An Interview with Professor Ted Sasson

Allie has taken a number of Jewish studies classes and worked with Professor Sasson as a teaching assistant. Professor Sasson, a sociologist, has recently returned to teaching at the College after six years as director of programs of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation.

I want to start by congratulating you on your relatively new position as the chair of the Jewish Studies Program. I’m really excited to be working in the program, and I can’t wait to see where you take it.

There are a lot of students who join different classes under the Jewish studies umbrella, but there aren’t as many students who are actually minoring in Jewish studies.

Why do so many people choose to engage with it, but not commit to the minor? And do you plan to make any changes or build interest in the program in any way?

Jewish studies at Middlebury is a framework for the interdisciplinary study of Jewish civilization, so what we really try to do is work as a faculty to offer a wide range of classes and cocurricular activities, and investigate all different elements of Jewish civilization, contemporary and past, from a humanistic standpoint and from a social scientific standpoint. Our main focus is in mounting terrific courses for students, and we’re thrilled with having good enrollments and cocurricular offerings for students, as well as for faculty, colleagues, and the whole community. We’re also happy when students choose to declare a minor in Jewish studies, and I think that we can do a better job making that opportunity visible to students.

You asked about where I want to take things. I’m beginning this fall to direct the Studies in Modern Hebrew and Israeli Society Program, as well as the Jewish Studies Program, and I agreed to direct both of those programs because I think there’s an opportunity to do a better job integrating so that students who are interested in all aspects of Jewish civilization—including Hebrew language, including Israel, including Israel and Palestine, and including Jewish studies—can form community, take common classes, and cosponsor cocurricular activities. I’m really interested in bringing those various resources that we have at Middlebury College together and making them more visible for the student body.

One of the things I noticed while taking some Jewish studies classes was the diversity of students in them who are studying other things.

I wonder what you think attracts students, who are maybe not interested in pursuing Jewish studies, specifically to Jewish studies classes, to explore Jewish history or the history of Israel.

All kinds of things. First of all, Israel and Palestine are top of mind for so many people these days. They dominate the news headlines. There’s a lot of interest in and concern about the ongoing war that’s now two years in duration. So students are drawn to the study of Palestine and Israel for those reasons, and our classes on the Israel-Palestine conflict, on Israeli politics and society, these classes fill up, and are of widespread interest.

Allie, you were a student in my class, American Jewish Life, and you were a teaching assistant the second time around in that class, and you know that that class has students who are Jewish, students who have one foot in the Jewish world and one foot outside the Jewish world, and students who have no personal, familial, or direct connection to the Jewish world. They’re interested simply in either religion or the meaning of life, and they are drawn to a class in the American Jewish experience and American Jewish life as a way of investigating issues that are of interest to them. Our Hebrew classes at Middlebury include students who are Jewish and students who are not, and again, students who have a foot in a variety of worlds arrive at these classes for a variety of reasons, and sometimes just because a friend said, “This is an interesting class,” and pulled them in. At a liberal arts college, we really want students to take classes simply because they’re interested and they’re curious and want to learn.

One of the things you mentioned was the study of Israel on campus, and of course, Israel and the Israel-Palestine conflict has been a very controversial topic on campus in the past few years.

Does that make it difficult to teach about the topic, about the countries? And what do you see as your role and the role of the Jewish Studies Program in campus debates about Israel, Palestine? Are there challenges that go along with that, and what are they?

Amazingly, I don’t find it difficult to teach about topics concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of Israel. I find that students are actually curious, that they engage in very civil inquiry, that typically they approach these topics with humility. What draws me to academic instruction within the College—and I’ve returned to the College after many years as an executive at the Mandel Foundation—is that really only in the college setting are we able to approach complicated issues and topics like Zionism and Palestinian nationalism systematically, in historical context, and with ample consideration of a variety of perspectives.

We live in a world that’s increasingly dominated by sound bites, by social media, by polarized conflict, and only within the college setting can we say wait a minute, let’s begin at the beginning, let’s approach this topic systematically, let’s take it apart. Let’s think about it from a variety of vantage points and perspectives, and let’s take 12, 13 weeks to have a real systematic conversation that’s grounded in well-ordered collections of sources and readings that cover the field.

To me, that is exciting, and I find that students are eager for that kind of inquiry. I don’t find that these conversations are taboo or difficult to have. In fact, they’re easier to have at the College than anywhere else. Now, there are other issues concerning antisemitism that I hope we’ll get to discuss, in the student experience in college, but within the classroom, I think we have a great environment at Middlebury and can have conversations that are difficult to have anywhere else in American society today.

You mentioned antisemitism, which is something else that I wanted to talk about.

How do we see antisemitism today on college campuses, and what do you see as your role as a Jewish studies leader, someone that people look up to and look to in times of crisis, for Jewish students?

Let me address these in reverse order. Let me talk about my role first, and then let me talk about antisemitism.

My role as an instructor, and also as a member of the College community, is to try to make sure that the whole variety of perspectives, experiences, and realities are introduced into conversations within the classroom, and in cocurricular settings, in public lectures, in the cafeteria, and anywhere else where conversations are happening. 

Whenever I hear claims being advanced, I think about the claims that are backgrounded, that are obscured, that aren’t getting advanced. For example, when I hear a discourse that is, let’s say, a polemically pro-Israel discourse, I think about the Palestinian perspective, or the variety of Palestinian perspectives. And conversely, when I hear discourses that are exclusively, let’s say, pro-Palestinian that exclude the Israeli or the Jewish experience, I try to make sure that I bring into the conversation the Jewish and Israeli experience. And of course, I’ve got to qualify this by saying there’s no single Jewish and no single Israeli experience, and likewise, there’s no single Palestinian experience or perspectives. But I tend to see my role as introducing into conversations the perspectives that I think are backgrounded, silenced, or not visible. I tend to want to complicate conversations. So my role, I think, depends on the context and the setting and who I’m in conversation with.

Now let me talk a little bit about antisemitism on campus. You know, in American society, we have resurgent antisemitism in general. And a lot of it, especially coming from the political right, is classic antisemitism, conspiracy theories about malevolent Jewish power, and frighteningly, that kind of antisemitism is much more widespread today than in any living person’s memory. Those perspectives surface on campus as well, and they’re concerning.

However, I think most of what Jewish students on college campuses today, including Middlebury College, experience as antisemitism is increased hostility toward Israel, and increased opposition to Israeli policy. Now, some of the hostility toward Israel reflects a history of antisemitism, and it’s very difficult to unpack and separate the antisemitism from the anti-Zionism in contemporary discourse. They’re intertwined in various ways, not in principle, but in terms of the history of these discourses. I do not think that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. I don’t think all anti-Zionism is antisemitic. But anti-Zionism often expresses ideas that were developed in antisemitic propaganda, and it’s difficult to disentangle the two. 

And it’s not surprising that a lot of Jewish students are deeply disturbed by political discourse that rejects Israel’s right to exist. Over the last half-century, Israel has been a key feature of Jewish identity among American Jews. So criticism of Israel is often experienced by Jewish students as criticism of their Judaism, especially when that criticism of Israel is intense and seeks to exclude or tarnish anyone who disagrees, who has, let’s say, a more sympathetic orientation toward Israel. Jewish students have been excluded and have been tarnished for either caring about or having sympathy for Israel and often feel that they can’t speak in public settings because their views are rejected. And we know from a lot of research that lots of students on American college campuses say that they wouldn’t be friends with a Zionist, and as a consequence, a lot of Jewish students feel excluded, feel that they’re paying a social penalty simply for being Jewish on campus. And I think that that’s a real problem for Jewish students and Jewish life. 

I can say that some of the debate between Zionists and anti-Zionists on college campuses today is based on disagreements about the nature of Zionism, and there is some talking past one another, which means that some of this antagonism could be diffused through dialogue.

Generally, when students identify as Zionists, what they mean by Zionism is that they believe in the Jews’ right to a state of their own, to self-determination within their own state. When people say that they’re Zionists, generally they believe that the Jews have a national character, not just a religious character, and that they have rights of self-determination, and that they should have a state. That’s all they mean by Zionism. 

Many anti-Zionists believe that Zionism is a belief that Jews should have different laws from Arabs, that they should have sovereignty and control over the West Bank and Gaza, that Palestinians should be expelled. Basically anti-Zionists believe that Zionism is a right-wing project of the contemporary Israeli government. And that’s what they reject. And so, there is some basis for thinking that better dialogue and communication could defuse at least some of the conflict between Zionists and anti-Zionists, and these are some of the things we try to do in our cocurricular activities on campus, and also in our classroom settings.

That’s definitely one thing that I really appreciate about being at Middlebury during this time, that it’s one of the easiest places to have the discourse.

I very much appreciate it now that I’ve been off campus for a while, being able to talk honestly without feeling judged. And I think other people feel that way, too, on campus [at Middlebury], which is good.

And then something that I haven’t seen on campus, luckily, but mostly on social media, is Holocaust denial and Holocaust inversion and minimization as forms of antisemitism that are mostly being applied to discussion around the Israel-Palestine conflict.

As a higher education institution, it’s possible for us to take for granted that everybody has the knowledge of the Holocaust and knows how to talk about it correctly, but of course, that’s changing now and has been trending that way.

I’m just curious about how the Jewish Studies Program and how Middlebury will address the gap in knowledge about the Holocaust, and although it’s not seen as prevalently on our campus, ensure that everybody knows how to respectfully talk about history.

Rebecca Bennette, a professor in the History Department and the Jewish Studies Program, is teaching a course on the Holocaust in the spring semester that I would encourage students to consider taking. And we also have some cocurricular activities around the Holocaust, including an event around Holocaust Memorial Day. 

I can tell you that I think you’re right, Allie, that discourse on the Holocaust is sharpening in podcasts, in social media, as a way of enabling renewed antisemitism in America by saying that, in fact, the Holocaust didn’t really happen or happened very differently. Why? Because it was coming to terms with the Holocaust in America that caused America to become a much less antisemitic society. In the 1920s and 1930s, the KKK was resurgent in America, and there was a lot of hostility toward the Jews. Following World War II, Americans in general repudiated antisemitism because they saw that it led to the Holocaust. And so when we hear today Holocaust denial, Holocaust revisionism that’s increasingly mainstreamed—I’m thinking about Tucker Carlson’s podcast, for example—what I think is that there are antisemitic forces in American society that would like to restore antisemitism to the culture, and the best way to do that is to deny or minimize the Holocaust, which was, in fact, the traumatic event that caused Americans to rather dramatically change American culture in relation to the Jews.

It’s definitely an interesting and scary topic to talk about right now, but something I think is important that everybody hears about more.

Do  you plan to collaborate with other Jewish Studies Departments in the future?

In the spring we’re collaborating with another Jewish Studies Program by inviting Professor Mara Benjamin, who is the chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College, to deliver our Quint Lecture. She is a Guggenheim Fellow who has just finished a book on the implications of the climate crisis for Jewish theology and Jewish religion, and she’s a brilliant scholar of modern Jewish thought. I think that her lecture will be of widespread interest to Middlebury students who are interested in climate and the environment, as well as in religion and theology and Judaism.

I can imagine that that would be a very Middlebury talk!

I also really want to know a little bit more about what you’ve been up to outside of Middlebury. I know that you’ve been spending a lot of time in Tel Aviv, where you are right now. What have you been doing, and what have you learned from Israel that you plan to take back home with you?

I am on associate status at Middlebury, which means that I have some flexibility during the fall semesters, and I have a position as a research fellow at a research outfit at Tel Aviv University, and my work here focuses on the relationship between the United States and Israel, and Israel’s relationship to the American Jewish community. These are topics I teach about at Middlebury College, so there’s a strong connection.

What specific research are you focused on right now?

I just published a couple of pieces in both Hebrew and English. One is on the growing criticism in the United States—in public opinion, among political elites, and also in the Jewish community—over the continuation of the war in Gaza. The changes may be enduring and have real consequences for the future of what had been a very important alliance for both the United States and Israel.

Then I also published a piece, not long ago, oriented toward an Israeli audience, about how the Trump administration has been approaching the issue of antisemitism, particularly within higher education. Israeli audiences often are very supportive of any kind of a crackdown on antisemitism, and so the presumption in Israel is that if Trump is going after antisemitism, that must be a good thing. In fact, the American Jewish community is very divided in its attitude toward how Trump is approaching antisemitism, in particular in university settings. And I tried to show Israeli audiences some of the complexity in how American Jews are thinking about that issue.

I have one other question for you as someone who’s involved in Jewish life and the U.S., and who teaches about American Jewish life. Something that I’ve observed has been a lot of instances where Jewish life and practice have been segmented between Jewish people who have different opinions on Israel, and I’ve heard a lot of the reasoning behind that is that we want everybody to have a safe space and to feel safe in talking about whatever they want and just feel supported in their community, especially in their Jewish community, where they’re practicing something vulnerable.

But I’ve also heard that that same practice separates Jews and continues the polarization issue that we’re seeing today. So I’m wondering what your opinion is on that, especially because it’s something that’ll be interesting to Hillel going forward.

I’ve got a roundabout way of answering this question, and then a straightforward way.

So, first, the roundabout way. In the Kol Nidre prayer at the beginning of Yom Kippur, the congregation asks for permission to pray with the sinners. And I think about that line whenever I attend worship services in a congregation that is politically quite distant from me. I think that they might think of me as the sinner, and I might think of them as a sinner. But we’re all in congregation praying together, and I think that that is a value.

Now, having said that, let me also say that I think of Judaism as a civilization, after Mordecai Kaplan. And when you think of Judaism as a civilization, it should no longer be surprising that Jews disagree with each other. They disagree with each other about politics; they disagree with each other about religion. They share in common language or languages, texts, customs and practices, elements of civilization, but they don’t agree about the meaning of those things. They argue intensely about their meaning, within themselves and in the community, and so it’s not surprising that there should be Jews who congregate politically and congregate religiously. And I think that’s healthy.

Jews have a mythology about unity, and sometimes, politically, they’ve acted in a unified fashion, and sometimes that mythology has produced real consequences in the world. I’m just thinking about the American Jewish movement on behalf of Soviet Jewry that drew on support from the right and the left, from the religious and the secular—it really helped produce this sense of the Jewish people as a unified political actor. We continue to think about the Jewish people as unified. And sometimes they can be, but there’s also the reality that we’re a civilization, and within a civilization, there are going to be factions, and they’ll struggle with each other, sometimes bitterly.

And that’s all very rich material for reflection and also can be enriching for practice, because the Jewish scene is so diverse and variegated. That variation is something that we try and encounter in the American Jewish Life class, when we go to New York City and spend time with the Hasidic community of the Satmar in Brooklyn, and also an anti-Zionist Jewish left-wing community in Brooklyn, and the Reform and the Conservative Jewish community scenes in Manhattan. It’s all very rich and interesting. But absolutely, there’s a lot of polarization, a lot of disagreement, and to my mind, there are occasions where it’s good to suspend that disagreement and be together. That’s my own sort of value position, my own normative position. I think that breaking bread on Shabbat evening and praying in the worship service are moments when we can recognize our shared civilization. And that’s a value that I personally embrace.

Is there anything else you want to tell the readers about yourself, about the Jewish Studies Program, or about your goals for the program?

I’ve got just one more thing to share, which is the great news that Middlebury College has approved a position in the Religion Department for a scholar of Judaism, and we’re recruiting for that person this fall. In a sense, the new faculty colleague will succeed Robert Schine, who retired from the faculty last year, as a professor of Judaism within the Religion Department.

I’m very pleased that Middlebury, in a period of tight budgets, has seen the importance of preserving the College’s capacity to teach about Jewish sacred literature, about the Bible, about rabbinic literature, and is recruiting a scholar in those fields to enrich the Religion Department and the Jewish Studies Program. It’s a very exciting development for us.

That is exciting. Those are some big shoes to fill, though. Professor Schine was an amazing professor!

Yes. And Professor Schine is not leaving the College community. He is continuing as a professor emeritus. He’s advising students this fall, and I am hoping he’ll offer more classes in the future. 

My gratitude to you, Allie, for conducting this interview and for your interest in the Jewish Studies Program as a student, as a teaching assistant, and now, as a journalist.