Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
College is supposed to challenge your assumptions, but right now I’m experiencing the most annoying challenge possible. As planned, I went down a couple of days ago to talk to the rabbi—ordained Reconstructionist, though he insists that the congregation is “unaffiliated”—about my options for converting. He told me, of course, that I and my patrilineal…
Caught between the pressure to speak up and the fear of faltering, a Jewish disabled writer journeys through the past to discover a way to write again — this time, on her terms.
Creatives across North America flocked to pop-up events hosted by the Jewish Zine Archive to revel in a renaissance of small-scale Jewish independent publication.
A new play by Ruth Geye paints a critical, intimate portrait of a modern orthodox student Shabbat lunch, asking, “how much are we willing to mutilate our souls in the pursuit of safety?”
From EveLilith and shtetl stories to Claude Cahun, Jess Goldman’s “Shmutz” zine dreams up modern Ashkenazi midrashic fiction for today’s Jewish Left.
No one gives you any real guidance on how to handle depression.
Erev¹ Tu b’Av² twilight where flesh and sorrow tumble in fields not sure the end of each or where beginnings tremble moonlight scoops my armpits arches my back hands reach down to lift me from a shallow grave³ then I help another out of theirs we promise to return some night leave the longing earth…
While the two may have dramatic differences, I think that the successful model of the millennia-long conversations that make up Talmud can teach us a lot about how to argue – and understand each other – on Twitter.
Protest does not remove us from our Jewish people. Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milcah, and Tirzah are our ancestors, too. Standing for what is right can create new Torah, can change the fabric of the world entirely, and in the process make us integral to that new world.
H. meets me in the Menarah at around 4:30; I am late, and she, in the tradition of everyone I have met here, is beyond gracious. We walk down Rukab Street towards Rukab Ice Cream. It’s the oldest ice cream shop in Ramallah and so notoriously good that the street is named after the shop…
Content warning: discussion of sexual violence. The below is an edited version of a d’var Torah that was delivered at Yale University’s student egalitarian minyan on Friday night, August 24th. Parshat Ki Teitzei begins with a particularly haunting section: י) כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ ה’ אֱלֹקֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ׃ (יא) וְרָאִיתָ֙ בַּשִּׁבְיָ֔ה אֵ֖שֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּ֑אַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ֣…
Originally published in J. Weekly. My experiences in Israel have been some of the most formative of my life. I was bat mitzvahed on Masada, worked in the winery of a kibbutz and made lifelong friends in the country. And yet, my relationship with Israel is complicated, like that of many progressive American Jews. I…
Dear Jewish educators, First, I would like to thank you for dedicating your lives to helping students like me understand faith and tradition. Thank you for allowing me to develop life-long friendships, for allowing me to grow my creativity and for patiently fielding my questions. Thank you for encouraging my feminism and my passion for…
These days, it seems I can’t scroll down my Facebook news feed without seeing something about privilege. At Boston College and within American Jewry more broadly, conversations about privilege of various kinds have been vigorous and ongoing. While much of it has focused on racial privilege, especially here at New Voices, there has been…
When I was very young, I was jealous of the way my sister and her friends played together. Other boys were always so aggressive, so into breaking stuff, but girls just played nice. What they were playing–Barbies, house, Mall Madness–I thought was stupid, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t find another boy who wanted…