Shabbat Magic

By Gali Davar April 16, 2021

“To my surprise, Shabbat dinners became a predictable and grounding occurrence every week. My mom cooked, I set the table, and my dad and brother cleaned up after the meal. Sometimes it was twenty minutes of near silence then everyone scurried off to their bedrooms again. Sometimes it ended in explosive arguments and someone finishing their plate an hour or two later in the kitchen. But sometimes it worked.”

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On the Search for Kosher Haggis

By Kayla Steinberg February 11, 2019

Kosher haggis was everything I hoped it would be — oaty, savory, and smooth. I scooped spoonfuls alongside fellow UK Jewish students at the Edinburgh Jewish Society’s annual Burns Ball. The night was a fusion of Scottish and Jewish cultures, and the kosher food — delivered from Glasgow — was well worth the wait. Until that night, I’d…

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Constructing Jewish Community, On Our Own Terms

By Hal Triedman August 13, 2018

It was a warm Wednesday in the fall of my first year at Brown University. As I meandered through the main green, a child with with tzitzit poking out of the bottom of his shirt walked up to me and asked, “Are you Jewish? Would you like to say a prayer or come to dinner?”…

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4 Tips for DIY Judaism in Small Campus Communities

By Erin Ben-Moche May 22, 2018

If your family is anything like mine, you were raised on mandel bread and ridiculous family stories that felt like a “Seinfeld” reboot in the making. Growing up, I was a proud member of the Metro Detroit Jewish community. I went to shul regularly, sang in the congregational choir, taught at Sunday school, and attended…

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The Kvetch-Up: 10/29-11/4

By New Voices Staff November 3, 2017

Nu, have you read the latest campus Jews news? If not, watch this week’s Kvetch-Up, a speedy video summary of some of this week’s stories – from the Chabad on Campus international shabbaton to President Trump’s Civil Rights head nomination. And don’t forget, shoot us an email at editor@newvoices.org to tell us what’s new at your…

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Students Start Cooking Club to Help Chabad Make Shabbat Dinner

By Hannah Bernstein July 25, 2017

Every Friday at 7:30 p.m., University of Minnesota students pile into the Steiner family’s Chabad House for dinner. As usual, there is homemade challah and matzo ball soup, but there’s also something special – the dinner was made by the students themselves.  That’s because of the Kosher Cooking Club, or KCC. Every Thursday, students get…

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7 Semester Survival Tips for Jewish Freshmen

By Jillian Gordner January 18, 2017

With the first semester of college behind us, many freshmen are wondering how it went by so quickly. The late-night pizzas, the cram sessions, and the crying sessions all melded together to create the whirlwind that is the first chapter of the “college experience.” Integrating yourself into the campus world can be difficult, but for…

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Chabad Reaches All 50 States

By Jackson Richman January 11, 2017

We all know the joke: The first life on Mars will be… a Chabad House. While Chabad, a juggernaut Jewish presence on nearly 200 campuses nation-wide, isn’t quite intergalactic yet, it recently took one step closer. Chabad is finally in all 50 states with its recent addition of a Chabad House in South Dakota. South…

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Why I Say Shema as a Secular Jew

By Josh Daniels October 31, 2016

Throughout my university experience, I sat in the middle of a seesaw – spirituality on one end and skeptical materialism on the other. As I took my classes, the weight of skepticism seemed to get lighter and lighter, and the seesaw slowly shifted closer towards spirituality. But no matter how much I read, I could…

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Not your average Brooklyn hipster: Meet Meir Kalmanson

By Samara Abramson May 2, 2016

  At first glance, you might think Meir Kalmanson is just another 25-year-old hipster filmmaker from Brooklyn. But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that he’s far from typical. Kalmanson was born into the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which is a sect of ultra-Orthodox Hasidism — and the largest and fastest-growing Jewish organization in…

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‘Disabled’ Does Not Mean ‘Not Able’

By Miriam Roochvarg February 25, 2015

My older brother has autism, a disorder that mainly affects social interaction and communication skills. He is one of the proudest Jews you will ever meet: He attends services every Saturday morning, reads Torah once a month, and has all the prayers and their page numbers memorized. At our shul, one of the congregation’s favorite…

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Undoing the Non-Orthodox Inferiority Complex

By Amram Altzman February 9, 2015

When I was in high school, I stopped wearing my kippah. I felt myself drifting away from the ultra-Orthodox community of my childhood and the Modern Orthodoxy my parents tried to model for me at home. I stopped wearing my kippah because I wanted to disaffiliate from the Orthodox Jews that filled New York City…

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Learning to Undo Ashke-normativity – A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz October 22, 2014

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…

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First Results of the Jewish Student Survey are In!

By Derek M. Kwait September 15, 2014

  Preliminary results of the Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 are out. Started last spring by Drs. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, this is the first comprehensive scientific survey ever of an underrepresented and under studied demographic: American…

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Spreading the (Orthodox) Love

By Jenny Appelbaum May 27, 2014

  Written in response to Eat the Food Without Drinking the Kool-Aid: How to Get the Most out of Orthodox Outreach Programs “Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: ‘From all those who taught me I gained understanding’ (Psalms 119:99). ‘Who is honored? He who honors…

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