Envisioning Jewish Safety Beyond the Nation State
On escaping antisemitic violence through community building, not nation building.
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
On escaping antisemitic violence through community building, not nation building.
Jerusalem has long been the center of the world in Jewish life, but not since the time of King David has the city felt so personal and laid bare as it is in Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s new book “Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered.” Interwoven with the fighting, love, loss, and the longing of a mother, it speaks…
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…
“American [Jew]s are fleeing organized religion.” This was the big takeaway from the Pew Report in 2013 (I feel a not insignificant embarrassment that we are still quoting it) and another report released last week on the state of American religion in general, both of which found that many Americans are affiliating less and…
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…
We’re usually pretty hard on Israel here at New Voices, and though more forgiving than some, I’m no exception. Yet, I find that in the midst of all my anxiety over the results of the last election or railing against the settlements, Yom HaAtzmaut provides the ideal opportunity to step back and remember why I…
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…
Israel has always been a concept — a country, a culture, a history, a memory —I was always intimate with, but it remained aloof. I grew up surrounded by Hebrew and Israeli culture, singing “Hatikvah” alongside the “Star Spangled Banner.” I’d been to Israel only one time before going on Birthright, and since then, my…
The span from Thanksgiving through New Year’s is generally a hectic time for me. A week after trying to wrest control over half the Thanksgiving menu from my mother and sister while debating internally if it’s even worth trying to keep kosher on such a day before inevitably stuffing myself to the gills either way,…
Last week, two Palestinian cousins, armed with a meat cleaver and a gun, attacked worshipers at Kehilat B’nei Torah synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem, killing four Israelis. This is the most devastating attack Jerusalem has seen since 2008 and it is now, more than ever, imperative that people start thinking about the religious and cultural…
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…
The Israeli band Shmemel recently released a controversial, tongue-in-cheek video single entitled Berlin(English translation and annotation here, courtesy of The Forward). In the song, the band sings a ballad of Israelis leaving the country – for economic opportunity, for the madness of living in a state of constant war, or for a better and more…