The surge in antisemitism on college campuses didn’t take Ruth and Jay Lenrow, active volunteers with The Associated, by surprise. Now, the pair is adamant that staying silent about antisemitism is not an option.
Get to know Ruth and Jay as they talk about their upbringing, antisemitism on college campus, The Associated and how they are addressing antisemitism.
Let’s start at the beginning. Growing up Jewish.
Ruth: I grew up in Upper Montclair, a Northern New Jersey bedroom community of New York City. There were not many Jewish families in our town. When I was in sixth grade and my sister was in kindergarten, there were perhaps four to five Jewish kids in our elementary school. I remember arriving at Goucher for college and thinking that I never so many Jewish women in one place – except for at Temple.
Yet, Judaism was always an important part of my life. Our family was Reform, and I grew up at the temple two towns away where we were a third-generation family.
Jay: I also grew up in Northern New Jersey, and my grandparents were the founders of a local conservative synagogue. As a teen, I was involved with our synagogue youth group, president of the local chapter of AZA and president of Young Judea.
We moved to Bergenfield, N.J. when I was five. I became friendly with four boys my age who lived on my street. It was here that I was first exposed to the Holocaust. One of their moms was a camp survivor; another mother was raised in a French convent, where she was placed by her parents. They were later killed in the camps.
