Jared
Shelly
Jewish Exponent Staff
To help remedy the world, her family preached activism. Her father, Art Rosenblum, was outspoken during the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, and the family would frequently entertain friends with similar interests in protesting for the common good. "The community of people I was raised among gave time to trying to change the world," said Rosenblum, a German- town native who just graduated from Temple University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a minor in Spanish.
The 25-year-old will soon embark on a year's worth of travel, here and abroad, to conduct research on anti-Semitism. The project is being funded by an anonymous grant.
Rosenblum graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average. She was also the recipient of the Arthur N. Cook Memorial
April Rosenblum
Prize work in the field of history, based on her high grades and faculty recommendations.
Her upcoming project on anti-Semitism — titled "If Not Together, How?" — will consist of a paper and a workshop that she will deliver to high school students.
"My research is about how we go about building sincere ties of alliance with people in other oppressed groups," Rosenblum explained, "to the point where other groups feel that fighting to defend Jews is a valuable and essential part of their own fight, and where we feel the same about others."
'One element of the story'
Deeply influenced by her parents' activism, Rosenblum started a group at Temple to increase dialogue among Jews, Arabs and Muslims.
"When Jews. Arabs and Muslims around the world stand up together, they can create a non-violent way of transforming how people relate to each other around the world," she said.
Her domestic travels investigating anti-Semitism will take her to San Francisco, Chicago and New York. She hopes to raise enough money on her own so that she can study anti-Semitism in Canada and Argentina as well.
Buenos Aires has one of the largest Jewish communities in all of Latin America. In 1992, the Israeli embassy there was bombed, and in 1994, the city's main Jewish community center was destroyed in another terrorist attack.
According to Rosenblum, anti-Semitism still thrives in the area.
Montreal is another center of interest for her; the bombing of the United Talmud Torah school library in April 2004 sent shock waves throughout the Jewish community there.
"Israel is just one element of the story, [but] not the whole story," stressed Rosenblum "Lots of Jews in other places go through a lot of intense anti-Semitic rhetoric."
She hopes that her year of research will eventually help lead to a remedy for this eternal and widespread problem — a remedy that will affect many oppressed people. <•>