Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” –Hamlet, III. iii. 98-99 Shakespeare: The name that many high school students have come to dread hearing. Each year of high school, the curriculum required English students to analyze a specific Shakespearian play. The year that I was in 12th…
As I said yesterday, there will be Kol Nidrei at Zuccotti Park among the Occupy Wall Street folks tomorrow night. By way of an update on the logistics, here is a message that went out to everyone who has RSVPed to the Facebook event (all links and strikethroughs inserted by me): Thank you for joining us…
In the midst of the U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood, which has sparked debate everywhere, college students across the country gathered on Sep. 21 and 22 as part of Hillel’s Talk Israel initiative to engage in dialogue about the Middle East. With large tents set up in the center of 20 universities, equipped with large blue banners reading “Talk Israel,” Israeli cuisine and videos featuring talks from several prominent pro-Israel figures, the goal of the event was to provide a forum for students to ask questions and discuss Israel “at a time when civility is in rare supply in the public sphere,” according to a Hillel International press release. Students at universities spanning the map from the University of Florida to McGill University in Montreal stopped by between classes to grab a falafel and talk Israel.
Today in New Voices, Geoffrey Edelstein reviews “Bad for Jews,” a new book about Jewish celebrities by Scott Sherman, a “Colbert Report” staff writer. The book has illustrations of each celebrity it deals with by New Yorker cartoonist Andy Friedman. If you go read the review, you’ll see a great likeness of Seth Rogen. The…
My three-week academic study trip to Poland withnine other graduate students set off on Thursday, June 30. We were going, as students of history and the Holocaust, to look at modern issues concerning Jewish-Polish relations. We arrived in Krakow, smack in the middle of the Jewish Culture Festival, which as we learned pretty quickly, is…
The realization that my office is a five-minute walk from Zuccotti Park, home base of Occupy Wall Street, combined with my excitement about the plan that was announced yesterday to hold Kol Nidrei in the park convinced me to spend my morning among the protesters. There’s plenty you can read about Occupy Wall Street out…
The hot new book to have on your coffee table during the High Holidays this year is “Bad for Jews” by Scott Sherman, a hilarious account of which Jewish celebrities are bad, worse and the worst for the Jewish image. Clear away the Ansel Adams books and old copies of Reform Judaism Magazine and make room for the funniest book of the season. Sherman is a staff writer on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” so expect great jokes and relevant comedy that is relevant to everyone from boychick to bubbe. So he delivers, but then goes on to make his writing appealing to all ages, which is a pretty good value for $13.99. The book takes 50 Jewish celebrities and discusses why they are great or not so great for the Jews.
Including responses to recent on-campus agitation, tales of Jewish campus life back in the day and more, there is plenty to digest this week about college Jewry. J Street U leader Logan Bayroff has an op-ed in the Forward calling for a more open, less polarized dialogue about Israel on campus in response to Hillel‘s…
Greetings, readers of New Voices, my name is Alan Borenstein and I am a part of the Israel Teaching Fellows program. There are several ITF groups sprinkled about the country. My group, based in Rehovot, has Israeli counterparts with whom we will work and learn with throughout the year. My ITF group is administered by…
Daniel Sieradski is organizing a Kol Nidrei minyan in at Zuccotti Park, home base of the Occupy Wall Street folks, at 7 p.m. this Friday night. I don’t believe it’s set in stone yet, but Rabbi Arthur Waskow may be delivering a devar and or leading the service. Sieradski is looking for knowledgeable service leaders….
To be perfectly honest, I had to Google the term “Traditional Egalitarian” when I decided to write this piece. If admitting that hasn’t robbed me of all of my credibility, allow me to make it worse: the results were sparse and mostly unhelpful, so I had to then call my own personal Google, my dad….
As former New Voices editor Josh Nathan-Kazis rightly points out, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg oddly implied a common Jew/New Yorker identity in his Rosh Hashanah message: MAYOR BLOOMBERG WISHES NEW YORKERS A SHANAH TOVAH U’METUKAH “When shofars sound in synagogues and community centers across our city on Rosh Hashanah, New Yorkers customarily say ‘Hayom…
So we have this new blog coming out soon called the Global Jewish Voice. And we have this little problem… It doesn’t have an editor. If you or someone you know is a college student with experience editing a blog, especially a college blog, drop me a line at david@newvoices.org for more information. We gonna…
On Friday – the second day of Rosh Hashanah – United States Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) announced the birth of his first child: a son, weighing in at a healthy 8 lbs. and 12 oz. According to a short notice posted on the Boulder Weekly, Polis joked that the boy – named Caspian Julius –…