Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
It’s off-season for the Jewish summer camp world. But the conversation about including Palestinian perspectives in Israel education, started by IfNotNow earlier this year with their #YouNeverToldMe campaign, will continue to haunt institutions like Camp Ramah, the Conservative movement’s camping arm. As any camper, counselor, or camp professional knows, last summer defines what next summer…
Though 150 journalists and bloggers from 30 countries had gathered in Jerusalem for the Israeli Press Office-sponsored Jewish New Media Summit in late November, American Jewry was very nearly the only subject of conversation when discussing the strained relationship between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. Over the course of the three and a half day…
A local Jewish college student on the front lines of BDS recently boiled eggs on his AIPAC-sticker-laden laptop using the raw energy of online Israel-Palestine-related hot takes. Jake Zucker, of rural New York City, New York, said he wasn’t sure what to do when his stovetop stopped working. “Man, I need a high-protein breakfast if…
Young Jews are increasingly disaffiliated from mainstream Jewish institutions and those institutions are panicking. But many young Jews aren’t lost at all. They’re just expressing their Jewishness elsewhere – Facebook. In fact, they’ve built their own institution of sorts: Jewbook, a term referring to a community of Jewish Facebook groups. “I think there are several…
Jerusalem has long been the center of the world in Jewish life, but not since the time of King David has the city felt so personal and laid bare as it is in Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s new book “Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered.” Interwoven with the fighting, love, loss, and the longing of a mother, it speaks…
Rabbi Steven Wernick knows that he is abandoning Conservative Jews on college campuses. As CEO of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism since 2009, Wernick saw KOACH, the campus wing of the Conservative Movement, shut down on his watch in 2013, drawing ire from many Conservative leaders and students. Almost five years later, I caught…
Jewish high school students want to celebrate Shabbat by protesting gun violence, and their Jewish communities are stepping up to help. Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, recently announced that USY (United Synagogue Youth) would support students wishing to attend the Washington D.C. March For Our Lives, a rally to…
A new piece of right-wing Polish legislation, which criminalizes accusing Poland of complicity in the Holocaust, sparked international condemnation, hitting a particularly raw nerve with Jews in America and Israel. But for European Jewry – and Jewish students – this nerve has been exposed for years. The amendment to the Act on the Institute of…
I never knew that a world union of Jewish students existed, let alone the World Union of Jewish Students, until only a few months ago. My Jewish campus worldview was shaped by my time involved in Hillel and Chabad, with the assumption that because both the organizations are international, Jewish life at universities worldwide must…
On Dec. 3, 2017, an unspeakable act occurred in Jerusalem. Yonatan Razel, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish musician, saw that women at his concert wanted to dance. Faced with the conflict between these women’s wants and the laws of modesty (which state that men shouldn’t look at dancing women), he took extreme action against his female audience….
After Jewish summer camp, USY, and a Talmud Torah education, my friend told me he was disillusioned with Zionism. “I’ve always found the idea of Diaspora to be super meaningful,” he said. “The majority of Judaism is based on Diasporic tradition and the allegory of Diaspora. Modern Zionism sort of spits at this.” He explained…