Prophets

On June 4, Columbia's commencement day, Keith Karnofsky, 22, was arrested in a student protest near the campus. A month earlier he had been charged with criminal trespass when New York City police cleared Columbia's buildings of student rebels. Today he is studying to be a rabbi at Manhattan's Hebrew Union College, and he sees no disparity between his radicalism and his faith. As Keith puts it: "Activism is a Jewish thing."

Not all young rabbis are campus radicals, and few members of Students for a Democratic Society have much use for organized religion. Nonetheless, many of the nation's most vocal young protesters are of Jewish origin. A survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee in San Francisco last year found that 30% of Haight-Ashbury's hippies were Jewish. The Hillel Foundations, campus arm of B'nai B'rith, concluded that Jewish students made up one-third of last spring's Columbia protesters.

Jewish adults view these statistics with mixed emotions. Since joining the drug scene or the S.D.S. usually goes hand in hand with a formal rejection of inherited belief, many Jewish parents are now worried about the religious consequences of radicalism. In Washington last week, speakers at the 125th anniversary convention of B'nai B'rith agreed that, while most Jewish youth still share the traditional ethical concerns of their faith, too many have turned their backs on temple and synagogue. A B'nai B'rith survey showed that anti-Semitism is no longer the prime worry of American Jews; instead, Jewish parents are more concerned about retaining the spiritual loyalty of their children.

One obvious reason for the frequent appearance of Jewish students in sit-ins and love-ins is purely numerical: more than 80% of eligible Jewish youth are attending college, and they form more than 6% of the total student population. Some synagogue leaders contend that historical tradition does much to stimulate student commitment to radical causes. Says Rabbi Alfred Jospe, director of programs for the Hillel Foundations: "From experience, the Jew knows that whenever inequality exists, the Jew suffers as much as anyone. If we cannot exist, no one can."

Dr. Harold Weisberg, a philosophy professor at Brandeis University, thinks that many liberal Jewish parents have raised their children with strong ethical consciences while neglecting their own. "The kids find that their parents have betrayed something. They look around and ask: 'Where were you? You let this happen.' " Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee believes that youthful Jewish protest against social inequity is a valid, idealistic continuation of the "prophetic rebellion" that began in 7th century Israel. He may be right, but not many parents are finding it easy to accept the idea that their son the revolutionary is in the ideological line of Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah.

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