Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
When I envision the rituals that will someday characterize my family’s Judaism, singing “Eishet Chayil“, or “A Woman of Valor” to my future wife is not among them. However beloved and time-worn a tradition the singing of this particular chapter of Proverbs is, it seems odd to me that I should strive so hard for…
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…
I read with enthusiasm and appreciation my good friend Amram Altzman’s recent piece on Jewish masculinity and egalitarianism. So much of Amram’s work centers on exploring the significance of egalitarian practice for him and other men, and this is necessary and important. I was deeply disturbed, however, by how little women with egalitarian practice…
Israel has always been a concept — a country, a culture, a history, a memory —I was always intimate with, but it remained aloof. I grew up surrounded by Hebrew and Israeli culture, singing “Hatikvah” alongside the “Star Spangled Banner.” I’d been to Israel only one time before going on Birthright, and since then, my…
My egalitarianism started out as a compromise: it gave me most of the traditional liturgy and observance I’d grown up around, while also giving me the modernity and progressive attitudes I’d been surrounded by for most of my life. It allowed me to cling to the tradition of my childhood and the feminism and liberalism…
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…
“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…
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…
I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in…
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…
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…
This is a busy week at the University of Chicago. For one thing, we students are consumed with the mid-quarter rush of exams and paper due dates. This week in particular, though, we are also exceedingly busy non-academically—if you can imagine anything but academics ever occurring at the University of Chicago. Two major events are…
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…
I recently published my first op-ed in the Jewish Press. In it, I made the claim — contrary to the beliefs of the far-right wing publication —that those of us who were raised in the left-wing Modern Orthodox world are not, actually lost to secularism, but are instead, re-imagining the world of traditionally observant Judaism…
In my more angsty, middle-school days, Jimmy Eats World’s “The Middle” ranked up there with my personal anthems alongside Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid,” and other songs playing into adolescent angst. However, the middle is no place to be for anyone — politically, socially, or religiously. Francine Klagsburn’s article in last week’s Jewish Week…