Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
With the release of the University of California’s campus climate survey results, the Anti-Defamation League and the regional pro-Israel watchdog AMCHA Institute pounced on the results, which indicated that life for Jewish students on UC campuses is less than perfect. The results, announced last month, show Jewish students self-describe as some of the most uncomfortable…
My grandmother tells this story about how a relative of hers who lived in Israel asked her, quite intensely, whether she was an American or a Jew. She didn’t know what to say; why couldn’t she be both? For many American Jews, including me, this question is ridiculous. I have no problems with the intersecting…
“Failure will kill the political constituency of the two-state solution,” warned American Task Force on Palestine Director Ghaith Al-Omari at an event co-sponsored by J Street U Brown and Brown RISD Hillel last week. These chilling words reminded me of why it is so essential to demonstrate support for Secretary of State John Kerry’s current…
When I told people I was going to Poland for spring break, I received all sorts of responses: “Why are you going there? Isn’t it just concentration camps?” “Wouldn’t you rather be on a beach?” “I would never go to Poland after what they did to the Jews.” To be honest, before I left it…
Two calls, a text, and three Facebook messages, all in less than a week. That was how I learned about B’rith Shalom, South Dakota’s first Jewish student culture club at South Dakota State University. You see, for years, I had been known as “The Jew.” Growing up in the middle the Sioux Empire, we were…
For all its hype, the Pew report missed a lot of college-aged Jews, and therefore might have missed a lot about us. Two professors from Trinity College in Connecticut, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, hope to get the true picture of who we are and what we want by creating an online survey accessible here…
…Continued from Anorexia and Shabbat My first Friday out of my first intensive treatment session for anorexia. I’m supposed to be excited to see my friends, relax, and enjoy the free food that Hillel is serving for Shabbat dinner. I know what’s on the menu for the night, and how now much of each food…
South Dakota State University’s B’rth Sholom is more than just the only Jewish cultural club in the state. Its nine members constitute one of America’s most diverse Jewish organizations, as about half them identify as Messianic Jews, or those with Jewish practice who accept Jesus as the Messiah. “We really don’t try to segregate by…
I am an American. I am neither an Israeli, nor am I a Palestinian. However, I am a Jew, and a pro-Israel American, who lives in a country which has strong, positive relations with Israel. As a Zionist, I see it as my job to defend Israel as a Jewish State, and that means protecting…
Third grade lunch at Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School. All my friends are sitting around eating Cheetos and sharing sandwiches. Me, I’m staring at the clock waiting for the little and the big hand to both land on the twelve so that I can throw the untouched lunch my mother packed me into the trash…
It all started with Chanukkah caroling. Late one night, in the midst of finals week stress, a few male Modern Orthodox University of Pennsylvania students decided to carol some Channukah songs at the doors of their Jewish friends. As they walked down the hallway, snapping their fingers and singing in a loud messy harmony, they…
I am proud of being Jewish, and the people I live with know this. Though it’s not Halachally required, my dorm room’s door frame sports a mezuzah (which is kosher, according to Chabad.com—I checked!). Friends from my residence hall know that I don’t make plans on Friday nights, because I go to Hillel for services. …
There I was. Sitting in the back of an ambulance with sirens blaring, racing through red lights, wearing proudly but cautiously the official Magen David Adom uniform I had just received the day before. All around me was a mixture of loud Hebrew, muddled directions from the ambulance dispatcher on the radio, questions for me…
Feeling caught up in the pressure to align themselves with either the liberal Open Hillel movement or the nascent reactionary Safe Hillel movement, Jewish students at West Virginia International University met and decided to start a new movement in response: Ambiguous Hillel. “We really had no other option,” explained WVIU Hillel president Jason Scheingross. “Our…
Let me be direct: the men in Birthright ads are hot. As in, “let’s do something not tzanua together” hot. This queer man, despite his dovish tendencies, distaste for right-wing “anti-assimilation” efforts, and critiques of Israel, is not completely displeased when a Birthright ad featuring smiling, shirtless, muscular Jewish men surfaces on Facebook. The Jewish…