None Shall Be Afraid Essay Winners
2025 winning essay by Camilo Rey, Sophomore, Florida International University
Every day I put on my Star of David necklace. I don’t want to hide—not because I’m trying to get attention. I never thought a little symbol could inspire such hatred. However, being openly Jewish on campus has changed over the past year from a silent act of identity to a silent act of resistance.
As an international student, I came to the U.S. with hope: hope of freedom, education and safety. I never expected that I’d see echoes of the same hatred my grandparents fled decades ago.
It wasn’t a dramatic outburst the first time I felt it. It was barely audible. I heard one student murmur “Here come the colonizers” as I passed a group of students after Shabbat dinner. I froze. I continued to walk, uncertain, wondering if that was truly aimed at me or at us. However, the uncertainty was more significant than the insult. The murmurs became louder over time. Anonymous flyers were displayed in the library accusing Jews of controlling the media. When a group of students chanted slogans, I felt uneasy crossing the campus. The thing that hurt the most was seeing my former classmates participate in those demonstrations and post online anti-Israel content with overtones that bordered on anti-Semitism. Instead of staying silent, I acted.
Camilo Rey
Sophomore,
Florida International University
I started by contacting my campus Hillel and joining a group of Jewish and allied students who wanted to educate rather than retaliate. During campus cultural week we set up a table called “Ask Me Anything,” where students could freely ask Jewish students questions concerning anti-Semitism, Israel, Zionism and Judaism. Some showed up to argue. Others arrived to gain knowledge. However, we were present, composed, arrogant and obvious. That was relevant.
After that, I collaborated with our student government and faculty to suggest a system for reporting instances of bias and hate speech including anti-Semitism as a university-wide policy. I assisted in setting up a forum where Jewish students told their stories to be heard, not to win sympathy. Our collective voice took the place of the silence in which we had once suffered. A few months later the administration announced the establishment of a task force to combat religious bias and anti-Semitism on campus. Not much, but progress nonetheless.
I discovered that you don’t have to yell to fight hate. When the time is right you must speak. You have to come. I didn’t want to be removed from the discussion even though I might not have convinced everyone.
These days anti-Semitism is not always accompanied by a swastika. Sometimes it’s a sarcastic comment, a meme or a slogan. Its effects are genuine. I have witnessed the fear it instills in the eyes of students. However, I have also witnessed the power it evokes. The generation we belong to will not reveal who we are. It will be us who confidently and clearly stand, speak and declare: “No one shall be afraid.”
2024 Winning Essay by Ilana Argentar, Incoming Freashman, Bradley University
A trunk full of books, a bicycle and 30 dollars. That’s what my mom says she and her family had with them when they left Poland as refugees in 1979. My grandparents and great grandparents survived the Holocaust but life in Poland after the war was still not great for Jews. My grandmother was born in Belarus where Jewish children were spit on in the streets and Shabbat candles were lit and prayers whispered behind closed curtains. As an adult in Poland, my Bubbie became accustomed to the word “zyd” used as an insult or, as a compliment, being told that she was, you know, was not like the other Jews. She understood the power and meaning that hateful words possess.
Led by my Bubbie, my family gave up their citizenship and left Poland, with the hope that their children would be more free in the United States to live safely as proud Jews. They were right to do it. As she grew up, my mom’s Jewish identity was firmly planted and grew at preschool, summer camp, Hebrew School and through holidays and celebrations.
Ilana Argentar
Incoming Freshman, Bradley University
Class of 2028
I asked my Bubbie her thoughts about the recent sharp rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses. Her response was that “nothing has changed.” She recalled her mother-in-law sharing the story of mandatory “Jew-free Tuesdays” on the university campus in Poland she attended in the1930s. While the Holocaust had not yet officially started, the seeds of hate had already been firmly planted in the DNA of campuses in Europe.
In November 2023, the ADL and Hillel published a poll which stated that 73% of Jewish college students experienced or saw anti-Semitic incidents since the beginning of the school year. Sadly, November 2023 feels worlds away from today, April 2024. Without looking at a new poll, I am confident that we all know that number must have risen exponentially since the fall. Even my TikTok algorithm has stepped up its game, sharing more and more videos each day featuring students rhyming those familiar chants, threatening the destruction of our people and homeland.
Unfortunately, it seems our top universities are leading the way, inspiring and allowing hate to grow, often under the guise of “free speech.” Of course, all speech is not free, and there are limits to free expression in every public environment. Schools must ensure that one person’s right to free speech does not shut down a Jewish student’s right to safety and security.
If they don’t already have one, universities must create a mechanism for students who have witnessed or encountered anti-Semitism or verbal threats against Jews or Israel to submit a complaint and then they must provide the resources necessary to follow up on those complaints. It is important that they work with university police and local law enforcement to take swift and decisive action against all verbal threats. The word must get out: You cannot make threats against Jews and Israel and get away with it.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. teaches that the Holocaust was preventable. Verbal threats are actually warning signs. By taking immediate action, universities still have the opportunity to lead the way, slow down the hate train and ultimately even save Jewish lives. Left unchecked, history has taught us that verbal threats can become actionable and then it is too late.
Remarkably my great grandmother managed to complete her master’s degree in Pedagogy in Poland in the 1930s.This was in spite of the many odds stacked against her, which included the university sanctioned “Jew-free Tuesdays.” Not long after that, most of her family was deported and murdered at Auschwitz, while she escaped and survived by hiding in the Ural Mountains.
As a teenager who has always invited friends over for Shabbat dinners, traveled to Israel and worn my Star of David necklace daily and proudly, this story can’t help but feel like a scary fairy tale from long ago. Yet, when I think about going to college next year and hear the threats against Jews and Israel that have spread throughout campuses, this unbelievable history sadly becomes a little closer and more real to me. Times are definitely scary for Jewish students on campuses. Universities must do what they failed to do for Jewish students in the past and act now to deter and shut down verbal threats before the hate becomes more institutionalized and it is too late.
2023 Winning Essay by Amit Sapir, Senior, University of Florida
As my foot slid into the gravel of the railroad tracks, my mind boggled with emotions. Confusion overran anger, anger constructing anxiety. August of 2019. Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland. Seventy-five years prior, my ancestors stood in my footsteps. Yet, unlike myself, they would never step outside of those gates.
It was just eight years ago when laughter filled the air as I paraded down the streets of Jerusalem on my 13th birthday to be crowned “bar mitzvah majesty.” As I sang before the Western Wall kingdom, Your Majesty noticed a Frenchman waving his Israeli flag, displaying love for our Judaic performance. For such chivalry I repaid my fellow knight with a formal salutation of a high-five. It wasn’t until a couple weeks later that I found out that this nameless knight had been the victim of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Paris. Social media and news outlets shared the unspeakable truth that the terrorist entered a kosher deli, and this French Jew that I met only months prior jumped in the line of fire to save other Jewish customers shopping for Shabbat dinner. He had come to Israel for the first time when we crossed paths, and the few seconds of unconditional love and joy he displayed for my bar mitzvah has always had a special place in my heart.
Panic struck within the kingdom I always expected to harbor such stability and celebration. I feared the light of hope was lost, contemplating whether anything has changed in how the world thought of Jews.
After reading a book after my bar mitzvah called “All the Light We Cannot See,” anger and confusion from Poland resurfaced. I was mad at the author for making me empathetic toward a Nazi. For portraying the Germans in a positive light of innocence. For forgetting to mention the suffering and havoc of Jews. But I realized the truth later on: The novel is the symbol of good conforming to wrong, the virtuous obedient to evil. The reality was that despite the Holocaust’s immorality, the light of hope was brightened when contrasted against conformity and obedience, two fatal flaws of human civilization.
Amit Sapir
Age: 21
Senior, University of Florida
Expected Graduation: 2024
The light of hope. I’m inspired by the resonating message: “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” Throughout history, the Jewish people maintained their sense of optimism. Yet, there are many opportunities for pessimism to seep through the openings and undermine the mentality we’ve developed for a lifetime. Anti-Semitism was one of them. The idea of hostility and prejudice against a community I always found loving and selfless had the potential of extinguishing that light of hope. My perspective is exemplified in my commitment to ensuring that everyone continues to sparkle with light in their eyes, never giving up on aspirations for hope and sanguinity among all people.
Our social media-driven world provides a duality in establishing a society reflective of brightness and the light of hope.
The idea that social media have revolutionized the power of perspective can be both advantageous yet misleading; therefore, it’s the power of the moral to shine bright in factual determination despite the dark. Anti-Semitism can be countered through the interconnected reliance of social media in the dissemination of validity and strength for pro-Judaic initiatives. We treasure the idea of universal communication, especially when the Jewish people once faced adversity and hardship through the propaganda of the Nazi Party. The evil desire for racial superiority, as spurred by the eugenics movement of the 20th century, must be constantly retaliated through the voice of justice, resonating through the intricate beauty of networking and intertwined communication systems of the modern era.
We’re given the opportunity of life to spread brightness into the eyes of others before our time comes to close them forever. I’m grateful for this blessing of sight and light, especially by staying optimistic in how our common humanity can reconcile our diversity. Challenging life’s meaning is the truest expression of the state of being human. Our diversity harmonizes through an understanding of how conformity and obedience to authority can dismantle that humanity through hate. It’s about making sure society moves forward to eliminate that hate to create our version of the perfect race: the human race, one that runs on love. Whether bringing a Jewish perspective to the social media community, encouraging unity through our diversity, or living the life my ancestors or the Frenchman should have been given, I remain determined to be the light the world cannot yet see.