Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
We here at New Voices seem no strangers to the question of whether or not the Jews are white. Yet the wider American Jewish community tends to go back and forth on the issue, especially now that racial tensions in this country have reached a boiling point. Despite the advancements made in the national…
Evan Goldstein’s recent contributions to New Voices have featured fascinating and insightful meditations on the cultural location of Jewishness in our world. They are a welcome move toward a critical conversation around the hybrid forms of modern Jewish identity, a project that requires a historical understanding of whiteness. Sharona Bat-Ephraim, the subject of Goldstein’s critique…
Introduction Anti-Semitism is everywhere, and it is nowhere. It is claimed to be behind every critique of Israel voiced by progressive youth, yet is said to have been vanquished as American Jews have found themselves increasingly present among the fringes of the establishment. Of course, anti-Semitism still exists. The attacks on Jews in Paris and…
While Jewish family planning typically includes finding a welcoming community or reputable Hebrew school, one non-profit program hopes more couples will consider genetic screening a step in building a healthy Jewish family. J Screen, an initiative based out of Emory University in Atlanta, is an education and carrier screening program that provides genetic screening kits…
One familiar thing about the United Kingdom for me is that I frequently hear South African accents. Here in the colonial heartland, I have met a lot of folks like me: born to South African [Ashkenazi] Jewish parents abroad, raised abroad, and with varied ties to South Africa. Some, like me, maintain citizenship in South…
This poem was inspired by this article in Tablet Magazine about the anti-Semitic poet Amiri Baraka (born LeRoi Jones) and his Jewish ex-wife Hettie Jones (née Cohen). I was born to be swept off my feet by a hip brotha, poetic justice and a tight beat. I was bred Ashekenzi on borscht, vodka…
“The African newscaster asked the Jewish rabbi why there were no female rabbis, and the rabbi was very clever – he asked why there were no female chiefs!” I am not sure if it was the self-congratulatory racism, rehash and ignorance of colonial dynamics, or the justification of sexism that irritated me more. There I…
Like most Jews with ties to South Africa, my heritage is extremely Ashkenazi. In fact, both sides of my family largely originate from the same region of what is now northeastern Lithuania and northern Belarus. Growing up in New York, most of what I was exposed to as “Jewish culture” was really “Ashkenazi, specifically Lithuanian…
Some people study whales. Some people study epistemological analysis. I study white people. More specifically, I am interested in diaspora networking and migrant housing stock, but I am also interested in the way whiteness as a concept affects these in host countries. A lot of the time, that idea means things like deeply…
The #YesAllWomen meme has been one of the most transformative moments in the history of social media, and it’s been exciting to watch the long-overdue conversations it has inspired unfold across all media platforms. Recently, it got me thinking: Are there experiences common to all Jews, or at least all North American Jews? My thoughts…
The recent debacle about the (Jewish, day-school alum) Princeton freshman who claims he “checked his privilege” dominated my social media network for a good two weeks. A few people came out in his support, but most people – myself included – were furious at his complete inability to consider the advantages he may have…
Just over two weeks ago, the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (CJLS) voted in favor of a controversial teshuvah (responsum), written by Rabbi Pamela Barmash, ruling that, according to Jewish law, women can be considered obligated in all of the ritual commandments from which they have classically been exempt. When I first…
Passovers during my high school years were games of “What-will-Dani-bring-to-school-for-lunch-today”? Hosting Seders at my house almost every year meant that we always had an insurmountable amount of leftover Peschadike food in our fridge. This, combined with the fact that the only Kosher for Pesach thing my school cafeteria served was plain matzah with butter, meant…
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…
There’s been a bit of news about Sephardim lately. Although the attempt began a few years ago, the Spanish government recently announced a more concerned effort at paving the way for Sephardim – ancestors of those Jews expelled in the Inquisition of the 15th century – to acquire Spanish citizenship. The ways of determining who…