Bibi is wrong: Brussels is not Israel

By Chloe Sobel March 22, 2016

In 1996, I moved to Brussels. In 2000, I left. In 2007 and 2011, I went back again, both times for only a few short days. I have no Belgian ancestry or citizenship, but I’ve always felt a little bit Belgian — it’s hard not to, when it played such an important role in my…

Read More...

Perspectives on Syrian refugees: Is the Holocaust comparison inappropriate?

By Jackson Richman February 26, 2016

Read the first part in our series of Jewish perspectives on Syrian refugees, “Finding commonality in Jewish history.“ For the last few months, I’ve seen the comparison of today’s Syrian refugees to the plight of European Jews during the Holocaust trending on social media. This is an ignorant comparison with no real critical analysis behind it….

Read More...

Jews cannot ignore Syrian refugees

By Amram Altzman November 30, 2015

When I was a child, my mother taught me that Thanksgiving was a holiday of immigrants and refugees. It was fitting, then, that Thanksgiving was a holiday my family spent with my maternal grandparents, who were themselves, along with my mother, Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union in 1981. Although my understanding of the holiday…

Read More...

On French Anti-Semitism and Conflicting Identities

By Ari Bloom April 8, 2015

My first experience with anti-Semitism was at 6 years old. Someone painted a swastika on the front gate of my school and I remember asking my dad why it upset him so much. I had a limited understanding of Nazism at that age, but I knew enough to understand when he told me simply that…

Read More...

The Dangerous Myth of the ‘Good Muslim’

By Amram Altzman March 2, 2015

We Jews have a problem: we fetishize Muslims. Not just any Muslims, though: we choose to fetishize the “Good Muslims.” The Muslims, or the Arabs, who stand up for our cause, who toe our party lines, and who stand up to protect us. To be sure, many in our Jewish community also often quite hastily…

Read More...