Labels Are for Food, Not Jews

By Yosef Nemanpour January 10, 2018

Originally published in Ha’am. There are a surprising number of labels that a Jewish person can use to describe their Jewish identity. It can range anywhere from the typical “Orthodox,” “Conservative,” and “Reform” denominations, to “Jewish Science” observances. The practice of affixing labels to Jews has become so pervasive that the concept of separating those…

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Modern Orthodoxy: Stop Appeasing Orthodoxy

By Amram Altzman June 1, 2015

 In January 2014, Rabbi Avi Weiss’s conversions were called into question by the Israeli Rabbinate. At the time, this was the most prominent example of the differences between the Orthodoxy’s left and right wings, as well as the growing gulf between American and Israeli Jewries. This gulf widened last week when news broke of the…

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Can a Fully Feminist, Fully Traditional Jewish Space Exist? A Dialogue

By Avigayil Halpern May 12, 2015

AVIGAYIL HALPERN: When I was fourteen and just beginning to explore what it would mean to me to be a halakhic, or Jewish-law-abiding, Jewish feminist, I was delighted to stumble across a blog called Star of Davida. The blog’s author, who went by the name “Talia bat Pessi,” explored her own beliefs and experiences as…

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Want to Reform Israel? Vote for the Reform Movement

By Evan Traylor April 15, 2015

Most Jews have at least heard of the World Zionist Congress. They know that it had something to do with Theodore Herzl and played a critical role in creating the State of Israel. What many don’t know is that the World Zionist Congress still makes very important decisions affecting Israel and the Jewish community around…

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Why Small Campus Jewish Communities Are the Best

By Miranda Cooper March 17, 2015

When applying to colleges, I gave barely any thought to Jewish life on campus. This was not because I didn’t care about being engaged with a Jewish community; on the contrary, between leading my Temple Youth Group, attending regional NFTY events, working as a teaching assistant at a religious school, and moving up the ranks at…

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Who Speaks for America’s Jews?

By Amram Altzman February 16, 2015

The question of who should speak for the Jews is not a new one, nor is the question of whether or not Israeli political or religious leaders can or should speak on behalf of American (or other Diaspora) Jews. It dates back to a series letters between Jacob Blaustein, then the head of the American…

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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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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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Improving Israel Comes at a Cost: $5

By Derek M. Kwait January 29, 2015

Are you a Jewish student? Are you fed up with the state of American Zionism? Have $5? Good. Click here before April 30, pay the $5, then vote to change things. I can’t explain the process, the necessity, or the candidates better than J.J.Goldberg did in two articles in the Forward, so I won’t try….

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The Value of a Chained Woman

By Rivka Joseph November 18, 2014

Deuteronomy 24:1 states, “If a man takes a wife and possesses her and she fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, he writes her a Bill of Divorcement, hands it to her and sends her away from his house.” Based on this verse of the Torah, the entire decision to divorce…

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Stopping Orthodox Erasure

By Amram Altzman April 14, 2014

Dear Jew in the City:   I understand what you’re trying to do on BuzzFeed with your articles about trying to normalize Orthodox Judaism. You are trying to show that, no, those of us who were raised in the Orthodox world (or are Orthodox now) do not actually have to be that different from you…

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The Black and White Necessity for Grey Zone Judaism

By Deborah Pollack April 1, 2014

This academic year I am a part of the Peoplehood Project: a UJA sponsored program that brings together students from Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Oranim College in northern Israel, and ZWST, a German Jewish organization. Each cohort spends time learning in their respective home countries, then, over winter break, all three groups spend time traveling and learning…

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Hart Levine Brings Grassroots Judaism to Campus with the Heart to Heart Project

By H. B. Rubin March 13, 2014

It all started with Chanukkah caroling. Late one night, in the midst of finals week stress, a few male Modern Orthodox University of Pennsylvania students decided to carol some Channukah songs at the doors of their Jewish friends. As they walked down the hallway, snapping their fingers and singing in a loud messy harmony, they…

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Modern Orthodoxy’s Identity Crisis

By Amram Altzman March 3, 2014

Modern Orthodoxy has a problem and a blessing: it is the belief that one can be both Modern and Orthodox. The problem is that when one changes, the other must, too, for if we are truly to be both Modern and Orthodox, then as modern world changes, our Orthodoxy must change, too. And that must…

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What!?

In Search of Something to Unite the Jews

By Dani Plung February 26, 2014

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…

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