“Jay-Z disappoints me as a person” | The Product

By mekeisler October 31, 2011

When I was at Shemspeed’s CMJ concert in Brooklyn, I got the chance to talk to Y-Love. He called out Jay-Z, talked about going more pop with his sound, and dropped some theology. KEISLER: Long story short, how’d you come to Judaism? Y-LOVE: I saw a commercial on TV when I was seven years old…

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Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul | Klal Yisrael

By sphilp October 30, 2011

Whether you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or straight, Mollie Pier will be your bubbie. She is the cofounder of Project Chicken Soup, a nonprofit volunteer organization that delivers kosher meals twice per month to residents of Los Angeles County living with HIV/AIDS. Even at 91, Pier is a fierce advocate for the LGBT community;…

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Speaking with bodies and words | Fresh Off the Block

By pkessler October 29, 2011

My dance professor stresses the importance of body movement as a form of non-verbal communication, and having spent half a semester examining and performing various forms of motion, I’m inclined to agree that sometimes our bodies do speak for us. Taking the class has made me pay more attention to the ways we communicate with…

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“HaMisrad”: the boundary-expanding Israeli version of “The Office” | 20,000 Leagues from Hillel

By Carly Silver October 28, 2011

English comedian Ricky Gervais created the original British version of The Office, which quickly jumped across the Atlantic to the U.S.  Here, no one was quite sure the hit NBC comedy could ever be the same after Michael Gary Scott left Dunder Mifflin, but this hasn’t stopped other countries from playing on the formula the British series developed.  Enter the…

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Occupy the quad!

By Penina Yaffa Kessler October 27, 2011

Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.)–Before the media coverage, before the videos of police brutality and before six Wesleyan University students were arrested for their roles in Occupy Wall Street, Wesleyan students awoke on the morning of Sept. 25 to an unexpected sight on a familiar grassy knoll–someone had erected a tent city on Foss Hill. The hodgepodge of hurriedly assembled canvas aimed to raise awareness about the burgeoning protest movement that started in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, as well as create a community that would sit in solidarity with the protesters during the school week. The protestors gathered support from Out House, a campus outing club, which donated the tents and other materials used by the tent protesters. Foss Hill, the Wesleyan version of a quad, was chosen for its central location and availability.

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What does Israel need in a leader? | Long-Range Israel

By greback October 27, 2011

We are coming out of the festival of Sukkot. To be honest, it is an oft-ignored holiday. It matches neither the trembling awe of the theme of freedom from Passover, nor the exhilarating celebration of victory in the lights of Chanukah. These two holidays could summarize what we want in an epic and idealistic event…

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Oh, so that’s where the Earth is!

By awiner October 26, 2011

Tevel b’Tzedek (Hebrew for Earth In Justice) is an Israeli non-profit organization promoting social and environmental justice by sending young people all over the world to do intimate and immediate action. Their goals are to engage the Jewish community is issues of poverty and devastation on the premise that the Jewish people are innately connected…

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Kid looks like a bush baby; I like sing-alongs; Gaddafi is dead

By aborenstein October 25, 2011

It’s been an eventful few weeks, full of holidays, cute anecdotes, law school applications and politics both domestic and international. And now, my pithy observations about all this: 1. My house built a Sukkah for Sukkot. It was really quite nice to sit, eat and sing in. I’d forgotten how much fun sing-alongs are especially…

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How attack in NYU divestment letter is right and wrong at the same time | Parsing

By Harpo Jaeger October 25, 2011

There’s nothing we here at New Voices like better than a press release email with a shouted subject line: “REP. ACKERMAN ATTACKS OVER 100 NYU PROFESSORS FOR SIGNING DIVESTMENT LETTER.” After catching our breath, we looked into it: Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) doesn’t care for boycotts: I strongly condemn the ill-conceived and dangerous effort by…

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So, check out my coverage of Shemspeed at CMJ Music Marathon

By mekeisler October 25, 2011

“Rare and based” according to random twitter cats. How many times can I say “hipster” without looking lame? Part one at Simi Lampert’s YU Beacon (opening acts): After Yellow Red Sky, Max Jared takes the stage. Jared bears an uncanny resemblance to Goldstein from the Harold and Kumar movies, and his music kind of sounds…

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Signs of life from Sephardi students

By Carly Silver October 25, 2011

Columbia University (New York City)–Columbia University has a large Jewish population but, according to some Sephardi students, the Columbia-Barnard Hillel can’t satisfy all of its constituents. Reflective of the makeup of the American Jewish community, most of the school’s Jewish students are Ashkenazi, meaning that they are of eastern European or German descent. Jews of other heritages, like Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, face a lack of opportunities to express their religious and cultural identities. Ashkenazi and Sephardi-Mizrahi practices differ in a variety of ways, ranging from the order of prayers in services to Passover customs. “The prayers, of course, are similar, but there’s some differences,” Columbia senior Mathew Samimi, a French-Persian Jew, pointed out.

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An egalitarian, Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Ugandan service? | Today in New Voices

By David A.M. Wilensky October 25, 2011

Today, in New Voices Magazine, Carly Silver writes about Sephardic student life, or lack thereof, at Columbia University. Though the picture is mostly bleak, one group mentioned in the article stands out, New Yachad City. Part of Columbia University Hillel, New Yachad City tries to create services that are more reflective of the diversity of world Jewry….

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Why are our writers suspicious of Occupy Wall Street?

By David A.M. Wilensky October 24, 2011

Several New Voices writers, including me, wrote a group of brief essays last week about Occupy Wall Street. Some of them were also published in the Forward (in print in the picture scan above). When the essays initially came Jane Eisner, the editor of the Forward, and I were surprised by how negative they were…

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Only in Israel, perhaps?

By eglassenberg October 24, 2011

I’m waiting for a bus near the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv to get back home to Jaffa. A woman with a baby in a stroller hails a cab. The cab driver comes out to help her. She has difficulty trying to fold the stroller with one arm, while holding the baby in the…

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New recruits

By Gabi P. Remz October 24, 2011

The scene at Norris University Center looked more like a Middle Eastern flea market than a student center. Recruiters yelled and sweet-talked, handed out candy and business cards as students squeezed through the packed aisles. Cultural groups, sports teams and even some students who developed a solar-powered car were trying to convince incoming Northwestern University students to listen to their pitches so that maybe, just maybe, the new students would make an appearance at their first meeting of the semester. This chaotic scene was the annual activities fair at Northwestern University, where student groups debated, pressured and begged freshmen to give their groups a chance. But several groups with a common denominator were noticeably more subdued, or even absent from the fair. The link between them? They were Jewish and Israel-centered groups.

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