Signs of anti-Semitism at USD?

Jesse Aizenstat / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

Just because USD’s religion class on the Holocaust was hopelessly full last year did not mean that I was going to settle for a substitute. I was determined. And coming from Jewish roots, I was particularly curious to hear what our faculty found acceptable to teach about the Catholic Church’s actions, or notorious inactions, in one of the most deplorable genocides in history, the Jewish Holocaust.

It is no secret that there are not many Jewish students on campus. According to the Jewish Student Union, there are about 150 Jews out of a 4,160 student body. I get it; it’s a Catholic school. But do these numbers reflect a choice by Jews to attend college elsewhere or an environment that is unwelcoming to their creed?

As my class on the Holocaust has taught this semester, both Catholics and Lutherans were found helping the Jews and also collaborating with Nazis. While acknowledging such anti-Semitism has blatantly existed in these religious institutions, we must also remember that there were some members, in these very same religious institutions, who risked their lives to preserve Jewish blood.

Yet, in almost every Jewish community in which I have participated, I’ve noticed that something lurks in the Jewish soul that maintains a profound distrust, particularly with Catholics and in all probability, the Catholics with the Jews.

So all this led me to wonder: is there currently anti-Semitism atop our hill at USD? After a meeting with a USD Public Safety representative and a quick tour of reports posted on the school website, I found some disturbing news. There has been evidence of anti-Semitism at USD.

From a Holocaust-denying cartoon that The Vista published in 1991 to Nazi S.S. drawings in a hallway in 2004 added to recent ongoing harassment reported by Jewish students, I have concluded that an exploration of traditional European anti-Semitism at USD is needed.

Over the next few weeks I will be running a series of tests and interviews to try and measure if there is a suppressed current of anti-Semitism here at USD. If anyone has any information about this phenomenon, please don’t hesitate to make contact:

Jesse Aizenstat
Jesseai-10@sandiego.edu