The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

On Jewish Catholic Guilt

By Catherine Horowitz July 20, 2023

“By distancing myself from Christianity, I’ve distanced myself from a part of my mom’s life. I’m still trying to put together the pieces I’ve missed.”

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Image of a shadowed hand holding a candle against a glowing wall.

Mishpacha: Given and Found

By Elsa Baxter June 8, 2023

“Zadie’s fork clatters on the table, startling me. So, he says, taking a breath to steady himself, I have been told that you are gay.”

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Dear Jewish Queeries: My Mom Wants Grandchildren, But I Don’t Want Kids

By Nat El-Hai August 9, 2021

Broader Jewish culture will have us believe that “being fruitful and multiplying” can only exist within a heterosexual context. This culture may create the means for “Jewish multiplication” but at the cost of whose fruitfulness? 

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Meditations on Blood

By Maya Faerstein-Weiss May 10, 2021

Apolitical Memories from somewhere in the Middle East

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There and Back Again: Navigating Judaism Between Campus and Home

By Kayla Lichtman February 26, 2019

Sitting at the dinner table over winter break with her parents, holding her very own three-person Shabbat service, Adrienne Sugarman got the distinct sense that home was not quite the place it used to be. Sugarman, a Middlebury College sophomore, was intent on recreating the Shabbat services that she attends every week on campus. Needless…

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We Can’t Ignore Domestic Violence in Jewish Homes

By Anonymous November 8, 2017

For the safety of the writer, this piece has been published anonymously.  Every part of the term “domestic violence” is misleading. The author bell hooks once said that the proper name for domestic violence is patriarchal violence because violence against women and children does not begin at home. It is directly connected to sexism and…

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Where Do I Belong as the Immigrant in My Family?

By Rose Teplitz June 5, 2017

Originally published in the Winter 2017 issue of The Leviathan Jewish Journal. When I was young and told the other children at school that one of my ancestors came to America from the Mayflower, they looked at my almond-shaped eyes, my long black hair, and laughed. “You can’t be from the Mayflower,” they mocked me. “Because…

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The Nights We Remember

By Hannah Weintraub April 28, 2017

My mom lights the Shabbat candles as she covers her eyes with the palms of her hands. The room is dark except for the light in the kitchen, a lamp in the dining room, and the yellow glow from the flames. “Baruch atah Hashem,” she recites the prayer alone, my sisters and I sitting in…

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Modern Orthodoxy must act on inclusion

By Amram Altzman May 23, 2016

Unlike many other people I know who grew up in but have since left the Modern Orthodox community, I don’t look back on my childhood religious experiences with sadness. Instead, many of the decisions that I have since made in my religious life have been because of — not despite — having been raised in the…

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Tevye the Dairyman’s Seventh Daughter

By Chloe Sobel May 16, 2016

i. Tevye Comes to Brooklyn My dad and I read Sholem Aleichem when I’m young. He has a copy of Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, but we stick to Tevye. We sit on the couch and he reads out loud to me. I grow up on Aleichem, not Fiddler on the Roof; my…

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“Got Chutzpah?” A note to my mother

By Michele Amira February 24, 2016

February is Jewish Disabilities Awareness and Inclusion Month. Since kindergarten, due to my learning disabilities, social anxiety, and battle with anorexia, I’ve had to have a lot of chutzpah. With anxiety, one needs to be a fighter. I’ve had the most amazing coach in my corner, worthy of Joe DiMaggio. My mother, a guardian angel:…

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Life as a Jew at Catholic U

By Sherilyn James June 3, 2015

Choosing a college was the first big choice I had ever made. I knew Seton Hall University gave away good scholarships, was close, and I figured I had nothing to lose. Two months later, I was accepted to their six year B.S.E. Elementary/Special Education/M.S. Speech Pathology program. The first time I set foot on campus,…

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The East Coast’s Top 5 Old World/New School Bagels and Schmears

By Michele Amira May 29, 2015

  From pop-up Shabbats around Miami, to black caviar bagel spreads, to halvah ice cream, Jewish food is having a gourmet makeover. The definition of soul food is food of life, which is exactly what bagels are to American Ashkenazi Jews. The bagel has Jewish roots dating back to seventeenth-century Europe, where it was eaten…

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I Don’t Want a ‘Woman of Valor,’ I Want a Lover

By Avidan Halivni May 14, 2015

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…

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Interview With an Accordion-Playing Golem

By Michele Amira April 29, 2015

As apart of the 2015 Washington Jewish Music Festival, the Gypsy, Yiddish, klezmer, funk, fusion band, Golem, will grace Sixth and I Historic Synagogue on May 14th. I talked with the founder of Golem, Annette Ezekiel Kogan, to kibbitz about everything from the dance club vibe of their upcoming set at Sixth and I performance…

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