Orit Tepper, 39-40, was born in Israel and “lived in Toronto from 1989 until 2005,” according to a 2014 article from The Canadian Jewish News (CJN).
Tepper was a student at York University, according to articles from The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post and CJN. CJN quoted Tepper discussing alleged “anti-Israel rhetoric on campus”: “‘As a student at York… it was almost impossible to focus on my education. You were either indifferent to what was going on around you, or you took a stand and it affected your ability to learn and to focus on what you needed to focus on,’ she said, adding that she served as Hillel’s Israeli affairs co-chair. ‘When I went back to Israel and I started studying there, I didn’t have any issues on campus. It was non-political. I studied with Christians, Muslims, Israeli-Arabs, side by side, and we never spoke politics.’ She said although she returned to Israel, she didn’t want to forget the Jewish students who still faced anti-Israel events on a regular basis.”
Tepper also served in the Israeli military. Tepper is described on a website for teaching English to Israelis as “an educator of English from Canada, who has experience in teaching over 65 students in Israel, both in private lessons and with groups. Before starting Making English Simple she worked for a private learning center in Kriyat Ono. Her passion for teaching emerged as an infantry instructor in the army, and as a instructor to new immigrants with the Student Authority.”
Tepper returned to Canadian campuses in her capacity as a co-founder of WordSwap, a group “promoting an accurate image of Israel and [serving] as first-hand sources for others by way of engaging in student-to student dialogue on campus,” according to another one of its co-founders. The CJN article stated, “The WordSwap team travelled to the University of Toronto, York University, the University of Windsor, the University of Guelph, the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, where they held tabling sessions and engaged students in informal conversation, answered challenging questions and shared personal stories about their service in the Israel Defence Forces.”
Describing the organization’s purpose, Tepper said: “‘Our goal is not to focus on politics on campus. We answer questions, we learn about the students we meet and we share with them our experiences in Israel,’ Tepper said. ‘We want people, who maybe haven’t had an opportunity to meet an Israeli, an Arab-Israeli, or a Jewish-Israeli… to turn around and say, I have an Israeli friend,’ she said. ‘Most of the people we talk to are people from the Middle East, from Yemen, from Saudi Arabia, from Syria, from Lebanon. To them, Israel is just an entity – they call it Little Satan – and when they meet one of us, they can’t help but think, “Well, you’re not so bad.”’”
The publication added: “Tepper said she feels the majority of the Jewish community still doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation faced by pro-Israel students on Canadian campuses. ‘The Jewish community needs to realize what is going on. We need their support. We can’t have just a few students carrying everything on their backs, and that’s how I felt when I was at York. That we were working around the clock and we were by ourselves,’ Tepper said.”
