Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
J Street, the political arm of the pro-peace, pro-peace crowd is getting ready for its second annual conference here in DC. It’s 7:30 already and we haven’t started the opening plenary–set to being at 7–yet. And now they’re announcing that we’ll start in 5 minutes. Jews. Am I right? In other news, the DC convention center–the location…
Crossposted to Jewschool That’s right, folks. You heard it here first. (Well, actually, you heard it at JTA first.) Birthright Israel said it has received a record-breaking number of North American applicants for its free, 10-day trips to Israel. The organization, which provides all-expense-paid trips to Israel for Diaspora Jews aged 18 to 26, received…
The Jewish Exponent has a great feature from a couple weeks ago about a blind, 47-year-old black guy who has been a fixture at UPenn Hillel for twenty years. Ben just included it in The Reading List, but I wanted to put up a larger thing about it. Here’s a bit of it: At 47…
The other night, here at Drew University, a number of organizations came together for a screening of a film called “Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee Bean.” The film is about a profitable farmer-run coffee co-op in Uganda, run by a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian farmers. One of the leaders of this…
Egypt, revolution, blah, blah, blah. Also, other things are happening. But, if you want to read Egypt news, go check out Marc Tracy’s link roundups at The Scroll. [The Scroll @ Tablet] I am in love with Natalie Portman and I want to have her beautiful, smart Jewish Harvard babies. Also, according to this piece,…
Tim Cohen, senior VP of Hillel, wants you to know that the Jews are under attack. Beware, there are protestors. And, apparently, their most disruptive tactic is to tape their mouths shut and sit in their seats–then walk out. Also, Hillel needs more money. We at New Voices got one of those annoying form fundraising…
It is the miSinai, conventional wisdom in media that the future is in convergence. Convergence is the idea that you produce content that can be repackaged in a variety of media. For instance, let’s imagine that we at New Voices still have our print edition, but we also have a podcast and regular video pieces. Then,…
JTA posted an 88-word article about the first gay Jewish wedding in the Netherlands. We know when and where it took place. We know that the Council of Rabbis of the Dutch Union of Progressive Synagogues authorized the ceremony. We know that gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001. We do not know…
At Limmud NY every year, there are some panels that really just serve as an excuse for some smart people to talk to each other, rendering the supposed topic of the panel irrelevant. The “‘Just’ Giving” panel was not one of those. It was a panel with some smart, interesting people, but the topic was stayed…
I’m starting to wonder if the State of Palestine will just slowly fade into real existence. This week, the PLO mission in DC raised its flag for the first time and Russia reaffirmed a 1988 Soviet recognition of Palestine. The latter is a far more important step than the recent spate of South American recognitions…
God bless io9, my favorite sci-fi blog. In addition to sci-fi, the blog hosts regular features — like Mad Science — that focus on real life things… such as 16th century nose jobs. The post notes that it was multi-week process that involved grafting your whole arm onto your face and so forth. Apparently, it…
I wrote last week about how much I didn’t like the new “masterpiece” of Jewish fiction, “Witz.” As it turns out, the book is so ridiculously long that it can stop bullets (via The Scroll):
“Witz,” an 817-page tome purporting to be a novel by Joshua Cohen, has been sitting on my shelf for months. I have read fifteen pages of it. I have never been so bored by a “novel” I was so excited for. The premise had me anticipating the arrival of “Witz” with bated breath. At the…
Crossposted to Jewschool and The Reform Shuckle The Atlantic has this piece up this week about Shabbat observance issues surrounding e-readers like the Kindle. The article’s worth reading. Three thoughts: 1. Acts of writing should not be at issue here. From the article: E-readers are problematic not only because they are electronic but also because…
I’m a big fan of CUNY journalism professor, Daily Beast columnist and Jewish communal shit-disturber Peter Beinart. Jewcy has a new interview with him that I just saw at Jewschool. Beinart’s best points are about Jon Stewart (who he likes, but he’s got criticisms) and about young Jews visiting Israel. He thinks that young Jews…