Dani Plung

What the Warsaw Ghetto Starbucks Taught Me About Time

By Dani Plung January 2, 2014

When I traveled to Warsaw on a Holocaust study tour two summers ago, my group found the city particularly warm. In the middle of the day, we stopped for a respite—from the heat as much as the emotional drain of touring Holocaust sites—at a Starbucks in the city center. The juxtaposition—of both the air conditioning…

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How I Became a Proud Wandering Jew

By Dani Plung December 19, 2013

In high school, I idolized Jack Kerouac. I dreamed of beatnik-esque wanderings, of driving wherever the highways took me without a particular destination in mind. I had a realization, though, when some friends and I waited on the el platform in one of Chicago’s northern neighborhoods to return to our campus in the southern part…

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Prayer and Sensory Overload

By Dani Plung December 11, 2013

The first time I went into sensory overload while at college was during a Kabbalat Shabbat service. The just concluded school week had been stressful, and I probably hadn’t eaten enough that day, so perhaps it is not surprising that I went into a sensory attack that evening, while surrounded by about twenty people singing…

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My Thanksgivukkah Dilemmukkah: A Retrospective

By Dani Plung December 5, 2013

  Over the past several weeks, reminders of the occurrence of Thanksgivukah were impossible to avoid. Hanukkah was to coincide with Thanksgiving, for the first time in over 100 years and for what will allegedly be the last time in 70,000 years. Surely, this was an event this dramatic could not be overlooked! On the…

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On Why I Take Yiddish

By Dani Plung November 27, 2013

Several weeks ago, I attended a screening of the classic 1937 Yiddish language film, The Dybbuk, open to the University of Chicago community.  For me, the appeal was in the Yiddish language; the film was a natural compliment to my Yiddish 101 class, and, in fact, my professor highly encouraged my class to attend.  There…

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Selfish Tikkun Olam

By Dani Plung November 13, 2013

Tikkun Olam, it seems, is all the rage. Having grown up in a very Jewish area , physical acts of tikkun olam, or “healing the world” have been a part of my Jewish life since preschool. Street cleanups, community gardening, food bank packing, helping animal shelters, the list goes on. Despite all these opportunities to…

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Finding Permanence in a Sukkah

By Dani Plung October 31, 2013

[fblike style=”standard” showfaces=”false” width=”450″ verb=”like” font=”arial”] You’d think after forty years of wandering and two thousand subsequent years of diaspora, the Jewish People would be used to spatial transitions.  I mean, we seem to pass everything else L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, so why not the nomadic nature? Don’t we even take a full eight…

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