Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Jews in Rosh Hashanah on Aleksander Gierymski’s picture “Święto trąbek I” Confession: I’m writing this on Sunday. It won’t be posted until Monday, but sometimes I feel particularly motivated, and I write these things. Why am I writing now? Because Yom Kippur is still on my mind, as big days in the Jewish calendar often…
The following thought is in part a development of a marvelous sermon given on the “Shabbat of Repentance,” by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the Riverdale Jewish Center. All weaknesses are my own. As I write these words, traditional Jews are sitting down at their tables and eating of fine linens for the “seuda mafseket”: the…
If the Maya thought the world was going to end in 2012, some Jews seem to have a different opinion for the next few years ahead of us. One kabbalist rabbi says that G-d will “erase China from the world this year.” Why China, rather than Israel’s traditional antagonists? Possibly because China is an emergent…
There are no photos from those periods in my life, or the lives of my friends. The few photos come from before and after—the baby-fat and dimples proceeding, the still too-slender arms after. I’m under medical supervision while they root out an infection in my right lung, so fasting this year was a moot point….
How much do you pay for the privilege of sitting in shul all day on Yom Kippur? How much do your Christian friends pay to go to their churches? It may be the same amount. In a surprising and insightful series of articles, former NV Editor Josh Nathan-Kazis looks at how much we give to our…
We all know the story about Sandy Koufax refusing to pitch for the LA (ne Brooklyn) Dodgers on Yom Kippur during the World Series, but apparently current Jew pitcher Jason Marquis doesn’t think Koufax’s precedent is so important. Meanwhile, Oakland A Craig Breslow is trying to make up for not being a good Jewish doctor…
Why do the Jews hate Park51 (the so-called “ground-zero mosque” to be built on the shallow grave of the ever-mourned Park Place Burlington Coat Factory in lower Manhattan, two blocks from the site of 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center)? Abe Foxman, Holocaust survivor and the world’s leading crusader against anti-Semitism, told Sufi Imam…
Even though I’m a Zionist and a Jewish woman, I’m also an eternal Pollyanna. I truly believe that all people are good. I have spent a lot of my ink here begging people not to hate on the Cordoba Project, a lot of my free time pleading with my fellow Jews to remember many happy…
Dear Mr. Vick, It is my understanding that you live in Jerusalem and act as correspondent for Time Magazine. Based on what you wrote in your last article in the September 13 issue of Time, I find this hard to believe. How can you live in Israel and insist that Israelis are not interested in…
Gmail. Facebook. Twitter. University of Florida e-mail. I’ll admit it, I’m addicted. As a student at the University of Florida, Monday through Friday I see students plugged in, tweeting, texting, spacing out and status updating (for what has to be the fifth time in an hour). On the bus or at the Southwest Recreational Center,…
After New Republic Editor-in-chief Martin Peretz wrote a column suggesting that Muslims be stripped of their First Amendment rights, students from his alma mater, Brandeis, demanded that he apologize for betraying the schools values. Here’s a look behind the brouhaha.
Maybe, says Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC). Citing their activities in South America, She has called for a US task force on the issue–to no avail. [Charlotte Observer] That’s not the only problem in Washington. Obama has long faced criticism from the Jewish right on his stance toward Israel, but a James Besser says that his…
When I first began my college search, or perhaps it’s better to say when my mother started suggestively leaving college pamphlets on my desk, I refused to acknowledge a life after high school. The prospect of recreating myself and re-establishing my Jewish identity in a foreign environment frightened me enormously, but I needn’t have worried….
Those readers who have been following the daf yomi (“Daily Page” – a popular global Talmud study initiative) will have been having a good time recently. The program is currently working on the middle of Tractate Avodah Zarah, which deals with relationships between Jews and non-Jews generally, but has a lot of other good stuff…
Gary Shteyngart’s third novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,” depicts a future that is superficial, anti-literate and dystopian. In other words, our lives in 20 years.