Jews, You Don’t Have To Be White To Be White™

By Noam Lindenbaum January 11, 2018

Originally published in Scribe. “You don’t need to be white to be White™.” So said the comment on a contentious Facebook post in Columbia University’s premier meme sharing platform, columbia buy sell memes. The comment was in reference was to a ‘starter pack’ meme that ridiculed the generic wealthy lifestyle of those at Columbia who support…

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World Union of Jewish Students Welcomes NETWORK, Its Largest U.S. Delegation in Decades

By Nicole Zelniker January 17, 2017

From Dec. 27 to Dec. 31, the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) met at Kibbutz Tzuba outside Jerusalem for its 43rd international congress of Jewish student leaders. This year, the WUJS Congress hosted 27 American students, the largest delegation of American Jews in over 20 years, through NETWORK: The American Union of Jewish Students, a national, independent…

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In Defense of My Americanized Chanukah

By Mari Cohen December 26, 2016

When I was little, I looked forward to the day in December when my dad asked us to dig the “Chanukah box” out of the attic. Out came the electric menorah to put in our window, the glitzy blue and silver garland of dreidels and Jewish stars to hang on our bannister, several rolls of…

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Reclaiming Alienated Liberals: Israel’s Imperative for Diaspora Jews

By Benjamin Davidoff October 11, 2016

Originally published in the Spring 2016 edition of The Current. It has been over seventy years since the end of World War II and the Holocaust. As remaining survivors become fewer and fewer, the Holocaust moves from being a living memory to one that is more historical in nature. Inevitably, as we are further removed…

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How to travel Europe with your ghosts

By Leah Tribbett June 3, 2016

To grow up Jewish is to grow up haunted. I’ve never lived on a Civil War battleground, and I’ve never shared my closet with a ghost (two brothers who tried to scare me to death, yes — but never a ghost), and yet the feeling of being haunted is as well known to me as…

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UC Irvine students protest IDF presence on campus

By Nicole Zelniker June 1, 2016

On May 18, students at the University of California, Irvine, protested a screening of the documentary “Beneath the Helmet,” an Israeli film about the Israeli Defense Forces. “They were screaming. They tried to push open the door, but we were holding the door from the inside,” said President of Students Supporting Israel Katrin Gendova in…

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In defense of organized religion

By Amram Altzman May 31, 2016

There’s a stereotype that engagement programs for Jewish young adults are geared solely at producing the next generation of Jewish children. Many stereotypes exist for a reason — and this one is no exception. Many efforts to engage youth make a desire to produce the next generation of engaged Jewish youth explicit — and that’s…

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How I discovered Jewish strength and history in the pages of a comic book

By Leah Tribbett May 25, 2016

Comic books, for me, were an acquired taste. Growing up, I devoured anything with words — the backs of Pokémon cards, books pilfered from my mom’s shelf, the booklets stuffed inside CD cases — but never comics. Nobody in my life read them, and my weekly TV rotation was tuned into Rugrats rather than the…

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Modern Orthodoxy must act on inclusion

By Amram Altzman May 23, 2016

Unlike many other people I know who grew up in but have since left the Modern Orthodox community, I don’t look back on my childhood religious experiences with sadness. Instead, many of the decisions that I have since made in my religious life have been because of — not despite — having been raised in the…

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Tevye the Dairyman’s Seventh Daughter

By Chloe Sobel May 16, 2016

i. Tevye Comes to Brooklyn My dad and I read Sholem Aleichem when I’m young. He has a copy of Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, but we stick to Tevye. We sit on the couch and he reads out loud to me. I grow up on Aleichem, not Fiddler on the Roof; my…

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Brown students hope to continue events like the one that broke Hillel’s Standards of Partnership

By Nicole Zelniker May 13, 2016

On May 11, more than 70 students from Brown University came together to commemorate the Nakba by watching three films produced by the Israeli NGO Zochrot. Nakba is the term for the 1948 expulsion and displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians, and Nakba Day is observed on May 15, the day after Israeli Independence Day. “Within…

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The fridge wasn’t nuked after all: An impassioned defense of “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”

By Josh Weiss May 4, 2016

There was an announcement back in March that was great news for some and dreadful news for others — that is, of course, the announcement of a fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” franchise. It’s currently scheduled for the summer of 2019, with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford set to return to directing and acting…

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Why doesn’t Emory University have a J Street U?

By Nicole Zelniker May 3, 2016

When Emory University first-year Zoe Robbin got to college, she was upset by the lack of left-wing Jewish organizations on campus. With four other students, she founded a campus chapter of J Street U and set out to become a chartered organization. “We wrote a constitution … according to the college’s charter rules exactly,” said…

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IfNotNow’s protest at the ADL ended with 17 arrests — and stronger connections to Judaism

By Chloe Sobel April 22, 2016

IfNotNow’s “Liberation Seder” in New York on Wednesday began with a march from Bryant Park to the lobby of the Anti-Defamation League’s office building, and ended with the arrests of 17 protesters. The New York action was one of five that took place from April 19-21 held by the Jewish anti-occupation group. IfNotNow was founded…

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Why progressive Jews should be outraged about Hasidic schools

By Amram Altzman April 12, 2016

When news broke back in September of the systematic and egregious lack of regulation of secular studies curricula in Hasidic and Haredi schools, there was little outcry from the rest of the Jewish community over the fact that a large segment of our population — already growing up cut off from the rest of the world…

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