Will Students Take the ‘JUMP’ for Human Rights in the Middle East?

By Nicole Zelniker February 18, 2015

This past June, Boston University junior Raphael Fils decided he was fed up with the stances Jewish organizations take on the conflict in the Middle East. Whether Hillel, Jewish Voice for Peace, or J Street, all organizations seemed to have a bias. To change that, Fils launched Justice and Unity in Mideast Policy, or JUMP…

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What’s Behind Israel’s Veil?

By Evan Traylor February 10, 2015

For so many young Jews in North America, the idealistic images seen on particular trips with organizations including NFTY, BBYO, Young Judaea, USY, and especially Birthright, come to define our views of Israel. After my first trip to Israel, when I spent 4 weeks exploring Israel with my camp and NFTY friends, I immediately felt…

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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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Fallacies and Follies of Open Hillel

By Holly Bicerano January 14, 2015

John Adams famously remarked that “facts are stubborn things.” Maybe that is why Open Hillel leaders have closed their eyes to them. Open Hillel is an organization committed to abolishing Hillel International’s Standards of Partnership. These standards preclude Hillel branches from partnering with groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Besides…

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Interview with Open Hillel Defector Holly Bicerano

By Derek M. Kwait December 18, 2014

Holly Bicerano, a student at Boston University and the former Campus Outreach Co-Coordinator for Open Hillel, made waves in the Jewish world after publishing an op-ed in the Times of Israel called “Standing athwart lies,” explaining why she decided to leave the organization. Chief among her complaints are that, far from promoting true open dialogue…

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Remembering Korach, or On The Danger of Open Hillel

By Evan Goldstein December 17, 2014

Eric Fingerhut, you take too much upon yourself. The CEO of Hillel International could not resist taking a swipe at the ever-growing Open Hillel movement in his speech to the Hillel General Assembly, comparing us to Korach and his band of rebels. Korach, and by implication, Open Hillel, initiated a dispute that was not for…

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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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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 Limits of Open Hillel

By Derek M. Kwait November 7, 2014

If we’re going to talk at all about Open Hillel, we first have to ask, “Why would someone want to stop someone else from speaking in the first place?” Presumably, because they fear the speaking invitation will lend legitimacy or act as a seal of approval to the offending view, or else it will lead…

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Take Back the Mikveh: The Need to Democratize Orthodox Judaism

By Amram Altzman October 28, 2014

This summer, I had the opportunity to do something that few other men my age do: immerse in the mikveh. Normally, my Jewish  rituals are public: I don my kippah wherever I go, I generally pray every morning with my tallit and tefillin in the presence of at least ten other people, and I light…

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Learning to Undo Ashke-normativity – A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz October 22, 2014

Like most Jews with ties to South Africa, my heritage is extremely Ashkenazi. In fact, both sides of my family largely originate from the same region of what is now northeastern Lithuania and northern Belarus. Growing up in New York, most of what I was exposed to as “Jewish culture” was really “Ashkenazi, specifically Lithuanian…

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Let’s Open Our Judaism: Closing Speech From the Open Hillel Conference

By Amelia Dornbush October 21, 2014

  Folks at Hillel International seem worried about the future of Judaism. They seemed worried about it long before Open Hillel existed. There have been many prescriptions doled out to address this perceived problem of our generation’s apathetic and disaffected nature. Send the kids on a free trip to Israel, that’ll solve it. Make sure…

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Live Blogging the Open Hillel Conference Day 2

By Derek M. Kwait October 15, 2014

On Monday, the final day of what Previous New Voices Rebbe David A.M. Wilensky calls “Liberal Jewish Comicon,” my first interaction was with Ali Kreigsman, who was attending in support of her and Jana Kozlowski’s upcoming documentary, Between the Lines, about Jewish day school students who come to university and discover that in spite of…

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First Results of the Jewish Student Survey are In!

By Derek M. Kwait September 15, 2014

  Preliminary results of the Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 are out. Started last spring by Drs. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, this is the first comprehensive scientific survey ever of an underrepresented and under studied demographic: American…

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Peace Can’t Come Through Shutting Down Dialogue

By Tomer Kornfeld August 6, 2014

In my article, “Together We Can”, I called for joint peace efforts among college student clubs, especially those with differing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I relayed an example where I invited Students for Justice in Palestine to join the pro-Israel group at my college in New York for a debate, or ‘mock peace talk.’…

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