Students on hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian prisoner

By Zach C. Cohen February 28, 2012

Students for Justice in Palestine members at American University protested the administrative detention of Khader Adnan, who was arrested last December by Israeli police forces, by going on their own hunger strike for five days. Israel believes he is an Islamic Jihad terrorist, but has been unable to produce any evidence. Authorities never formally charged…

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Modern vs. Orthodox [Religion]

By Simi Lichtman February 28, 2012

I’ve reached a point in my personal musings on Modern Orthodoxy that I’ve started to wonder whether such a thing is even possible: the merging of modern life and religious Judaism. Is Modern Orthodoxy a contradiction in terms? The Modern Orthodoxy ideal is living and engaging in the modern world while maintaining a lifestyle committed…

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Different ways of coping with IAW… and Brits fling water ‘missiles’ [Israeli Apartheid Week]

By David A.M. Wilensky February 28, 2012

I’ve got two items of note on the Israeli Apartheid Week front today:  Tablet Magazine has a nice selection of opinions on how to deal with IAW And Brits throwing water balloons. I’ll leave the water balloons aside for a minute and focus on the Tablet piece, which brings together a variety of people all combating IAW in their own…

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Not just another “Facebook marriage” [Activism]

By pkessler February 28, 2012

Facebook is a source of endless procrastination for college students, a place for middle schoolers to explore their burgeoning sexuality via pictures taken in mirror reflects, and occasionally, a place for political and social activism. This is one of the latter stories. As Rabbi Jason Miller commented in this Jewish Week blog post, Facebook is…

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Israeli Apartheid Week continues; Obama’s Jewish fundraiser; Agunot and Facebook, and more [Required Reading]

By pkessler February 28, 2012

Training to be a Jew [Tablet] Jake Kohlman, a Jewish soldier in the American armed forces, reflects on how his basic training enabled him to connect to his religion. “At that Sunday service, for the first time, I started to understand. The chaplain’s words lifted my spirits. I remembered why I had joined in the…

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Who critiques the critics?

By Harpo Jaeger February 28, 2012

Rabbi Mordechai Rackover, the Jewish chaplain of Brown University and the rabbi at Brown-RISD Hillel (which serves both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design), doesn’t quite fit the popular conception of Orthodox Jews as out of touch with the modern world. He’s rarely found without his iPhone (except on Shabbat, of course), maintains a Kosher food blog, and is an almost alarmingly prolific tweeter. By any measure, he is as deeply involved in both modern American and Orthodox life as anyone can be. So what led him to strongly decry a recent statement by a group of Orthodox rabbis that condemned gay marriage, though he agrees with them that it is “halachically impossible”?

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