Ariana Katz Weaves Her Mark Into Jewish Podcasting with “Thread”

By Ariella Markowitz June 27, 2019

“If the only thing this podcast accomplishes is to have someone resist saying even one time ‘I’m a bad Jew’… then it will have been a success. Rule #1: there is no such thing as a bad Jew.”

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Vaybertaytsh and the Language of Exile

By Jonah Lubin January 30, 2019

Yiddish holds an extraordinary place in Jewish history. From a Middle High German lexical and syntactic base, Yiddish was shaped by the conditions of Jewish life in Central Europe. It adopted words and syntax from Romance and Slavic languages, and, of course, was heavily influenced by the Hebrew and Aramaic of traditional Jewish learning. The…

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My Jewish Masculinity is not Disposable

By Amram Altzman December 29, 2014

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…

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The Flipside to De-gendering Ritual: Continuing the Conversation

By Amram Altzman November 25, 2014

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…

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Feminist theologian ordained; Israel and marriage equality; and more. [Required Reading]

By John Propper May 11, 2012

Is ‘TED’ all it’s cracked up to be? [Tablet] In this piece from Tablet Magazine, Liel Leibovitz explores the popularity of the TED series of educational videos, and claims that the TED-Ed program (new from the series) leaves some things to be desired: “Which is not to say that there’s no room for video, audio, and…

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Schlepping 2012; Gibson’s Maccabees movie done; and more. [Required Reading]

By John Propper April 13, 2012

The Great Schlep begins again [Forward] After a successful 2008 campaign to encourage young Jews to talk to their elders about voting for Obama, the follow-up (again called The Great Schlep) has grown by leaps and bounds. The Jewish Daily Forward reports: “The group, called the Jewish Council for Education and Research, ran a high-profile campaign…

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