On Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, Jewish students on more than a dozen college campuses across the United States organized “Shabbat for Ceasefire” events to sing, pray, and perform their Shabbat tradition to call for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Jewish Voice for Peace, which helped organize the events, said in a press release that “[r]ather than seeing their Jewish identity and organizing for a ceasefire as somehow at odds, these Jewish students center ‘tikkun olam,’ repairing the world, as a core tenet of the Judaism which compels them to organize for a ceasefire in Gaza and a free Palestine.”
Elez Beresin-Scher, a junior at Bryn Mawr College majoring in sociology and an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about why she organized her campus’s “Shabbat for Ceasefire” event.