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The campus support organization said it provided direct help to more than 740 Jewish students over the past year and delivered more than 4,150 hours of welfare and mental health support.
By Shula Rosen
University Jewish Chaplaincy says it has been forced into an expanded crisis-response role across British universities, assisting hundreds of Jewish students amid a sustained rise in antisemitic incidents and disputes over religious freedom, the Jewish Chronicle reports.
The campus support organization reported that it provided direct help to more than 740 Jewish students over the past year and delivered more than 4,150 hours of welfare and mental health support.
In just the first 10 weeks of the current academic year, its chaplains handled 18 antisemitism cases and more than 213 incidents involving religious rights, figures the group says reflect an ongoing escalation since the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel.
One of the cases involved a Jewish student in London who told chaplains he was pushed down a staircase because he was wearing a kippah. The student said the assault was unprovoked and left him fearful about his safety on campus. University Jewish Chaplaincy supported him following the incident and raised the case with university authorities, the Community Security Trust and police.
At a Scottish university, Jewish students reported being challenged during a freshers fair by a Muslim chaplain participating in an interfaith event.
According to the students, the chaplain questioned them about “Israeli genocide” and voiced hostile anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views.
When one Jewish student spoke about a friend murdered on October 7, the chaplain denied the attacks and suggested Muslim students should avoid engaging with what he referred to as “Zionist Jews.”
Sophie Dunoff, the organization’s chief executive, published an article in the Jewish Chronicle saying that Jewish students are facing a convergence of pressures, including fallout from the Gaza war and broader social strains.
“Since the attacks in Israel on 7 October, 2023, British universities have seen sustained and elevated levels of antisemitism,” she wrote, citing incidents such as anti-Jewish graffiti, the removal of mezuzot on Yom Kippur and lectures that denied the reality of the attacks. She also pointed to cases in which blood libels were presented as factual material by academics, warning that no institution is immune.
The report also referenced an incident from October last year involving Michael Ben-Gad, an Israeli lecturer at City, University of London, who said masked demonstrators stormed his lecture, threatened him with beheading and branded him a “terrorist,” following a campaign targeting him over his Israeli nationality.
In response to rising incidents, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said last October that the government would fund training to help universities address what she called an unacceptable increase in antisemitism. Universities UK, which issued guidance on tackling antisemitism in 2021, was approached for comment.
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