Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
If Poland to Jews around the world represents one big Jewish cemetery, it goes without saying that for them, Jewish life in Poland is dead. Then, how can there still be Jews in Poland? After the Holocaust, after the 1946 Kielce Pogrom, and after the 1968 Jewish purges? It follows, that there must not be any Jews…
Students don’t have too many nice things to say about Arthur R. Butz. He is a professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University, and according to his students, he is boring, his handwriting is too small to make out on the board and he leaves all the real teaching to the teaching assistants. While their words about Butz are harsh, students tend to keep their silence when it comes to a darker part of his work, one that extends far outside the realm of electrical engineering. Butz is a prominent Holocaust denier, but many students walk into his classes without knowing it.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the recent trend among a small sect of ultra-Orthodox women to follow the example of modesty set by Muslim women by wearing burqas that completely disguise the shapes of their bodies. Most Orthodox communities are confounded by this latest stringency, thankfully. Us Modern Orthodox women needn’t fear that this will spread…
On Saturday night, Nov. 5, 16 years and one day (on the secular calendar) since Yitzchak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, was assassinated, I visited Rabin Square. All was quiet. There were just a few other tourists straggling by. And me. That was about it. A few Israelis walking and biking by slowed down for…
When I first saw Carole King’s new Christmas album I realized (with some guilt in my heart) that I had to buy it. It was nice, sweet, and simple. This was a real Christmas album, not completely abrasive like Bob Dylan’s Christmas album. But it wasn’t horribly fake like Barbra Streisand’s (titled “Christmas Memories” –…
Who advocates for the minority within a minority? According to a press release posted to their Web site on November 21, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) – the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lobbyist organization in the United States – is launching the Jewish Organization Equality Index (JOEI) survey. The purpose of this study…
My usual pre-Thanksgiving ritual doesn’t involve putting on stretch pants to allow for that last extra bite of stuffing. Neither does it involve watching the Macy’s Day Parade. Instead, before I head over to my grandparents’ house for Turkey Day with my family, I make sure to catch up on the latest episodes of my…
Israel may field a baseball team for the next World Baseball Classic. Can you say ק-ו-פ-ק-ס ? The latest from the Global Jewish Voice: Sabra League Baseball By Gabriel T. Erbs in Portland Citing a recent ESPN article, Heeb Magazine reported that a slew of former MLB players met with Israeli baseball officials to discuss the potential of an…
For the fifth consecutive year, Manhattan’s Jewish Community Center hosted the Other Israel Film Festival. A project devoted to exposing issues facing Israeli minorities, the festival brought together directors and films from Nov. 10-17 to “foster social awareness and cultural understanding,” according to the festival’s website. The festival included two Palestinian filmmakers this year. “We are constantly expanding and including other minority populations,” Isaac Zablocki, the JCC’s director of film programs, wrote in an email. The films shown at the festival represent the identities of many of contemporary’s Israel’s disenfranchised communities.
Last year, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) advised “conscientious filmmakers not to participate in this festival,” according to a release on its website. The organization’s concerns included allegedly propagandistic wording in official OIFF statements and “whitewashing” of what they call Apartheid-like practices in Israel.
I have always anxiously anticipated the arrival of Thanksgiving, filled with the promise of time with my family and some delicious turkey. But this year my excitement has taken a new form: for the first Thanksgiving of my life, I will be celebrating as a vegetarian.
By abstaining from turkey, which is often injected with hormones and antibiotics, and choosing instead to eat from the local fall harvest available in my area, it will be possible for me to observe Thanksgiving more ethically. The Thanksgiving holiday — which I choose to look at as a harvest holiday, rather than a commemoration of a mythical story about our Native American and Pilgrim ancestors — is the perfect opportunity to be thankful for nature’s bounty and the many gifts the earth gives us year after year.
Crossposted at Crystal Decadenz I am disturbingly familiar with the arguments against Orthodoxy. I imagine someone will take issue with my characterizations of the liberal branches, but it’s good to disagree sometimes. I know that really accurate characterizations would take a book to write (I’m telling you now so I don’t have to break up…
In the first part of his watershed work, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E to 640 C.E., Seth Schwartz, the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, argues “that imperial support for the central national institutions of the Jews, the Jerusalem temple and the Pentateuch, helps explain why…
I don’t mind Occupy Wall Street. I don’t mind civil disobedience. I don’t even mind police officers trying to do their jobs. Here’s what I do mind: People getting between me and taking that first look at my work email in the morning. I’m getting a little weary of OWS at this point. I’m not…
Around a table of ice-cold of beer and steaming pizza, one of Judaism’s oldest traditions thrives in a weekly session of raucous Torah study.
It’s called Torah on Tap. This guided discussion of Jewish topics meets every Thursday night on the back patio of Leonardo’s by the Slice in Gainesville, Fla. Leonardo’s is a Gainesville staple and has seen many businesses around it come and go since it opened in 1973. But for the last 10 years, Leonardo’s has also been home to Torah on Tap. Because of Hillel and Leonardo’s, hundreds of students have sat and discussed timeless Jewish concepts over pizza and beer.