5 Layers of Soul

By David G. August 29, 2014

As someone with quite an anti-authority bent, this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Shoftim, has always been one that I have struggled with. Parshat Shoftim lays the foundations for the future government of the Kingdom of Israel, establishing five different leadership roles. These roles include judges, law enforcers, kings, priests and prophets.  The former anarchist in…

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Why the Search for Aaron Sofer Matters

By David G. August 27, 2014

On Friday, August 22, Aaron Sofer was taking a shortcut through the Jerusalem Forest with his friend. The two became separated when his friend wanted to try hiking up a hill, and later that evening when the friend returned home, he discovered that Aaron was missing. When I came online Saturday night, I learned about…

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Rage Against the Material

By David G. August 22, 2014

There is an anachronistic story in the Talmud in which Rav Ashi, a 4th Century Sage from Babylon, engages the infamous Judean King Menashe  in a debate. Rav Ashi, shocked by King Menashe’s knowledge of Jewish law, had to ask how such a great Torah scholar could commit one of the gravest sins in Judaism…

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The One Wish Project is Coming to a Campus Near You

By Derek M. Kwait August 20, 2014

I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those…

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Meeting New People: A Five-Step Guide for Non-Jews Meeting Jews for the First Time

By Ed Mighell August 19, 2014

  College means opening your mind and seeing a lot of new faces. You may even find yourself learning more from those around you than from of all the information in your textbooks. Of course, meeting people who think differently than you can be nerve-racking. If you’re meeting a Jewish person for the first time,…

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Mourning the American-Jewish Political Middle

By Amram Altzman August 18, 2014

  If nothing else, the over-discussed Pew Report from almost a year ago (almost a year ago — and here we are, still quoting it like it’s the Bible itself!) heralded the death of the American-Jewish religious middle. This summer’s Operation Protective Edge seems to have heralded the death of the American-Jewish political middle, as…

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Stuff White People Like: Savior Complexes and Palestine

By Jonathan Katz August 15, 2014

    Some people study whales. Some people study epistemological analysis. I study white people. More specifically, I am interested in diaspora networking and migrant housing stock, but I am also interested in the way whiteness as a concept affects these in host countries. A lot of the time, that idea means things like deeply…

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What Happened to the Arab Peace Proposal?

By Maddie Ulanow August 13, 2014

By the early 2000’s, the false promises of the Oslo Accords were becoming clear. The peace process was crumbling, and by 2001 the Second Intifada was in full swing. The situation was not all that different from what we are looking at right now: prospects for peace seemed low, and the odds of a peacefully…

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My Best Friend is Anti-Semitic

By David G. August 11, 2014

Staring across a room filled with tiny chairs and colorful books, I felt a great fear. The other people there were all strangers, the person across from me had bright red spiked hair, and only about 8 teeth. He looked sort of like my glue-sniffing boss from my days as a janitor. This was way…

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Peace Can’t Come Through Shutting Down Dialogue

By Tomer Kornfeld August 6, 2014

In my article, “Together We Can”, I called for joint peace efforts among college student clubs, especially those with differing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I relayed an example where I invited Students for Justice in Palestine to join the pro-Israel group at my college in New York for a debate, or ‘mock peace talk.’…

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Baseless Hatred, Tisha B’Av, and the Gaza War

By Jonathan Katz August 5, 2014

During the Nine Days preceding Tisha B’Av, the 25-hour fast commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem,we reflect on baseless hatred (sinat chinam). The Talmud teaches us that it was the baseless hatred among the people Israel that partially brought about the destruction of the Second Temple. (Along with, you know, high-level political drama…

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Why I Couldn’t Work for Hillel

By Jesse Baum August 4, 2014

Recently while killing time at work, I saw an email regarding a position I had applied for at my university’s Hillel. Expecting a rejection, I clicked, and realized that I was not being consoled- they were offering me a job. I’d applied for the job almost accidentally – working an event for my bike repair…

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Such opposition. Very Jew-hate. So overblow. Wow.

By Jonathan Katz August 1, 2014

An article by Amanda Borschel-Dan in the Times of Israel has described American youth as moving with “lightning speed” towards anti-Semitism. The proof in the nationalist pudding, it seems, is a lessening support for Israel among American youth. It seems that non-Jewish teenagers and young adults associate Israel a little too much with the over…

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It’s All Your Fault?

By David G. August 1, 2014

Together, we have reached the last leg of our journey through the text of the Torah, coming to the fifth and final book, Devarim, or Deuteronomy. In Parshat Devarim, from which the entire book gets its name, the Jewish people stand at the foot of a mountain, on the last leg of their own journey…

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