Review: “These and Those” Tests The Limits of Jewish Safety

By Sophie Hurwitz June 7, 2022

A new play by Ruth Geye paints a critical, intimate portrait of a modern orthodox student Shabbat lunch, asking, “how much are we willing to mutilate our souls in the pursuit of safety?”

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The “Halakhically Curious” Phenomenon

By Sofia Freudenstein May 26, 2021

Jewish law has often problematically been taught as a set of dogmatic rules, but a new generation of Jews and Jewish educators are calling for a more intentional vision of halakha.

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I Put a Ring in Your Nose

By Mirushe Zylali May 24, 2021

SCWANA and Balkan Jewish Adornment Today

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Not All Time Is For Sale: Keeping Shabbat Under Capitalism

By Ezra Lebovitz April 29, 2021

“There are still 25 hours of the week where time holds still, makes room for something quiet and eternal. It is, by its very nature, a world designed to exist outside of capital.”

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Messy Jewish identities: A High Holidays meditation, part II

By Amram Altzman September 30, 2015

Two years ago, I wrote my first blog post for New Voices. I invited young Conservative Jews, unhappy with the current situation within their movement, to enter into conversation with me and the many other young Jews I know who grew up Modern Orthodox. We, too, were discontented with what we perceived as our movement’s…

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Do Jews need to worry about the RFRA?

By Jackson Richman June 24, 2015

Does a kosher bakery have the right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for an intermarried couple? If the bakery is in Indiana, the answer might be yes. Indiana’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in March caused an uproar, especially among LGBTQ rights activists, who argued that it could encourage discrimination…

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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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Egalitarian Men: It’s Time to Move Beyond Comfort

By Avigayil Halpern January 20, 2015

  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…

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Is College Compatible With Orthodox Gender Laws?

By Talia Weisberg November 19, 2014

As an Orthodox person who attended an all-girls high school, single-sex spaces basically defined my life for four years. Keeping with the general attitude of the right-wing Orthodox community toward gender relations, students at my school were actively discouraged from associating with boys, who were considered temptations that could only lead us down the wrong…

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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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Two Egal Jews Talk About Gender and Ritual

By Amram Altzman November 17, 2014

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…

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What Can Marmite Tell Us About Diaspora? – A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz November 13, 2014

  It was certainly one of the stranger Jewish conversations I have had. (Mind you, I have had many.) There I was in Oxford after a hearty Sabbath lunch, walking in the beauty of Christ Church Meadow, chatting with a new friend about food. At a moment, he turned to me and said, “You said…

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Popping New York’s Jewish Bubble

By Jonathan Katz September 9, 2014

I grew up in the New York area: capital of the world, city of no rival, the Fourth Rome (defeating the Third, and there shall be no Fifth). True, I could note that this place – city and suburbs thereof – is overconfident, maddeningly arrogant, and rude to a horrifying degree. Yet it was a…

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I Am Dedicated: What Should Orthodox Feminism Look Like?

By Talia Weisberg June 9, 2014

Although it has been several months since the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) Conference, the Orthodox blogosphere is still buzzing about Leah Sarna’s speech at the opening plenary. In her address, Sarna stated her belief that Orthodox women must begin to demonstrate increased dedication to Judaism by participating in activities traditionally earmarked as male, like…

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No, I Will Not Stop Criticizing Israel on Facebook

By Jonathan Katz January 28, 2014

I post a lot of things about the Holy Land on Facebook. I mean, I post about a lot of things – South Africa, migration politics, tasty coconut-based desserts – but also a lot about Israel and Palestine. And many of the things I post are not terribly adulatory of Israel. In fact, they’re starkly…

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