Taking Jewish Guilt Global

By Ben Sales July 9, 2009

Where does our moral responsibility end? That was the question I confronted at Campus Progress‘s national conference yesterday in Washington, DC. Campus Progress, a division of the liberal flagship Center for American Progress, is a group dedicated to bringing the concerns of college students to the fore of the US political discourse. Think of it…

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Worth a thousand words? You decide.

By rebeccablady July 6, 2009

It’s hard to look. The Boston Globe’s photo blog, The Big Picture, advertises itself as “news stories in photographs.” The photojournalism is breathaking. The images are sharp and focused. They tell a story, and often, quite a moving one. But bear in mind that photojournalism is tricky, and it takes a few moments to discern…

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Born on the 4th of July (Bris scheduled for the 12th)

By peil July 3, 2009

It would have been nice if, in honor of July 4th, U. S. Independence Day, I wrote a sweeping, lyrical tribute to my American Jewish heritage. But as hard as I tried to come up with something awe-inspiring – combing through anecdotes about the Alamo and the text of “New Colossus” – I kept coming…

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Nostalgia and Identity

By admin July 3, 2009

Last week, the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva high school where I teach marked the end of the year with a siyum, a celebration in honor of the completion of a tractate of the Talmud. Almost every male there wore a black hat, but I wore a crocheted kippah. It was clear that they were ultra-Orthodox and that…

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The Death of the Jewish Cultural Vanguard

By Ben Sales July 2, 2009

I was about to write a blog post about a giant Israeli cucumber, but then I decided to check my email. And what happens? First I see a JTA piece by Ben Harris about Jewish Hipsters, then I read a Tablet article by Wesley Yang about how Jews invented Rock n’ Roll. Yang’s argument channels…

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Serving Justice, or Just Serving Jews

By thellmann July 1, 2009

Yesterday, the Forward published this article on restitution for property confiscated from Jews by the Nazis and the Soviet Union. “In a significant gesture this week, 46 countries signed a declaration at the close of a Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague aimed at easing the restitution process for Jewish property taken during the Nazi…

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