Should I Care About Israel Just Because Non-Jews Think I Must?

By Dani Plung March 12, 2014

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. …

Read More...

“We’re All in This Together” – Tel Aviv From the Back of an Ambulance

By Julia Goldberg March 10, 2014

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…

Read More...

Modern Orthodoxy’s Identity Crisis

By Amram Altzman March 3, 2014

Modern Orthodoxy has a problem and a blessing: it is the belief that one can be both Modern and Orthodox. The problem is that when one changes, the other must, too, for if we are truly to be both Modern and Orthodox, then as modern world changes, our Orthodoxy must change, too. And that must…

Read More...
What!?

In Search of Something to Unite the Jews

By Dani Plung February 26, 2014

In last week’s article, I talked about a need for klal yisrael—or Jewish unity—and how Jewish languages are ultimately not great means for fulfilling this goal. While I didn’t have anything else to say about this once I finished writing, I kept thinking about it afterward: is a Jewish unity really possible, or are we…

Read More...

In Defense of Labels

By Amram Altzman February 24, 2014

I recently published my first op-ed in the Jewish Press. In it, I made the claim — contrary to the beliefs of the far-right wing publication —that those of us who were raised in the left-wing Modern Orthodox world  are not, actually lost to secularism, but are instead, re-imagining the world of traditionally observant Judaism…

Read More...

On Why I Take Yiddish Now

By Dani Plung February 19, 2014

Yiddish is my favorite class. This isn’t new information, I’m sure; I’ve written about it on several occasions, including a piece entitled “On Why I Take Yiddish.”  I furthermore use Yiddish allusions and colloquialisms as a matter of practice—in writing as well as in general conversation—so I’m sure my new found passion for the language…

Read More...

We Don’t Need the Middle

By Amram Altzman February 17, 2014

In my more angsty, middle-school days, Jimmy Eats World’s “The Middle” ranked up there with my personal anthems alongside Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid,” and other songs playing into adolescent angst. However, the middle is no place to be for anyone — politically, socially, or religiously. Francine Klagsburn’s article in last week’s Jewish Week…

Read More...

Jewish Musical Dreams

By Dani Plung February 12, 2014

Every night, I fall asleep to a playlist titled “Jewish Sleep Music.”  Once upon a time, as a child, it consisted of mainly Kol B’seder’s covers of melodies that I’d learned in Hebrew School, like Shalom Rav and Oseh Shalom. At the time, before I really knew what their lyrics meant, the songs relaxed me because…

Read More...

Dear de Blasio: AIPAC Doesn’t Speak for Me, Either

By Amram Altzman February 10, 2014

Last week it was discovered that New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, held an off-the-record meeting with AIPAC. This caused the Jewish political left in New York to draft a letter to Mayor de Blasio expressing their disappointment over his decision to ally himself with AIPAC, as opposed to taking a harder look at…

Read More...

Jewish Tokenism and Tolerance: On Liberals, Narratives, and Costa Rica

By Jonathan Katz February 5, 2014

Zach Cohen’s New Voices article was not exactly the most adulatory of Costa Rica. His piece prompted responses: one from Q Costa Rica and two from the Costa Rica Star – an initial piece and a follow-up. These pieces took a largely self-defensive, mocking, and somewhat anti-Semitic tone. Yet at the same time, the pieces…

Read More...

In (a Somewhat Surprising) Defense of Jewish Education

By Amram Altzman February 3, 2014

I am a product of thirteen years of primary, elementary, and secondary Jewish day school education. I’ve been enrolled in a Jewish day school since I was three years old, and the idea of starting my school day at nine in the morning and ending at 2:30 in the afternoon is totally foreign to me….

Read More...

Bedbugs, Jewish Mothers, and Other Myths

By Dani Plung January 29, 2014

I begin this piece with a massive thank you and apology to the University of Chicago housing staff. A few weeks ago, shortly after returning to school and before the work for the grading quarter had become intense, while absentmindedly perusing the UChicago Housing policy book , I came across the section concerning bedbugs. I…

Read More...

Costa Rica Defends its Jewish Record Against…?

By Zach C. Cohen January 29, 2014

I am blessed to have had the opportunity to travel extensively in the last six months. Following a four-and-a-half month stint in Costa Rica studying at la Universidad Nacional in Heredia, I traveled in Israel on Birthright provider Kesher. After leaving those travels, I had a lot of thoughts on what it means to be…

Read More...

In Search of True Egalitarianism

By Amram Altzman January 27, 2014

  Growing up in the early 2000’s means I watched copious amounts of Arthur, Cyberchase, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh!; I knew the dance to “Soulja Boy,” played on my Gameboy obsessively, and ate Go-gurts (or the kosher equivalents thereof) on the school bus ride home. Growing up in the 2000’s also meant that I saw men…

Read More...

Me and Mein Kampf

By Dani Plung January 22, 2014

    For the past few weeks I’ve seen from various sources on Facebook, and most recently on Tablet, a growing concern about a potentially frightening new trend:  Featured on several Amazon.com best-seller lists are e-book editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The first responses I’ve seen have been understandably negative, coming from some reasonably…

Read More...