Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
What are you getting for Chanukah this year? I don’t mean the gifts you’re anxiously awaiting in your mailbox, though gift giving on Chanukah is actually an ancient tradition. I mean, what really is the gift of Chanukah? Is it freedom? Is it independence? Is it survival? Is it the ability to wrap a drone…
Last week was New Voices’ #GenderWeek, and many of us (including yours truly) chose to write about the gendering of Jewish ritual, as well as the need to de-gender — or create a new paradigm for— ritual and gender performances. At the same time, however, part of what draws me to rituals seen as traditionally…
Both Avigayil and I (Amram Altzman) have written extensively about the ways in which we have taken on Jewish rituals which, traditionally, fall outside of our traditional gender identities. This is a conversation we’ve been having, more specifically, about what it means to take on Jewish rituals and how that relates to our Jewish identities…
2 Poems by Sophie Katzman: Descendant’s Blessing Zadie. Zionist. Yellow stars. Young and old yearning for years passed. Yahrzeit. Yiddush: lyb, sholem. War. Woody Allen. Leaving notes on the Western Wall. The V’ahavta. U-blessed by the Orthodox Union. Torah. Tzedakah. Tikkun Olam, we repair the world. Shabbat. Sternberg Sewing. Samuel’s Metal Shop. Schlep. Shylock….
Yom Tovs aren’t days we traditionally think about death. They’ve always been, at least in my understanding, about life, and the preservation of life, celebrations of survival despite all the odds being against us to live or to live well. In the case of Pesach, we celebrate our overcoming persecution to live autonomously—in short to…
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…