View Memo sent out HERE or read more below.
Event is posted HERE; please feel free to share
Dear members of Yale’s Jewish community,
We hope our words find you, your family, and your communities safe and well in this difficult moment for the Jewish people and America.
We are writing to invite you to join a high-level security briefing on the situation of Yale’s Jewish community Monday night, January 24 at 8 pm ET at this Zoom link. We will share information about Slifka Center’s current security infrastructure and our work with Yale Security and the Jewish community’s security network.
Together, we all anxiously watched the hostage situation at Beth Israel Synagogue in Coreyville, Texas on Saturday night – and together breathed a deep sigh of relief as we learned that the rabbi and congregants had emerged safely. That incident was another terrifying manifestation of the violent power of ancient antisemitic tropes here in America in 2022, and it struck close to home because we realized that this could have happened at literally any place where Jews gather, including to us. Slifka Center is such a place, and Yale’s Jewish students deserve the peace of mind that they are well-protected.
As the events were unfolding Saturday night, we gathered over 40 members of our community in prayer, words of comfort, and the recitation of Psalms. At that moment, our duty was to comfort our students. Now, and going forward, we must redouble our efforts to protect them. The financial responsibility for securing Yale’s Jewish community – salaries for security personnel and physical infrastructure hardening – is currently borne solely by Slifka Center. On Monday night’s call we will discuss the partnership and planning needed to keep Jewish students safe.
We hope to see you Monday night for this important discussion. If you would like to support Slifka Center’s efforts to secure Yale’s Jewish community, please contact Uri at uri.cohen@yale.edu. We also invite you to make a gift to support these efforts to keep our students safe in Jewish spaces on campus. You may click this link to donate online.
Sincerely,
Uri Cohen Executive Director
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale