Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Back in April we invited high school and middle school students to complete the following sentence: “The thing they don’t tell you about Israel is…” as part of our inaugural essay contest. The entries trickled in, and intriguing reponses quickly appeared in our inbox. We want to thank all of our contestants for working hard…
“Lead us from the unreal to the Real; Lead us from darkness to Light; Lead us from death to Immortality,” the audience repeated after the speaker. Though they were there to memorialize the Holocaust, their words did not come from the Torah, nor are they found in Christian Bible or the Quran. The prayer came…
We’re proud to announce our first ever Middle School/High School Israel Essay Contest. Every summer, thousands of high schoolers pile onto tour buses to traipse around the Holy Land. Some travelers return home spiritually awakened, others with a new view of Israel’s political climate. They come back full of ideas, angst and passion. And New…
The fenugreek sprinkled into the chicken coconut stew has no significance to the half-dozen diners scattered around the restaurant. But to Thoufeek Zakriya, an Indian Muslim, the plant is not just a staple in Indian cuisine — it is an artifact in the history of Cochin’s Jewry, the long tale of a small community in…
There is still at least another hour before the moon blankets the surrounding rice fields and the gargantuan boulders here in the south Indian town of Hampi. But at Dudu Falafel it may as well be midnight. An Israeli tourist stands in the main window serenading passing strangers with the lyrics of an Israeli pop song as it blasts over the speakers. In the kitchen, Dudu Falafel owner Chandru Singh supervises his staff as they prepare falafel, shakshuka, and moussaka for Israeli backpackers and other foreign tourists. Dudu is one of several local restaurants offering Israeli comfort food – but it stands out from the rest, boasting that it imports its zaatar, paprika and even the instant coffee that many Israelis can’t live without.
Every Friday night thousands of backpackers, suburbanites and college students stream into Chabad Houses from Columbus to Cambodia. But before Chabad emissaries can clank their glasses of Johnnie Walker to a “gut Shabbos,” they have to learn where to find kosher meat at the local Kroger, or master the art of bartering for vegetables at…
THANE, India– Inside the narrow alleys of the Kalwa slum, past the shanties abutting the train tracks and the stray pig rummaging through garbage scraps, Pramila Mane rattles her rice dish and gently blows on the kernels on the second floor of her home. Across the room, Shayna Lebovic, 19, a volunteer with the Gabriel Project Mumbai, a Jewish nonprofit working to reduce hunger and provide educational services in Kalwa, crouches in front of a small chopping board diligently chopping onions.
Mane, a member of a local women’s group partnered with the Gabriel Project, and Lebovic would not be cooking partners in this enclave north of Mumbai were it not for Jacob Sztokman. The director and founder of the Gabriel Project, Sztokman toured the Dharavi slum during a business trip to Mumbai in 2011 while working for a data security company. Sztokman, 42, did not visit just to pay homage to the slum that inspired “Slum Dog Millionaire.” While doing research prior to the trip, he watched YouTube videos and read up on poverty in India and felt inspired to work in the slums.
I feel bad for the caretaker of Charles C. Moskowitz’s grave. The founding father of Alpha Epsilon Pi has probably made a racket rolling around the past month, as his progeny at Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania have smeared the reputation of his fraternity. These hazing episodes give critics prime material to decry…
Two weeks ago on Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day of Holocaust remembrance, I remembered how lucky I was to be sitting in a balmy lecture hall listening to a boring lecture about Native American history. On an April afternoon 70 years ago my grandma Ethel was in Siberia, where she and her mother landed after fleeing Poland, peddling trinkets after school. Grandpa Sam might have been hopping a train to the Russian-Chinese border or waking up from a nap on top of a gravestone.