Thomas Breen photos
Margaret Olin and Josh Weinstein ...
... at Friday afternoon's "humanity vigil" at Yale.
There were no flags at Friday afternoon’s “humanity vigil” on Yale’s downtown campus.
There were only people — from New Haven and Jerusalem and Haifa and beyond — eager for a place to talk about peace in a time of death and discord.
More than 50 people gathered in a circle by the Women’s Table in front of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library at around 3:30 p.m. for that hourlong ceremony, billed as promoting “Israeli-Palestinian solidarity against War and Hate.”
“We stand together, acknowledging our mutual grief and the devastation of this moment, and the long history of hostility, violence and oppression,” read a flyer handed out by one of the vigil’s organizers, Naftali Kaminski, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and a native of Haifa. “We call for a stop to the cycle of violence now: war has no winners, and mourning won’t be cured by more deaths.’ ”
The vigil took place as college campuses across the country — including at Yale, but more intensely at Columbia, USC, UT Austin, and elsewhere — have been torn asunder by protests and counter-protests, tent encampments and police crackdowns, and charges of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Netta Sovinsky: "What is the future we want?"
Attendees held signs written in English, Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi reading “Cease-Fire Now” and “Together Against War.” Another one of the vigil’s organizers, a Yale PhD student from Israel named Netta Sovinsky, stood in the center of the circle and spoke of the “unimaginable” pain caused by Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“Thankfully, I’m not a general,” she said. “I don’t have to be practical. I’m a philosopher.” She urged those present to “stand here and be impractical,” to grasp for an answer to the question: “What is the future we want?”
Paul Bloom, a “proud Ashkenazi Jew” and Buddhist from Beaver Hills, spoke about the dehumanizing violence of all war, and the need to focus less on oneself at the expense of others.
A Yale undergraduate named Aaron Schorr said he grew up in Jerusalem, and that one of his friends, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was taken hostage on Oct. 7.
“Six months of war have not brought Hersh home,” he said, but have resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza. “This is clearly not working.”
“I’m incredibly frustrated. I’m sad. It’s been an incredibly divisive time,” Schorr added. “This is not the way it has to be.”
New Havener and self-described “anti-occupation activist” Margaret Olin said that Friday’s humanity vigil was really the only public demonstration on the topic of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that she felt comfortable attending. Here she knew she could speak out against violence, all violence, and not have her presence and anti-war beliefs inadvertently support a message she might not actually be behind.
“The truth is we have to keep our shared humanity going,” said Kaminski. He spoke of friends of his in Gaza who “are trapped by terrible leadership.” Pausing to recognize how controversial a phrase this is, he said that there can and must be a world where, “from the river to the sea, Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, will all live in freedom.”
He held back tears while speaking further with this reporter about why he was at Friday’s humanity vigil. He spoke of his parents, both Holocaust survivors, and how “there was nobody doing this for them” when they were most in need. “It’s our duty” to stop the killing of Palestinian civilians, to ensure the safe return of Israeli hostages.
Gesturing towards the pro-Palestinian protest taking place at the very same time a few dozen feet away on Yale’s campus, Kaminski said he thinks those student-led rallies are “really important” too. And, he said, “what people underappreciate is the isolation” felt on college campuses by Jewish and Palestinian students alike.
Faisal Saleh, the director of Woodbridge’s Palestinian art museum and a native of the West Bank, was one of the last attendees of Friday’s humanity vigil to speak. He spoke about how many friends of his, Palestinian artists, are all in Rafah now. He spoke about bringing Palestinian art and stories to the Venice Biennale. “We are hoping that the killing will stop,” he said, “and that Gaza will come back.”
Naftali Kaminski: "We have to keep our shared humanity going."
Faisal Saleh: "We are hoping that the killing will stop."
On Yale's Cross Campus, with a pro-Palestinian protest in the background.
