Jeremy Dery is only 24 but he is a young man full of energy. He took on Drew University when it challenged his decision to study in Israel, is involved in numerous projects, and has devoted his time to Jewish affairs.
About to begin studying at Tel Aviv University for a master’s degree in conflict resolution, he’s been living in Israel since summer of 2010, filling in the time until starting his degree course with some very interesting and non-routine activities.
For several months, he worked with Ayoub Kara as an intern in the Druse Knesset member’s office. “When he visited the US, I worked with his chief of staff Mendi Safadi, preparing the visit,” Dery says. “He’s an interesting man – he made a speech recently in Tel Aviv in which he said he was more Zionist than all the Jews in the world.”
He’s also been involved with the activities of many Israeli advocacy groups and feels he has qualities that could be helpful in Israel’s hasbara (public diplomacy) battle.
DERY WAS born in 1987 in New York. His mother is of Turkish/Romanian/Russian origin; his father is Moroccan, originally from Rabat but moved to Paris as a teenager, his grandfather was the head of King Hassan's army. His parents met in France and lived both there and in the US.
When Dery was between the ages of six and 10 the family lived in France, so he speaks fluent French, and he clearly remembers encountering anti-Semitism as a child, being called “sale juif” (dirty Jew) and seeing anti-Jewish graffiti. “I felt it very much as a child. We would go to synagogue and I remember the guards standing there with big machine guns,” he recalls.
When they moved back to the US and settled in New Jersey, he gained an interest in Jewish history and particularly the Arab/Jewish conflict. As a young teenager, he learned about the spate of horrific suicide bombings in Israel and felt a sense of outrage.
While still in high school, he began to be active in Israeli and Jewish activities, becoming president of the Israel club in his final year at school, and when he joined Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, to study for his first degree, he quickly became co-president of the Hillel there.
During his second year at Drew University, as a political science major with a minor in Jewish studies, Dery got into his first public fight on behalf of Israel. After a Taglit Birthright trip in 2006, his first visit to Israel, he had planned to take some time off and spend the spring semester at Tel Aviv University.
Drew rejected his application citing the requirements of its insurance carrier — ruled that Tel Aviv would not be a safe place for him to study, and even clarified that if he went without their blessing he would not receive any credits for his study in Israel.
Administration officials said so long as Israel remains on the State Department's list of "travel warnings," it could not approve study abroad programs there. According to the State Department Web site, travel warnings are issued when the State Department recommends "that Americans avoid a certain country."
Jeremy's mother, Ann, had been her son's strong advocate throughout the dispute. She works as a global travel manager at Barr Laboratories in Woodcliff Lakes, shepherding pharmaceutical company representatives to many parts of the world.
"I look at risk reports all day long," she told NJ Jewish News, citing an on-line advisory service, iJet.com, which provides multinational organizations with travel risk assessments.
She said that on the Web site's scale of one to five, Israel shared a "three" rating with New York, Paris, and London, while Iraq and Afghanistan are rated a five as the most risky.
"A three is the highest limit you'd want to send anybody to, and Israel is not on the radar as being a highly violent place right now. It's quiet," she said. "And students are going there in droves from all over the United States."
In addition, Dery said, he was willing to sign "any waiver form" the university requires to resolve the insurance issue. University officials answered that there was no guarantee that such a form would hold up in court.
The Livingston resident fought back, enlisting the support of the media and leaders in the MetroWest Jewish community, involved the Israeli consulate, Jewish leaders, journalists and even the governor of New Jersey – and eventually won to the extent that the whole university policy was changed. Administrators were persuaded to liberalize Drew’s travel policies and give Dery credit for his study in Israel.
In the end, he was able to spend two semesters in Tel Aviv and finally earned his first degree in 2009.
After returning from his studies in Israel, Dery organized a program called “Operation Magic Carpet,” an intercollegiate effort to promote study, travel, and internships in Israel. Held on Dec. 4, 2008 at the Drew University campus in Madison, representatives from 20 Jewish organizations attended and offered information about their study and travel programs, including the Jewish Agency for Israel, Birthright Israel, and Hillel chapters from campuses in the tri-state area. The evening included Israeli food, music, dancing, and comedy.
Always active on campus, he was very involved in the David Project to encourage Israeli hasbara in US colleges and in 2009 was the guest speaker at their Boston convention.
He is now living in Tel Aviv and has become involved in several projects all designed either to help Israel’s image in some way or to help new immigrants.
One is World Magshimei Herut ("world achievers of liberty"), a Zionist young adult movement founded in 1999 by a group of Betar members who felt the need for a young adult movement dedicated to the ideals of aliyah, social justice and the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel. World MH views itself as loyal to the basic Zionist teachings of Zev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Zionist Movement.
Another is Hadar Israel, a grassroots non-profit organization offering a strong grassroots voice from Israel by mobilizing the English speaking Israeli community to fulfill the Zionist vision of a just society and to galvanize international support for Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and to defeat attempts to attack Israel's legitimacy.
A third activity is with the Gloria Center for Global Affairs, based at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. Here, he has helped produce material for its website, and he helped organize a China-Israel symposium devoted to security, finding appropriate speakers from his many connections and writing the official review.
He has a pro-Israel Facebook group with 2,500 members called “Peace for Israel; stand against terror,” which he constantly updates.
He would like to do something in the Zionist world, since he has so much experience in hasbara, and perhaps even join the Foreign Service to which he feels he could be suited with his fluent French and English, understanding a little bit Spanish and Italian, and can read and speak a little Hebrew and Arabic.
“I believe in my heart and soul that I have something to contribute in the cause of the Jewish people,” he says.
