What Would Jesus Do?: A Jewish Perspective

By Evan Goldstein April 30, 2015

Can a Jew ask “what would Jesus do?” I have two answers: Yes and no. Yes. Of course. How could we not? Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish, full stop. I am perplexed by the almost total lack of Jewish theological engagement with Jesus. To be sure, Jesus’ Jewishness has been emphasized by historical and biblical…

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Interview With an Accordion-Playing Golem

By Michele Amira April 29, 2015

As apart of the 2015 Washington Jewish Music Festival, the Gypsy, Yiddish, klezmer, funk, fusion band, Golem, will grace Sixth and I Historic Synagogue on May 14th. I talked with the founder of Golem, Annette Ezekiel Kogan, to kibbitz about everything from the dance club vibe of their upcoming set at Sixth and I performance…

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Let’s Make Yom HaAtzmaut About the People

By Amram Altzman April 27, 2015

Every year, even if I celebrate it differently and even as my perceptions of Zionism and the Jewish State become evermore complicated, Yom HaAtzmaut always evokes in me a certain special nostalgia. It was only once I was no longer forced to celebrate the holiday like I did in elementary and high school—with Israeli dancing,…

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Why I Love Yom HaAtzmaut Anyway

By Derek M. Kwait April 23, 2015

We’re usually pretty hard on Israel here at New Voices, and though more forgiving than some, I’m no exception. Yet, I find that in the midst of all my anxiety over the results of the last election or railing against the settlements, Yom HaAtzmaut provides the ideal opportunity to step back and remember why I…

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The Nice Jewish Girl’s Guide to the Broccoli City Fest

By Michele Amira April 22, 2015

Although my favorite holiday, Tu B’Shevat, passed in February, Jewish tree lovers like me can still find joy in another holiday celebrating the beauty of earth’s many bountiful blessings: Earth Day and the week-long Broccoli City Festival. Starting in Washington, D.C. on April 25 and finishing up in Los Angeles May 3, the Broccoli City Festival…

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Imagining an Alternate History in Lithuania: A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz April 21, 2015

  I, your faithful correspondent from the Colonial Motherland, just spent six days in the other motherland – Lithuania, the place from which most of my ancestors came. Other than a return in the 1990’s by my Holocaust-survivor maternal grandmother, and a similarly timed visit by my paternal grandparents, none of my “nearby” extended family…

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Who Really Are ‘The Jews’: More Questions About Jews and Race

By Amram Altzman April 20, 2015

  We here at New Voices seem no strangers to the question of whether or not the Jews are white. Yet the wider American Jewish community tends to go back and forth on the issue, especially now that racial tensions in this country have reached a boiling point. Despite the advancements made in the national…

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Passover in College: A Journey Worth Taking

By Miriam Roochvarg April 17, 2015

Keeping kosher in college is not easy; keeping kosher for Passover is even harder. Pizza, bread, eggs, fruits, veggies, and desserts are my go-to dorm foods. While mentally preparing for Passover, I realized many of the main staples of my already restricted diet were no longer options, and that was daunting. No more opening the…

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What Does ‘Never Again’ Mean Today?

By Jackson Richman April 16, 2015

In 2013, I went through an educational experience in Poland courtesy of Heritage Seminars. The name of the program says it all. Not only did we visit the places where Jewish life in Europe vanished, but also the sites where the notion of Jewish community flourished. The latter needs be examined more in today’s society…

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Retconning History: Comic Books and the Holocaust

By Josh Weiss April 16, 2015

In Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 movie X-Men: First Class, Professor Charles Xavier tries to stop his friend Magneto—controller of all things metal—from killing American and Soviet navy servicemen during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis by telling him the sailors were just “following orders.” Magneto then delivers arguably the best line of the film: “I’ve…

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Honoring the Holocaust in the Land of the Liberators and Bystanders: A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz April 16, 2015

Seventy years ago, on April 15, 1945, the British Army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and its 60,000 mostly Jewish, starved, and diseased prisoners. Among these prisoners was my maternal grandmother – who had survived several deportations, from Kovno (Kaunas) to Vaivara to Bergen-Belsen – and had lost her first child, first husband, and most…

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Want to Reform Israel? Vote for the Reform Movement

By Evan Traylor April 15, 2015

Most Jews have at least heard of the World Zionist Congress. They know that it had something to do with Theodore Herzl and played a critical role in creating the State of Israel. What many don’t know is that the World Zionist Congress still makes very important decisions affecting Israel and the Jewish community around…

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Not Your Safta’s Ukrainian Folk Music

By Michele Amira April 15, 2015

As I sat in Sixth & I Historic Synagogue the night before the start of Passover, I was surrounded by a sea of hipsters swagging SovJew, or Soviet Jewish. They were clamoring around, speaking in fast- paced Russian, to hear the self-proclaimed “ethno-chaos” of the Ukrainian folk fusion band DahkaBrahka. All around me, I heard…

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On French Anti-Semitism and Conflicting Identities

By Ari Bloom April 8, 2015

My first experience with anti-Semitism was at 6 years old. Someone painted a swastika on the front gate of my school and I remember asking my dad why it upset him so much. I had a limited understanding of Nazism at that age, but I knew enough to understand when he told me simply that…

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Why Trevor Noah Is Terrible

By Zev Hurwitz April 7, 2015

The last time someone named Noah’s actions were so globally significant, animals boarded a boat in pairs, it rained for forty days and the world flooded. This week, it was the Twitterverse that flooded over because of comedian Trevor Noah’s: a) appointment to the highest throne in the comedic news world as the replacement for…

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