J Street U abandons claim that it might lose CJL affiliation

There was some hubbub and confusion last weekend about J Street U Princeton’s plan to invite the Israeli activist group Breaking the Silence to campus. At first, it was reported that J Street U could lose its association with the Center for Jewish Life, but multiple sources now say that is not the case.Differing accounts of what, if anything, actually happened have gone around, so here are the facts as they stand: the Breaking the Silence photography exhibit will be presented Tuesday and Wednesday at the Carl A. Fields Center.The Center for Jewish Life, which is the official branch of Hillel on Princeton’s campus, declined to host the event after months of discussion with J Street U.J Street U is and will continue to be an official associated student group of the CJL, although J Street U said Friday on its Facebook page that the CJL had threatened to revoke the political advocacy group’s affiliated status.Since Friday, J Street U’s leaders have walked back their claim that the CJL said there would be repercussions for hosting the event. Rabbi Julie Roth, executive director of the CJL, wrote in an email that although the CJL would not host the exhibit, it “did not oppose J Street bringing Breaking the Silence to speak on campus.”(In the interest of full disclosure: I went to a J Street U meeting once, and I attended another event that they gave; I am involved in a few activities with the CJL and Hillel, although I do not hold any leadership roles; and I am a member of Princeton’s Alliance of Jewish Progressives, which, although not an official CJL group, meets in the CJL and is often critical of the CJL on issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.)Let’s go over the statements, some of which have been contested, from J Street U and its leaders over the past weekend, in chronological order.On Friday, the organization posted that “hosting the event could lead to a revocation of our status as an affiliated group of the CJL.”“We have now been told that, as a student group affiliated with the CJL, we are strongly discouraged from hosting Breaking the Silence anywhere on Princeton’s campus,” J Street U wrote in their Facebook post. “If we move forward with the event, we would risk having J Street U removed entirely from affiliation with the CJL.”When I read this Friday afternoon, I understood it to mean that someone at the CJL had directly threatened to end its affiliation with J Street U. Multiple people I spoke to on Friday found the same message in the post.On Saturday, Dylan Mittag, the president of J Street U, told me that Roth “sort of implied or suggested” that J Street U would lose the associated student group status if it invited Breaking the Silence to campus.“It was mostly implied that we would be removed as an ASG,” Mittag told me a second time in our interview on Saturday. He said that former J Street U president Justin Vogel was present when Roth implied the possibility of dissociation.Vogel wrote, via email, that he could not remember anything Roth said that seemed to threaten J Street U’s status; however, because the CJL did not approve of hosting the exhibit inside its own building, he worried that the CJL could still punish J Street U for hosting the exhibit elsewhere.Between Saturday night and Sunday night, the concern that J Street U would lose the affiliation seemed to disappear.In an interview with the Daily Princetonian Sunday night, Mittag said that “J Street U will remain a CJL organization.”Reached by Facebook Messenger Monday morning, Mittag wrote that he “sat down with Rabbi Julie [Roth] and reached some agreements that have settled the situation.”Asked whether he was still claiming that Roth had implied that J Street U would lose its affiliation, Mittag again changed his tune.“W [sic] were told in slight that we could potentially be removed but the process and notion was uncertain,” Mittag wrote. “I think at this point it’s unimportant who said it and when it was said, as it’s been settled that was miscommunication and we are now not risking losing our status.”Roth agreed Monday that there was some miscommunication between the organizations, noting that “everything’s good.”“The pro-Israel/anti-occupation voice is an important one to include, which is why I worked so hard to have J Street affiliated with the CJL,” Roth wrote in an email. “We hope to find constructive ways to partner in the future.”