Arts & Crafts, Bonfires, and USDA Flour Sacks: The Little-Known History of Global Jewish Summer Camps

By Rebecca Tauber November 11, 2020

An archival story of how “Summer Children’s Colonies” became known as Jewish diasporic humanitarian aid.

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Meet the Young, Progressive Voter Constituency Budding in Los Angeles’ Persian Jewish Community

By Sophie Levy November 5, 2020

“I used to feel so ostracized, so stigmatized and isolated because of my leftist beliefs…but I don’t feel like a pariah anymore. The network of support I’ve found with other young Persian Jews is small, but it’s really made an immediate difference in our lives. It feels like there’s been a shift in the ground I’m standing on.”

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Self-Portrait

By Phillip Neman November 8, 2019

As a California native whose Jewish family is effectively barred from returning to Iran safely, Neman grew up embracing and celebrating the new place that his parents chose to call home.

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The One Wish Project is Coming to a Campus Near You

By Derek M. Kwait August 20, 2014

I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those…

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What Happened to the Arab Peace Proposal?

By Maddie Ulanow August 13, 2014

By the early 2000’s, the false promises of the Oslo Accords were becoming clear. The peace process was crumbling, and by 2001 the Second Intifada was in full swing. The situation was not all that different from what we are looking at right now: prospects for peace seemed low, and the odds of a peacefully…

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Building the Great Student Constituency for Peace

By Joanna Kramer April 3, 2014

“Failure will kill the political constituency of the two-state solution,” warned American Task Force on Palestine Director Ghaith Al-Omari at an event co-sponsored by J Street U Brown and Brown RISD Hillel last week. These chilling words reminded me of why it is so essential to demonstrate support for Secretary of State John Kerry’s current…

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Challenging “The J Street Challenge” (or, Why I Didn’t Go To AIPAC This Year)

By Amram Altzman March 17, 2014

I am an American. I am neither an Israeli, nor am I a Palestinian. However, I am a Jew, and a pro-Israel American, who lives in a country which has strong, positive relations with Israel. As a Zionist, I see it as my job to defend Israel as a Jewish State, and that means protecting…

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Dear de Blasio: AIPAC Doesn’t Speak for Me, Either

By Amram Altzman February 10, 2014

Last week it was discovered that New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, held an off-the-record meeting with AIPAC. This caused the Jewish political left in New York to draft a letter to Mayor de Blasio expressing their disappointment over his decision to ally himself with AIPAC, as opposed to taking a harder look at…

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In Praise of Al Jazeera America – Israeli Media Can Take a Lesson

By Sam Hantverk February 6, 2014

Al Jazeera. Simply hearing the name would bother me two years ago, like nails on a chalkboard. In my ethnocentric view, I believed Al Jazeera existed for the sole purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda with the utmost criticism of the nation. How could I trust any of their other journalism with their articles containing blatant…

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What About Non-Zionists?

By Tom Pessah January 20, 2014

In an interview with New Voices last week,  Jewish educator David Harris-Gershon expressed his support for Swarthmore’s Hillel brave declaration, and recounted his own experiences of being banned from speaking at the UC Santa Barbara Hillel chapter for his political views. In the interview, Harris-Gershon recognized students’ “right to a space free of anti-Israel activity,”…

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Why I Can’t Support an Academic Boycott of Israel

By Amram Altzman December 30, 2013

I am very openly willing to criticize the Israeli government. Two of my recent blog posts for New Voices have been criticisms of Israel’s Housing Ministry for announcing the constructions of new settlements at a crucial point in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and Israel’s Prime Minister in condemning the announcement of negotiations between the United States and…

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What we Talk About When we Talk About Settlements

By Amram Altzman December 9, 2013

Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an editorial last week explaining why Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not the central issue in the Middle East today. He explains that, yes, settlements are definitely one of the obstacles to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but then proceeds to list the ways in which the…

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On Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and the Deal with Iran

By Amram Altzman December 2, 2013

“You and I can change the world”  The refrain from Arik Einstein’s iconic song, “Ani ve-Atah” (literally, “You and I” — no, Lady Gaga, you didn’t have the song first) seems to ring especially true as we enter Hanukkah and Thanksgiving and as news breaks of the United States and Iran agreeing to enter formal…

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Learning to Love Iran

By Simi Lichtman May 30, 2013

BBC World Service recently released the results of a 25-country survey determining how the world’s citizens view 16 countries and their influence on the world. Iran came at the very bottom of the list, with 15% of respondents seeing it as having a positive influence and 59% saying it has a negative influence. That result…

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Is Bibi Changing the American Vote?

By Joshua Lapidus October 11, 2012

A few weeks ago there were too many headlines blaming Netanyahu for intervening in U.S. elections. “The clash has led Netanyahu to brazenly intervene in the U.S. election, but is that all that new, asks Lawrence Davidson” in Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’ on Obama is a great example. This got me to toying with some grim thoughts. Are Israel…

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