Once a year, Hollywood opens an envelope, names the best actor, and the room erupts as the winner receives an Oscar. Once a year, television does the same for the best actress, and the winner receives an Emmy.
And once a year, on Sukkot, the eyes of the world turn to Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, where I announce the winner of the “Lulav of the Year Award.” Why that name?
I give this award to someone who shows outstanding courage on behalf of the Jewish people. Why do I call it “The Lulav of the Year Award”? A shofar can be hidden in a pocket, and a tallis folded into a bag and no one will know what you have inside. But a lulav cannot be hidden. It sticks out. It stands tall.
The Jerusalem Talmud (Sukkah 14b) tells us that in ancient Jerusalem, people carried their lulavim all day on Sukkot—a public declaration of who they were. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:14) tells us that the lulav symbolizes the spine. So, this award belongs to someone who has the spine to stand tall for the Jewish people and do what he believes is right.
And now, the envelope please. The winner of this year’s Lulav of the Year Award is Michael Kotlikoff, president of Cornell University. Why Michael Kotlikoff? Because when the anti-Zionist pressure came to sever Cornell’s partnership with the Technion—the Israel Institute of Technology—he didn’t hide behind vague statements, or nervous neutrality. He stood up clearly for what he thought was right.
Cornell and Israel’s Technion built Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island. At its center is the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a partnership that turns research into new technologies and companies to produce them.
Its programs have launched more than 120 companies, valued together at over $1 billion, and created more than 700 New York City jobs. That is partnership at its best. And that made it a target.
In March, Cornell’s Undergraduate Student Assembly passed Resolution 61 demanding an end to the Technion partnership claiming it violated Cornell’s values.
My friends, this is where leadership is tested. Not when everyone applauds you. Not when the wind is at your back. Leadership is tested when the room is tense, when the slogans are loud, when people are watching to see whether you will duck, soften, delay, or quietly disappear.
Now let’s step back and see what’s happening here. This is not only about one resolution at one university. This is about the fanatical chutzpah of Israel-haters and Jew-haters in our time. Nothing is useful enough, constructive enough, life-giving enough to be spared if it has an Israeli or Jewish name attached to it.
Writing in the Cornell Daily Sun, Ph.D. student Derek Berman warned of: “a new vanguard of ideological enforcement”—student leaders judging a conflict they understand through brief social-media clips.
Berman asked the obvious question: “Why this obsession with Israel? Where is the same urgency for persecuted Christians in Nigeria or Muslim Uyghurs in China? Why does the moral emergency always begin and end with the Jewish state?” Faced with such selective outrage, too many universities tremble. They whisper, equivocate, and confuse balance with cowardice.
Michael Kotlikoff did not. He wrote: I reject this resolution because it conflicts with Cornell’s commitment to academic collaboration and freedom. He defended the Jacobs Institute as a vital partnership in education, research, technology, and new ventures.
Think of the absurdity of it all: startups, jobs, and technologies that help people… suddenly count for nothing because Israel is involved. The good itself becomes suspect. That is why Kotlikoff’s response matters. Rejecting a discriminatory boycott should be ordinary. Today, clarity is rare—and therefore precious.
The same hatred appears elsewhere. Corey Miller—a professor of medicine at McGill University—connected the dots between 3 slogans scrawled on a bathroom stall:
1. “Free Palestine,”
2. “Jews out of McGill Med,” and
3. “Kill all Jews.”
He wrote: These are NOT disconnected expressions of rage, but a logical sequence escalating from anti-Zionism to “Kill all Jews.” It’s simple and chilling.
These slogans are not 3 ideas, Miller writes, they are one, expressed with increasing honesty. We have a tendency to use words like “rage” and “fury” to describe the growing animosity toward Jews and Israel. But, as Miller goes a step further, The bathroom wall did NOT reveal incoherent rage. It revealed something far more chilling: clarity.
Cornell president Kotlikoff used clarity in his rejection of Resolution 61, going as far as calling out its hypocrisy. The Cornell resolution… calls to “globalize the intifada”… and “from the river to the sea”… are not isolated. They belong to that same moral universe.
Kotlikoff exposed the double standard by pointing out that Cornell has 159 agreements across 59 countries, many involving government, military, or security research, yet only the Israeli partnership was targeted for erasure. He called that bias incompatible with Cornell’s values and rejected the resolution “fully and forcefully.”
His answer gives other university leaders a model to follow: lead with spine, say no to injustice, and defend academic freedom without surrendering to the mob. And that’s why Michael Kotlikoff receives my Lulav of the Year Award.
My friends, this is also about us. On Sukkot, we lift the lulav—which we can’t hide—and make our Jewishness, loyalty to Gd, Torah, Israel, and the Jewish people—visible.
We may not lead a university or be able to issue a widely read statement. But each of us faces moments when we are tempted to lower our voice, hide our spine, and make ourselves—especially our Jewish selves—small.
My friends, Sukkot says to us: You’re a Jew. Stand tall for who you are. Hold the lulav. Don’t hide it or apologize for it. Be brave. When Jews are told to disappear, stand up and say like Jonah said in the Haftorah on Yom Kippur: Ivri anochi—I’m an Ivri, Hebrew—a Jew!
This is what the lulav teaches and this is what Michael Kotlikoff models. May we be inspired by him to carry it everywhere courage is required. Amen!
