Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Apparently Facebook is more accepting of Palestinian peoplehood than, oh, I don’t know, Newt Gingrich. Obviously, this joke was too good to be missed, so I posted this very screenshot to Facebook earlier today. David (the Editor here) aptly pointed out that Facebook isn’t actually claiming that the Palestinians are a people, just that there do in…
We recently posted an op-ed by Carolyn Klaasen, a member of Young, Jewish & Proud. Carolyn argued that a queer safe space is one where queers can “strategize, energize, and organize to fight for our safety outside of that space.” She applies this understanding to a dispute over whether queer Palestinian solidarity activists should be…
Back in 2007, New Voices reported on the “demise” of a curious creature called Jews in the Woods. I am enormously excited to tell you that this weekend it will happen again! Over fifty young Jews will come together in beautiful North Scituate, Rhode Island, for two days of praying, singing, hiking, meditating, discussing and…
Rabbi Mordechai Rackover, the Jewish chaplain of Brown University and the rabbi at Brown-RISD Hillel (which serves both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design), doesn’t quite fit the popular conception of Orthodox Jews as out of touch with the modern world. He’s rarely found without his iPhone (except on Shabbat, of course), maintains a Kosher food blog, and is an almost alarmingly prolific tweeter. By any measure, he is as deeply involved in both modern American and Orthodox life as anyone can be. So what led him to strongly decry a recent statement by a group of Orthodox rabbis that condemned gay marriage, though he agrees with them that it is “halachically impossible”?
Our post on the NYPD’s spying on Muslim students elicited a letter to the editor from Marion D.S. Dreyfus: I have attended MSA meetings. They are not ecumenical, they are not inclusive, they are not unharmful. They surrounded me when they saw i was taking notes. Imams came in and began spouting shariah-filled homilies that put the…
Editor’s note: This post was written in response to an op-ed we recently published by Eliana Glogauer, an American Orthodox Jew currently in Israel for a gap year program. Neither her op-ed nor this response to it is anything but the opinion of their respective authors. Eliana Glogauer’s op-ed “Obama – Iran, not Israel, is…
Our own Gabe Schivone, who wrote the interview series Other Voices last semester, has moved on to his very own Huffington Post column. His first piece is up: Any free society–from Margaret Thatcher’s Apartheid-era Britain to Obama’s currently anti-immigrant America–cannot expect to adequately deal with the sort of violence that prompted the Tucson shootings while refusing to…
In September, an Orthodox student at Barnard claimed that a faculty advisor, Professor Rachel McDermott, steered her away from a class taught by an allegedly anti-Israel professor. As a result, the Institute for Jewish & Community Research filed a complaint with the New York Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The Forward reported last week that the…
We’re looking for students to contribute regularly to our blog this semester and beyond! If you’re interested, please email me, New Voices Web Editor Harpo Jaeger, at harpo@newvoices.org, with the following material: Your name Your school Your graduation year A sample of your previous writing An example of the type of content you’d like to write for…
The JTA has an interesting round-up of #Occupy’s Palestinian solidarity issues: While the pro-Palestinian events have been organized by outside groups, the closest Occupy Wall Street has come to endorsing Palestinian activism was a Nov. 3 tweet from the New York branch’s unofficial communications team expressing solidarity with the Freedom Waves mini-flotilla, which tried to…
Our previous post on #Occupy and the baseless charges of anti-Semitism that have been levied against the movement as a whole based on a few crazy people has received more trackbacks than any other I can remember in this blog’s history. As far as #Occupy bots are concerned, we must be great writers! But just…
There’s nothing we here at New Voices like better than a press release email with a shouted subject line: “REP. ACKERMAN ATTACKS OVER 100 NYU PROFESSORS FOR SIGNING DIVESTMENT LETTER.” After catching our breath, we looked into it: Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) doesn’t care for boycotts: I strongly condemn the ill-conceived and dangerous effort by…
The Irvine 11 were convicted on Friday of conspiring to disrupt and then disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine. Our own Gabe Schivone interviewed one of them, Taher Herzallah. Making the rounds online: a nifty graphic showing which countries will support the PA’s statehood bid at the U.N. Finally, Jewish…
Oaxaca has everything: beautiful scenery, delicious food, and a party (with parades, fireworks and more) pretty much every night. Yet after three weeks here, I think I’ve discovered the one thing it lacks. Jews. A few days after I got here, an elderly gentleman stopped me on the street. “¿Usted eres Judio?” In broken Spanish,…
Bernard Avishai has a really excellent essay (PDF) based on survey data (summarized by Haaretz here) from the Macro Center for Political Economic Research. It’s a long read, but worth every bit of it. A highlight: Approximately 40% of young Israeli Jews believe (about a third, strongly) that the state should not offer civil marriage….