Harvard Warns Jewish Group To Hide Menorah
Amid a wave of campus antisemitism, Harvard University instructed a Jewish student group to take down and hide its menorah each night over concerns of vandalism. University officials, according to the New York Post, said such a desecration “won’t look good.”
Leadership starts at the top, and Harvard President Claudine Gay recently displayed the example being set for the “best and brightest.” She refused to confirm to Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews violates the Ivy League institution’s code of ethics.
She tried to make up for it on Wednesday by lighting a menorah on campus, but it had to be gone by sundown.
Anti-Jewish hatred erupted on elite campuses nationwide after the Hamas terrorist massacre of Oct. 7. Over 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered and hundreds more were taken hostage.
Harvard Chabad founder and president Rabbi Nirschy Zarchi explained that the school asked that the menorah be removed each evening after the first Hanukkah lighting. On Wednesday night, he detailed the shocking interaction.
Zarchi said Jewish students should not have to hide their ethnicity on the Ivy League campus to feel safe. “You know when change is gonna happen on this campus? When we don’t have to pack up the menorah.”
He further set his sights on Gay. “We in the Jewish community are longing for the day when we can refer to the president — and all of Harvard — as ours too.
That day will come, Zarchi told the Post, when the menorah does not have to be hidden at night. It will come when leaders do not remain silent “when they witness hateful calls to the death of Jews.”
Harvard is far from the only school where antisemitism recently exploded. Students from New York University distributed a flier asserting administrators “denied their annual Hanukkah lighting on the Kimmel steps.”
The flier added that “antisemitism has no place at NYU.”
An administrator denied that the Jewish community was targeted by the refusal to permit the lighting. They said weeks ago the main staircase to the Kimmel Center was suspended for use with all events.
The ceremony was held at an alternate site, and NYU spokesperson John Beckman said that two deans were in attendance.
