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While Columbia Students Stormed Buildings, at Y.U. They Just Wanted To Play Some Coed Volleyball

New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt looks back on the tumultuous spring of 1968 — from the vantage point of a not-too-radical student at a not-too-radical college campus. While his peers at Columbia were busy occupying buildings, Rosenblatt and his fellow Yeshiva University students were engaged in some mischievous — if decidedly less political — rebellion of their own:

Despite the fewer than 60 blocks that separated them, the Columbia and YU campuses were really light years apart. One was at the cutting edge of revolution; one was framed by Talmudic study steeped in disputes of centuries past.

So the edginess of the times, compounded by final exams, played out in a major water fight in the main dorm one spring night at YU, with scores of students in their swim trunks heaving large cans of water on each other, and sometimes out the window onto Amsterdam Avenue.

Soon, the fire department arrived, with firemen wading through the puddles in the dorm halls, axes at the ready, responding to calls from neighbors. Surveying the scene, though, they were good-natured about the mess and didn’t stay long.

Hours later, well after midnight, two student activists from Columbia’s SDS chapter appeared at my dorm room. SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was the radical group behind the Columbia protests, and it seems they had received notice that, in their memorable words to my roommate and me, “Yeshiva was being liberated.”

They said they were there to help us plan a takeover of the president’s office.

Too embarrassed to explain that the commotion at YU was a water fight, not a student protest — and that any prospective rebellion at YU would have been quelled by a rabbinic scholar announcing that such acts were halachically not permissible, or just not right — we listened as they urged us to secure maps of the administrative buildings and fortify ourselves for a long stay.

We nodded, scribbled notes, thanked them for their advice, and finally were rid of them, raising our fists to meet theirs in solidarity.

Then we had a good laugh before going back to sleep in preparation for another day of Talmud study and exams.

But wild water fights weren’t the sum total of Rosenblatt’s youthful rebellion. He goes on to describe a guerrilla volleyball game with some female students from Stern College that drew a pretty stern police response.

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Ahmadinejad Wins, Israel Loses

Ha’aretz’s man in America, Shmuel Rosner, thinks that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University was a win for the Iranian president and a clear loss for Israel. He explains that Ahmadinejad’s speech, and the accompanying controversy, helped to underscore his message, namely, as Rosner puts it, “It is not Iran versus the world, but Iran versus Israel.”

Rosner writes:

The protesters outside only served to reinforce his claims, as many were Jews wearing skullcaps who carried signs protesting his Holocaust denial and calls to wipe Israel off the map. To many, this serves as further proof that Iran is only a problem for Israel, or at most for the Jews.

Ahmadinejad aimed precisely for that. “It’s the Israelis, stupid” was his primary message. Forget about the “Palestinian problem,” Ahmadinejad was telling his listeners. “Instead, we need to solve the Israeli problem — and finally bring peace to the Middle East.” While he did not explicitly reiterate his calls for Israel’s destruction, in practice, the message could not have been clearer.

The pro-Israel camp consoled itself with the knowledge that those who are familiar with the regional complexities, and with Tehran’s antics, will surely realize the absurdity of Ahmadinejad’s proposal.

But the average American is not familiar with the regional complexities. He is tired of the region’s fighting. To him, Ahmadinejad’s idea may sound tempting.

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