Article Archive

At Jew U., less Hebrew

By Dafna Fine | November 14, 2011

Hebrew is everywhere on the campus of Brandeis University. It’s heard conversationally in the fast-paced exchanges of Israeli students with thick accents and in ritual form at Hillel. It’s found on posters in the campus center and on the clothes of students sporting Brandeis apparel. It’s embedded in the Brandeis seal — which features the word emet, Hebrew for truth — and takes an academic role inside the classroom. But faced with the increasing financial challenges of the ongoing economic crisis, Brandeis announced in 2010 the termination of the Hebrew Language and Literature Major, beginning with the students of the class of 2015, who began school this semester.

#Occupy The Great Pyramid? | 20,000 Leagues From Hillel

By Carly Silver | November 11, 2011

The Nile is clogged with mystery – and inaccuracy. Today, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities closed the Great Pyramid at Giza. According to The Jerusalem Post, “protesters said various groups, among them Jews, planned to attend a numerologist ceremony on the Giza Plateau.” Apparently, Egyptians feared that on November 11th, 2011 (11/11/11), the Jews would reclaim for…

Barack Obama, Jewish student journalist [Today in New Voices]

By David A.M. Wilensky | November 10, 2011

This week’s (first) New Voices editorial concerns the curious appearance of an op-ed by Barack Obama in the pages of a few college newspapers last week. If Obama is a Jew (thanks to the Jewish Daily Forward for providing us with that notion), then he was also once one of us, a Jewish student journalist! Here’s a…

‘Standing Silent’ and ‘Yolande’ [Boston Jewish Film Festival]

By mekeisler | November 10, 2011

“Standing Silent” This is a profoundly disturbing film. It’s not just the subject matter, although pedophilia isn’t exactly popcorn flick material, it’s the way it’s shot, the color scheme, everything about it. You know how in the “Twilight Zone,” a man could wake up in a world where everyone had four stomachs and goat horns…

Sex at YU. Again. [Modern Unorthodox]

By Simi Lichtman | November 10, 2011

You may recall my post last week about sex at Yeshiva University, in which I wrote: Sex. Ostensibly there is nothing of the sort at Yeshiva University. As the exemplar of American Modern Orthodoxy, YU has something of a pristine reputation. […] YU is definitely more sheltered than most places; if someone’s looking for a…

Editorial: Back to school with Obama

By New Voices Editorial Board | November 10, 2011

Have things gotten so bad for the leader of the free world that he’s slumming it on the op-ed pages of college newspapers? Last week, an op-ed written by President Barack Obama targeted at the college crowd appeared in a handful of college newspapers, including The Harvard Crimson and the University of Texas at Austin’s Daily Texan.

For a sitting president to run an op-ed in student newspapers is uncommon, to say the least; this one drew the ire of some commentators. The College Media Matters blog said, “A related post yesterday on Fox Nation ran with the headline, ‘Obama Reduced to Writing Op-Eds in Student Newspapers.’ A separate commenter on a Politico story wrote, ‘It’s a transparent and ethically challenged vote-buying gambit.'”

We’re not convinced.

‘Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies’

By eglassenberg | November 9, 2011

On Friday, Oct. 7, Erev Yom Kippur, vandals desecrated Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa, the city where I live. They broke tombstones and graffitied clichés such as “Death to the Arabs” and “Tag Machir” (i.e. Price Tag, a Jewish anti-Arab extremist organization in Israel, based in the West Bank settlements). This was less than a…

Iran’s nuclear fallout [Long-Range Israel]

By greback | November 9, 2011

Though defeating Iran is a given, the costs of a war with Iran would be dramatically high. This much has to be made clear. Israel will never go it alone. The country does not have the assets currently to make any sort of unilateral assault sustainable against multiple foes at once. It would involve the…

Occupying the occupiers [Other Voices]

By gmschivone | November 8, 2011

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace’s youth wing, Young, Jewish and Proud, disrupted an event last night in New York City hosted by Birthright Israel-Next. According to their press release: Using the ‘human microphone’ or ‘people’s microphone’ made famous by the Occupy Wall Street protests they interrupted a Birthright Israel Next-sponsored event. The event featured…

Occupy bursts in on Birthright

By Simi Lichtman | November 8, 2011

New uses of the word “occupy” abound. The latest is Occupy the Occupiers, a new campaign led by the Young, Jewish and Proud (YJP) division of the Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-left Jewish activist group. At a Birthright Israel NEXT event last night, YJP members interrupted speaker and author Steven L. Pease, using an Occupy Wall Street-style “mic check,” also know as the “human microphone,” to call attention to their Occupy the Occupiers initiative. The protesters were all escorted out by security, but continued their chanting on the sidewalk outside the room on 13th Street in Manhattan, where the NEXT event was being held.

Non-Members of The Tribe: Part II

By Jun Chen | November 8, 2011

In Part II of this three-part series about non-Jews in Bloomington, Ind. who have become deeply involved with the Jewish community, Jun Chen interviews two non-Jewish women whose children attend a Jewish preschool.

Putting Poland into words

By awasserman | November 7, 2011

Last week, I looked out over the old city of Jerusalem, barely paying attention to the view it afforded me. This week, as I sit in a hotel in Lublin, Poland, looking out at the graves of hundreds upon hundreds of Jews, I swear I will never take that image for granted ever again. When…

A portrait of Chomsky as a young Zionist

By Sam Greenberg | November 7, 2011

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet with leading American social critic Noam Chomsky in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where we spoke about a number of issues of international youth activism regarding American involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict. One of the issues I was curious about was his youth advocacy work within the Zionist movement during the waves of foreign immigration to–and settlement of–Palestine, before Israel was established.

Do not bring God into the Holocaust | J-Studs

By dbloom | November 6, 2011

Scholars regard the Book of Lamentations as one of the most problematic in the Tanakh. Written after the fall of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E., Eicha describes Jerusalem’s decimation and the nearly complete destruction of its inhabitants. The text acknowledges sin only briefly and it does not specify its nature. Traditionally, commentators have interpreted Lamentations…

One of these things is not like the others | The Jew in the Boonies

By Laura Cooper | November 6, 2011

Did you know? Hillel elections are coming up, and as planned, I’m running. They’re a mess, as far as clubs are concerned. I even talked to our rabbi a few days ago (under the guise of interviewing him for our newspaper), and he confirmed that our Hillel is a “Jewish affinity club” and that I…