Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I had not remembered Israel being this ‘green’. Currently in Tel Aviv on a three-week trip to Israel during my winter break from Wesleyan University, I have been immediately struck by the amount of environmentalism that seems to pervade the streets of the city. And yet it is the actions that go beyond the exterior…
Recently, as the end of the semester approached, I sat down with my co-teacher to prepare an overview of our class as part of the student progress reports that my Religious School sends out twice a year. To my surprise, it only took about twenty minutes for us to condense these past four months into…
Whenever I raise my voice at my fifth-grade religious schools students, I immediately begin to worry that they will recall this moment twenty years from now as an explanation for why they are no longer affiliated with Judaism. “I came there twice a week when I didn’t want to,†I fear they’ll say, “and then…
“Why do we need to learn these?†my co-teacher, Robin, asked, the five fifth grade students present in class that day, pointing to the stack of Hebrew letters and vowels which we had just reviewed for the last thirty minutes. “So we can be ready for our Bat-Mitzvah,†Alison immediately replied. “And then after that,…
The Conservative affiliated Religious School where I work, like all Jewish institutions, is consistently behind schedule. The planned activities outside of the classroom – services, shirah, and bagel break – inevitably detract from the already limited time each teacher has with his or own class. Yet despite this already segmented schedule, the Synagogue felt that…
On a chilly autumn Wednesday in Connecticut, I stood before the six students of my Kita Hey (fifth grade) Religious School class and tried to review with them the written words of the Amidah, a core section of the daily Jewish service. “I like your hair, Morah Miriam,†one girl called out. ‘I like your…
My last night in Amman I called my mother in the States as I slowly wandered down the main road in the Tla Al’alia region where I live and searched for an empty taxi for the final ride to a friend’s. Amid the bustle of honking horns and blaring radios, I reviewed with her the…
As borders and peoples began to settle following the formal creation of Israel, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) in collaboration with the Jordanian government established in 1952 the Jabal el-Hussien Palestinian refugee camp North West of Amman. Now, over fifty years later, the Jabal el-Hussien refugee camp has significantly grown and become…
As a child a tale was told to me of the Halutzim, the pioneers who came from the diaspora to the land of Israel and cultivated the parched, barren earth into the beginnings of a fruitful nation. I did not doubt this tale, or the image drawn for me of the proud pioneers as they…
From the start of my home-stay in Amman, I made it clear that I was a practicing and self identifying Jew. I felt that this was an important first step in building an open relationship with my host family, as well as in exploring how my sense of identity could co-exist within an Arab household….
I have found that I lack the necessary Arabic words to adequately describe the concept of “keeping kosher.†While the notion of vegetarianism may be generally accepted in Amman, for my home-stay mother, Madame Basma, such a lifestyle remains as foreign… as the American Jew living in her house. I had barely walked through the…
I had never expected Amman to be such a windy city. Back home, as I packed my single duffle bag for my seven-week trip, I fretted over how I would balance modest dressing amid the inevitable, unbearable heat. I was headed to Amman to study Modern Standard Arabic (Fus-ha) and colloquial Jordanian dialect (Aamiah) through…