Dance Dance Resurrection

By Derek M. Kwait February 4, 2015

I’m a member of that niche demographic who is really excited by the idea of a dance performance inspired by Jewish text study, and luckily for me, this is essentially the premise behind Sydney Schiff Dance Project’s signature work Dry Bones: Resurrection of the Living. Sydney Schiff graduated from Princeton University in 2010 with a…

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The Myth of the Cultural Jew

By Avidan Halivni February 3, 2015

In high school, my friends and I dubbed our childhood neighborhood “The Shtetl.” Though we didn’t boast Yiddish names or a pushy matchmaker, like in the shtetls our grandparents grew up in, our shtetl, with its disproportionately high concentration of Jews, nevertheless rivaled its prior European counterparts in its sense of community and strong commitment…

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Wrestling with Faith and God – 6 Poems

By Hannah Ehlers January 15, 2015

  Full there is a deep breath resonating through the walls and I am coming closer to catching it   not concerned with lasting concerned with now   not before but because of   arriving not leaving   made-up not fantasy   there is a deep breath resonating through these paper walls not calm but…

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Tevye at Temple Sinai: Past as Prologue in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

By Evan Goldstein January 6, 2015

Recently, I participated in one of our people’s most sacred customs: I went to see Fiddler on the Roof. I was psyched. Fiddler has been a part of my life from time immemorial (meaning, I literally cannot remember a time when I did not know it nearly word for word). I’ve seen the movie countless…

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How to Become Successful in Playwriting (While Really Trying)

By Derek M. Kwait November 11, 2014

At 19, NYU freshman Jake Rosenberg is already one of the most accomplished young playwrights in the country, getting his plays put on around the country and winning multiple awards. After seeing his latest play, Muse of Fire, a comedy about Auschwitz inmates putting on a farce about the Dreyfus affair, New Voices editor Derek…

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‘Muse of Fire’ Imagines Comedy in Auschwitz

By Derek M. Kwait November 4, 2014

It was already maybe the smallest stage I’ve ever seen, and much of it was taken up by black spray painted stepladders with boards between them and black theater blocks; the wall behind it painted to look like a brick wall with shadows of barracks on the sides.  The woman seated next to me remarked…

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Another War: Conflict in the Paintings of David Reeb

By Yael Roberts October 27, 2014

After a summer of war in Israel, David Reeb’s series, “Let’s Have Another War” is a powerful greeting as one enters the gallery at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Reeb places the text “Let’s Have Another War” as a constant caption throughout the series, a caption overlaid on top of gruesome images of war….

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From Italy, A Bridge to Anne Frank

By Sofia Domino October 1, 2014

My name is Sofia, I’m 26 years old, and I live in Italy. Like any young woman, I have many interests: I love traveling, reading, listening to music, eating, and living new experiences. I have been to the Unites States several times, and also to France and Spain, and I also lived in London for…

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Bringing Holocaust Denial to Campus: Interview With ‘Hoaxocaust!’ Star Barry Levey

By Derek M. Kwait September 23, 2014

Yesterday, I reviewed Hoaxocaust!, a new play performed and written by Barry Levey that satirizes Holocaust denial simply by putting the arguments of some of its biggest proponents, Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in context. I saw the show the night of September 11 (coincidentally), then on September 12, I caught…

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Holocaust or ‘Hoaxocaust!’?

By Derek M. Kwait September 22, 2014

It’s 9/11 in New York and I’m commemorating by seeing a Holocaust comedy. Though Barry Levey originally wrote Hoaxocaust! written and performed by Barry Levey with the generous assistance of the Institute for Political and International Studies, Tehran for the New York Fringe Festival, I became aware of it during its second run at the…

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Why We Should and Shouldn’t Be Mourning Joan Rivers

By Amram Altzman September 8, 2014

I had an opportunity to meet Joan Rivers at the tail end of my senior year of high school. She told me I was a nice Jewish boy. She then moved along and continued to make some joke which was probably far too inappropriate to quote, then proceeded to flip off the photographer. What I…

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OMGWTFEXODUS: A Dialogue With the Man Who’s Bringing the Bible to the 21st Century

By Derek M. Kwait September 5, 2014

Part live spectacle, part Biblical scholarship, comedian David Tuchman’s OMGWTFBIBLE podcast “reframes the Bible as the world’s oldest weekly comedy serial.” A year-and-a-half after its debut in April 2013 (as seen in New Voices), he’s now heading into Exodus. I caught up with David recently in the food court of Grand Central Station to discuss…

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A Glimmer of Hope for Religious Women in Israel

By Talia Weisberg September 4, 2014

Most Americans are familiar with what the media has dubbed the “War on Women,” or Congress’ relentless attacks against many basic women’s rights. Fewer know that Israel is also suffering from a resurgence of conservative ideologies and consequent rollback of feminist gains. In her book The War on Women in Israel: How Religious Radicalism is…

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“Even Jacob Went Down to Egypt”: On Shmemel’s “Berlin” and Israeli Out-Migration

By Jonathan Katz September 3, 2014

The Israeli band Shmemel recently released a controversial, tongue-in-cheek video single entitled Berlin(English translation and annotation here, courtesy of The Forward). In the song, the band sings a ballad of Israelis leaving the country – for economic opportunity, for the madness of living in a state of constant war, or for a better and more…

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My Illumination: Making History by Uncovering the Past

By Jonathan Kamel September 2, 2014

A section of this article was featured in the Daily Northwestern on September 1st, 2013.   She fell into the ditch thinking she was dead. All around her she breathed and touched dying human flesh. The bullet had apparently missed her. She desperately raised her arms to push through the masses of bodies that were…

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