January 31, 2025 | 2 Shevat 5785
Candlelighting 5:20 p.m. | Havdalah 6:21 p.m. | Vol. 68, No. 5 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Building bridges across communities
Fellowship brings together Blacks and Jews LOCAL
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From classroom to campus: City Council Jewish students share their introduces struggles with antisemitism at Pitt legislation to blunt Not On Our Dime’s BDS referendum
Two decades of Federation leadership
Students gather at the University of Pittsburgh and demonstrate support for Israel on Oct. 9, 2023. Photo by Adam Reinherz By Toby Tabachnick | Editor
Jeff Finkelstein looks back and looks ahead Page 3
LOCAL Celebrating Sephardic traditions
A weekend of culinary and musical events Page 4
LOCAL Tech's role in patient safety
JHF presents at national conference
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n early December, the University of Pittsburgh’s Faculty Assembly president, Robin Kear, announced the creation of a working group on antisemitism. Authorized by Pitt’s chancellor and its provost, and in collaboration with the university senate president, the working group is charged with analyzing and helping to address antisemitism on campus. That such a group is necessary is obvious to numerous Jewish students who have experienced or witnessed various incidents of antisemitism at Pitt for months. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, and the ensuing war, anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment on university campuses around the country have led to feelings of isolation and marginalization for many Jewish students. Some have feared for their safety; at least three Jewish Pitt students were physically assaulted last year. While the physical attacks garnered the most media attention, many more subtle antisemitic episodes have transpired at Pitt, contributing to an unnerving and at times unwelcoming environment, several Jewish students told the Chronicle. Those incidents include anti-Zionist messaging coming from some faculty members, leading to feelings of intimidation and exclusion. Last April, for example, 49 faculty members signed a letter to Chancellor Joan Gabel in support of the anti-Israel encampments on
Schenley Plaza “to protest ongoing violence in Gaza and to call for University disinvestment from the war on Gaza.” City Councilperson Erika Strassburger
One-sided perspectives
Olivia Baer is a fourth-year Pitt student majoring in fiction writing. Last fall, she registered for a class in speculative fiction. She was looking forward to the class, but on its first day, she noticed that the assignment for Week 11 was a book called “Palestine Plus 100.” The book, according to Amazon.com, is a collection of writings from 12 Palestinians considering “what might your country look like in the year 2048 — a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?” Baer withheld judgment of the assignment, she said, until she got home and viewed a PDF of the book. “On Page 1, you know, your classic blood libels and genocide and ethnic cleansing,” she said. Baer withdrew from the class. “I was not comfortable sitting in a classroom where I knew the professor would teach about the Middle East in a literature class. It was really nothing I was interested in,” she said. Please see Antisemitism, page 10
Photo courtesy of pittsburghpa.gov
By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
P
ittsburgh City Council has introduced legislation meant to blunt a referendum to the Home Rule Charter, proposed by the group Not On Our Dime, which would force the city to divest from Israel and companies that do business with the Jewish state. Councilperson Erika Strassburger, District 8, along with co-sponsor Bob Charland, District 3, Anthony Coghill, District 4, Daniel Lovelle, District 6 and Bobby Wilson, District 1, introduced two bills at the council’s Jan. 21 meeting that they hope to have added to the May ballot. The first would prohibit “the discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin or association or affiliation with any nation or foreign state in conducting business of the city.” The second would prohibit the “Home Rule Charter Amendment process to add duties or obligations beyond the lawful scope of the city’s authority.” Not On Our Dime’s proposed referendum, Please see City Council, page 11
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