My Jewish Awakening

By Kayla Cohen January 7, 2020

“Awakening” suggested a kind of milestone, a coming-of-age, almost a second bat mitzvah. Here was my unofficial rite of passage into the real Jewish world: not an aliyah, but anti-Semitism.

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Reconciling My Swiss and Jewish Heritage

By Julia Métraux October 10, 2018

When I was a little girl, my family took a trip to Switzerland every year. My dad is from Switzerland, so we (my dad, my Jewish American mother, my twin brother, and I) would go every single summer until my grandparents passed away. I always enjoyed these trips – my Disney Princess-loving self was always…

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Murder of Gay, Jewish Student Raises Questions About Hate Crime Prosecution

By Jay Wells October 3, 2018

On January 9th, 2018, Blaze Bernstein’s corpse was discovered in a shallow grave in Lake Forest, California. Bernstein’s murder came in the wake of the year that had, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the largest single-year increase of anti-Semitic incidents on record. Bernstein was a 19-year-old gay, Jewish man. His alleged killer is 21-year-old…

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Anti-Semitic graffiti found at Brown Jewish frat

By Chloe Sobel March 18, 2016

On the night of March 17, the Brown University undergrad residence that houses Jewish fraternity Beta Rho Pi and co-ed fraternity Zeta Delta Xi was defaced with anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti. According to an email provided to New Voices, written by the interim assistant vice presidents of Brown Campus Life & Student Services, Mary Grace Almandrez and…

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Steps towards solidarity in the aftermath of Charleston

By Nicole Zelniker August 11, 2015

In America, Jews come from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, and have a shared memory of oppression and violence throughout history. That’s why, after the June 17 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that left nine dead in Charleston, S.C., several rabbis from across denominations came together and determined they had to do something…

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Yes, Orthodoxy is still to blame

By Amram Altzman July 31, 2015

Yesterday, I was reminded that the world in which I grew up — the Orthodox world — is one toward which I feel a sense of affinity, but also fear. The stabbing at Jerusalem Pride, carried out by a man who committed a similar crime a decade ago, confirmed this for me. I can love…

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