The fellow [CORRECTION: A colleague of the fellow] petitioning in Furst Hall about the lack of Israel coverage, Gadi Dotz agreed to be interviewed over e-mail yesterday.
Why did you decide to start protesting the Commentator’s decision?
The reasons for protesting The Commentator’s policy regarding articles about Israel are threefold:
1. It is a censorship issue — while it is the discretion of the editorial board to decide whether articles are appropriate for publication, arbitrarily singling out a particular issue (in this case Israel) is unacceptable.
2. There are not too many pro-Israel voices on college campuses today. To silence a pro-Israel voice is therefore in effect, if not in intent, anti-Israel.
3. The Commentator repeatedly claims to represent the student body, and refers to itself as our “official” newspaper. The vast majority of students at this university feel that Israel is extremely important and relevant to them, and it needs to be stated that the Commentator’s claims to the contrary are absurd. It needs to be stated that, at least in this particular case, The Commentator does not reflect the views of our student body.
What are you hoping to accomplish with the petition?
We hope to effect change. The newly-formed Israel Activism Club has drafted a petition that calls for a retraction of the Commentator’s policy and a reinstitution of an official Israel Section in The Commentator. In this past issue of the newspaper, half a page was dedicated to determining whether Batman or Superman was the “better superhero.” It appears the Commentator editors feel this is more relevant to Yeshiva than Israel. At the very least, the petition will give a voice to the majority of Yeshiva students who do not agree.
How many signatures do you currently have
We’ve collected approximately 500 signatures from undergraduate YU students in a week, and we expect hundreds more in the coming days. What’s more impressive to me though is the enthusiasm with which the petition was met by students and non-students alike who wanted to get involved with our cause. It is clear to me that Yeshiva students have the potential and the motivation to become leaders in pro-Israel activism, and I’m hoping the new Israel Activism Club will contribute towards this goal.
What’s your long-term plan for bringing Israel news back to the Commentator?
I am hoping that the Commentator’s editors will change their stance when they realize that the students they claim to represent oppose them. The Commentator’s editorial board is not elected by the student body, and can ultimately choose to ignore the students’ views. However, if the editors continue to do so, they will continue to lose credibility as the voice of the students. The Israel Activism Club will continue to protest through articles, petitions, and demonstrations until Israel regains its rightful place in our newspaper. In the meantime, we will lend our support to the YU Israel Club, which has begun working on a new newsletter about Israel for our campus.

The Yeshiva College Drama Society held rehearsals last week and announced roles last night. In a controversial decision, the lead role in the production was given to alumnus Eli Lamm instead of to one of the students. The production is The Wizard of Quiz — the stage version of Quiz Show, the movie about the Twenty One quiz show scandal.
The play is about the Jewish Herb Stempel, and his rigged victories — and his rigged defeat at the hands of Charles Van Doren.

Outside the news box in Furst Hall today, a protester solicited signatures for a petition demanding Israel news be returned to The Commentator. Editor-in-Chief Eitan Kastner controversially altered the paper’s editorial policy this year, declaring that the paper would not run Israel-related content that did not have direct relevance to the school.
I asked the protestor about the articles in this week’s issue about Israel: Dylan Kurlansky’s article about students traveling to North Israel, Eitan Kastner’s review of Sen. John McCain’s address on the Middle East conflict, and Jeremy Stern’s review of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie. The protester seemed unaware of these articles, and said that he was upset by an article comparing Batman to Superman.
I asked him for his name, and he became silent and walked away

Tonight, Monday November 20th, at 8:00 PM, Etgar Lefkovits - Jerusalem correspondent for the Jerusalem Post - is speaking on the topic of “Covering the Middle East as an Israeli Journalist: Reflections of a Jerusalem Correspondent.”
The Schneier Center-sponsored event is being held in Furst 535 at Wilf Campus.

Yael Dubrovsky was involved with the Yeshiva University Arts Festival three years in a row, and one of the directors for two of those times. Her major is in Fine Arts and Art History. She spoke to me Thursday night about her experiences with the Arts Festival and some of the problems she feels are inherent to the system, and gave some advice to future Arts Festival participants. The Arts Festival is a program started by Dean Norman Adler at Yeshiva University to promote arts and culture over a week-long period. In past years it has incorporated poetry readings, plays, art galleries, and concerts.

So, Yael, when did you participate in the Arts Festival at YU and what were you responsible for?

I participated in the AF for three years. The first year, I ran the art gallery. The second two, I was co-chair of the festival.

Was your experience mostly positive?

Quite the contrary. I have only good things to say about Dean Adler’s vision and his efforts toward realizing it. And only negative things to say about the community in which he chose to do so. It’s absolutely sterile ground for creativity. Not because I believe the students are incompetent but simply because they don’t care.

Do you have any anecdotes you’d like to share?

I have three million and two anecdotes but I guess the one that drives the point home was an exchange I had with a girl I was inviting to come to the events my first year as co-chair. I felt like a broken record. From the moment I woke up in the morning until the moment I went to bed at night I was trying to get the word out, rattling off the list of events to anyone who would listen and inviting them to attend. I sent out e-mails, I made phone calls to remind the people who had asked me to remind them and I was available 24/7 to answer questions and try to get people excited about the program. I was exhausted.
And at one point I stopped to invite an acquaintance of mine to the events and started to explain what each one was about. She looked incredulous, thoroughly annoyed and she handed back the paper I had given her with the program and said it was chutzpah to assume that she had the time for such things. She asked, “Why are you bothering people with this? Art is not important.�?
If you think she was the only one who said it, you should know like-minded people were in the majority. Only that was the first time I listened. It washed over me like a bucket of ice water. In that moment I realized that I’d wasted my time, my strength, my passion and a whole lot of the university’s money.

Are you still involved in the arts now?

Right now I’m trying to finish up some projects I had pending. It’s the first time that I’ve been able to devote myself exclusively to my work and I’m taking advantage of it as much as I can.

Do you have any advice to students who take over the Arts Festival?
Purist that I am, the only advice I could offer goes contrary to everything I believe. And in my opinion, the requirements for success as head of the arts festival are impossibly contradictory. You cannot do an amazing job if you are not passionate and completely emotionally invested in doing this thing that you love, and at the same time, you cannot care that much about it if you’re going to survive the people that ask you why you are bothering them. You have to pitch to the crowd. You can’t push fine art if the crowds are only interested in the free dinner, and that’s something I could never make peace with.
If I could add a comment though, I’d like to clarify that despite my negativity, I was speaking exclusively about my experience trying to pull together an event of this magnitude in a venue where the reception was so disappointing and the efforts of all of the incredible people with which I worked deserve to be noted and celebrated.