Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, told JNS on Wednesday afternoon, hours before another evening of scheduled anti-Israel protests near campus, that Columbia University’s Jewish community is resilient and growing.
“We don’t deny the craziness. It exists and it’s real and it’s an ongoing challenge,” Cohen, 48, said. “At the same time, we recognize that many of the issues that we’ve seen here are now starting to creep up at other universities around the country.”
A protest scheduled outside of Lerner Hall was organized by Columbia University Apartheid and Divest in response to a Students Supporting Israel event, on March 25, which featured reservists in the Israeli military.
The university stated that it is aware of the protest and is providing support to to the pro-Israel student group. “While the university supports the right of individuals to peacefully protest, we will state again that any individuals or organizations of any sort that promote violence or encourage disruptions of our academic mission are not welcome on our campuses, and the university will not engage with them,” Columbia stated.
Cohen said the school has worked closely with Hillel.
“We’ve always felt a lot of support from Columbia Public Safety, the police department, just everyone really working hard to make sure that not only are we physically safe but we’re able to continue doing the work that is so important to the Jewish community,” he told JNS.
Amid the tensions, Cohen said that he has focused on helping students reclaim a sense of normalcy and joy in Jewish life. “The one thing that never gets proper attention is the continued vibrancy of the Jewish community here,” he told JNS.
A turning point came when the Hillel hosted Israeli musician Ishay Ribo for a concert.
“It gave permission to the students to dance again, to laugh again, to sing and to smile and to just be joyful,” Cohen told JNS.
Around the same time, Hillel partnered with Chabad to host a large Shabbat dinner on a campus basketball court, drawing roughly 1,100 attendees, including students and faculty.
“I remember standing at the door and looking at the smiles on everyone’s faces as they walked in,” Cohen said. He recalled a professor who “got emotional talking to me at the Shabbat dinner, because she was spending so much time focused on dealing with antisemitism, and she just didn’t see the vibrancy of Jewish life like we do at Hillel on a regular basis.”
The Shabbat dinner has become an annual event, most recently on Feb. 20. With Passover approaching, the Hillel is preparing multiple seder options to accommodate students with varying levels of religious observance.
“We will do at least two each night, one which will be more traditional in nature and one which is more designed for a student who wants to do something for Pesach but doesn’t want to sit for several hours through a long seder,” Cohen said.
Programming will also include kosher-for-Passover meals, holiday services and educational sessions.
“We have 1,200 Jewish undergraduate students and even more Jewish graduate students, so even with me saying many students leave campus for the holiday, there will still be many Jewish students on campus,” he told JNS.
Cohen has led the Columbia/Barnard Hillel since 2012. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Lisa, an architect, and their two children, ages 13 and 17.
He told JNS that when he started working in the Hillel system, he expected to move on after six months but found the role uniquely meaningful. “These students were choosing to celebrate their Judaism on their own terms,” he said. “That ended up just becoming a very significant experience for me.”
Cohen said “the reality was more challenging” after the Oct. 7 attack. “It’s just different today,” he said.
“Whereas we were dealing with a year and a half of many students being very upset day in and day out for what they were reading online and what they were hearing in the classroom and out of the classroom, now it has slowed down a trickle of complaints that land on my desk,” he said.
