A Yiddish Camp Saga

By Tyler Kliem January 5, 2024

The weeklong trip to Camp Kinder Ring has been around, formally, for 14 years. But, for the first time, yunge mentshn (“young people”) would fill the bunks, and meet the generations that came before.

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A “Die-In” at Bard College

By Misha Schaffner-Kargman December 28, 2023

“As the war continues, students search for an outlet for their grief, and ways to do something that feels meaningful. But constraints like social anxiety, institutional pressure, and blacklisting have made activism difficult.”

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Opinion: Demonizing Each Other Hurts Us All

By Rebecca Raush December 7, 2023

“I am choosing to allow for my discomfort because dialogue is important to me, and I believe that peace will always begin with a commitment towards understanding.”

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Review: Havurah’s First Jewish Short Film Festival

By Julia Hegele November 3, 2023

The films ranged from poignant renderings of love and loss of faith to high energy concepts toying with the forms of Judaism and film alike. 

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Students share how the Israel-Gaza war is affecting life on campus

By New Voices October 23, 2023

“To ignore my emotions would be to ignore the empathy I have for Israelis and Palestinians who are being driven from their homes and who are being killed as collateral damage.”

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Image of a blue and grey mural of the musician Bob Dylan against a grey wall.

Like a Jew Among Jews: A Jewish Media Fellowship Reflection

By Miri Verona September 1, 2023

“The Yiddish word haymishe comes to mind… It immediately made sense to me as an equal-parts ironic and sincere evocation of the joy and warmth of Midwestern Jewishness.”

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The Battle Over California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum

By Naomi Friedland June 23, 2022

While major Zionist organizations lobby to change California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, many Jewish students and scholars across California have a different outlook on the issue – and are being overlooked in the debate.

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Waters Of Heaven, Waters Of Earth

By Sophie Hurwitz September 14, 2021

Shira had been texting her best friend for a long time. Maybe this will be forever, she thought. This imperfect, one-sided conversation. The world is built on longing, she remembered as she pulled one end of the gum out of her mouth, stretched it out, and stuck the end back in and pulled to make a loop.

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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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The Jewish Educator’s Distance-Learning Handbook

By Rena Yehuda Newman April 9, 2021

Best-practices gleaned from a new generation of Jewish Educators, making the Zoom makom meaningful.

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The Spaces We Zoom From

By New Voices Editorial Board December 29, 2020

More people are curating their surroundings, framed within a Zoom window. Yet, what lies beyond the edges of the composed picture tells deeper stories of the day-to-day.

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How to Build a Sukkah on your College Dorm Porch

By Rebecca Tauber October 20, 2020

A short instructional guide in six easy steps.

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Reflections on the “Real World”

By Adam Zemel August 17, 2020

“You can’t work at camp for all those summers, watch all those campers burst into bloom under a summer sky that feels close enough to reach out and grab hold of with the tips of your outstretched fingers, without learning to believe in something. And those things I believe about camp live at the very center of my heart; to deny they were true for myself rendered them meaningless, entirely.”

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Between Politics and Religion: Jewish Activism at Columbia

By Solomon Wiener December 20, 2016

Originally published in the Fall 2016 edition of The Current. Since the famed student uprising of 1968, many generations of Columbia students have felt an obligation to perpetuate the legacy of the late 60s by creating a myriad of activist clubs and organizations here on campus. And not uncommonly, Jewish students have occupied prominent lay…

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Co-opting social justice won’t erase reality in Israel

By Chloe Sobel January 20, 2016

I was hoping that in 2016, the Jewish community would find better ways to reach out to millennials. I guess they have, if co-opting social justice, intersectionality, and related ideas counts as outreach. It started with an op by David Bernstein, the current CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, published Jan. 4 in…

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