politics, don’t really get into the details.”

Greenberg, who heads JCRC’s Israel Teen Advocacy Group (iTag), said there can be a lot of misinformation, even among Jewish students.

“In modern times, everybody watches different news and I think people believe whatever they hear,” she said.

A progressive approach

to dialogue

In town from Chicago for a conference over the Sept. 11 weekend, Brett Cohen, national campus program director of StandWithUs, a group that helps students create pro-Israel programming, is blunt when asked how he feels about the state of dialogue on campuses across the nation.

It’s bad.

Cohen said some pro-Palestinian advocates often won’t engage at all with Jewish groups, refusing to co-sponsor cultural events, bringing in anti-Israel speakers and referring to Judaic organizations as “Zionist Apartheid Zones” or with similar inflammatory terminology.

“Basically, what we’ve seen over the past few years is that dialogue has completely broken down,” he said. “We have a situation where Jewish students very sincerely want to meet with their pro-Palestinian, Muslim and Arab counterparts and they’re basically hit with a brick wall.”

StandWithUs is now working on 40 different campuses on an initiative called Peace Takes Two, part of a larger “Real Partners. Real Peace” program sponsored by the Israel on Campus Coalition. The effort looks for solutions to many of the most divisive topics of the Israel debate such as refugees, borders and the status of Jerusalem.

“What we’re trying to do is change this dynamic and say, ‘Listen, we’d like to sit down with you and let’s talk about these final status issues and see if we can have some responsible dialogue, build some relationships and try to cut through this dynamic on campus that’s destructive for both of our groups and for the college campus,'” Cohen said.

As for Krayterman and her own experiences on campus, she feels effective dialogue is all about that building of a relationship.

“Israel advocacy is important but I also think that on the smaller scale it is much more efficient when you talk face-to-face to somebody with different views and you can both explain where you are coming from and learn from each other,” she said.

To that end, she said SLU Jews didn’t engage directly with the most anti-Israel elements on campus but did work with the local Muslim student association. They focused events on discussions of religious holidays or traditions.

“Once you establish that common ground with somebody and get into a dialogue that’s friendly and that you want to learn from them, I think that’s a much better relationship and way to move forward to discussing those difficult issues,” she said.