The Real Scandal of Open Hillel

By Rachel Sandalow-Ash January 22, 2015

In the fall of 2011, Yeshiva University demanded that The Beacon, a student-run publication, remove a ‘scandalous’ story about premarital sex from its website. The student editors fought back, but the administrators threatened them with sanctions if they did not comply with the Orthodox university’s perceptions of modesty. Ultimately, the editors decided to sever ties…

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Brunch With Progressive MK Merav Michaeli and the American Jewish Left

By Derek M. Kwait December 16, 2014

Merav Michaeli, the Israeli journalist and women’s rights activist-turned-Knesset member for the Labor Party, is a sign of hope for a progressive future in Israel. Last Tuesday, she tried to convince an exclusive crowd of worried Jewish leftists gathered in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that there was hope for the upcoming elections…

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How I Can Still Hope for the Future, in America and in Israel

By Derek M. Kwait December 4, 2014

This was a bad week for people who believe in human progress. Whether you imagined America was on its way towards becoming a post-racial society or that residents of the Levant could maybe learn to live peacefully side-by-side someday soon, the better dirt of our nature has again graffitied and burned down our delusions. What…

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We Need Arguments, Not Echos

By Derek M. Kwait July 3, 2014

I don’t know how so many pundits had reactions polished and published within hours of the announcement of the news of the murders of Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Fraenkel. I wanted to take time to let the shock dull a little, then write something about it. My thoughts are still a little disjointed,…

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Remembering Rav Amital

By admin July 12, 2010

Adam Sales is a graduate student at the University of Michigan. HaRav Yehuda Amital, one of the great contemporary Jewish leaders and thinkers–and one of my personal heroes–passed away in Jerusalem last Thursday night, July 9, at the age of 86. Rav Amital was born Yehuda Klein in Transylvania in 1924, and survived the Holocaust…

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