A campfire, glowing yellow and orange and burning atop a pile of woods against a dark background.

The History of Jewish Summer Camp Could Change its Future

By Julia Hegele June 15, 2023

“It can be hard to let go of the sense that camp is full of tradition and history… but change is ok. It’s inevitable.”

Read More...
A dark stage with spotlights shining down on the cast of Fiddler on the roof, who are dancing in long skirts with their hands raised in the air.

The Fiddler And The Self-Hating Jew

By Daniel Kushner April 21, 2023

“Right at the moment when I felt the least aligned with Judaism, I was cast in the most Jewish musical in existence.”

Read More...

The Torah of OCD

By Anonymous April 14, 2021

“The Torah of OCD is simple: it is an important and very serious mitzvah to manage my OCD as skillfully as I am able on any given day, seeking out the support and resources I need to live well and in good health. And it is deeply complicated: I am no longer comfortable theologizing pain.”

Read More...

The “Ish” In Jewish

By Jillian Crocetta February 16, 2021

Wrestling with a multi-faith identity.

Read More...

We Can’t Ignore Domestic Violence in Jewish Homes

By Anonymous November 8, 2017

For the safety of the writer, this piece has been published anonymously.  Every part of the term “domestic violence” is misleading. The author bell hooks once said that the proper name for domestic violence is patriarchal violence because violence against women and children does not begin at home. It is directly connected to sexism and…

Read More...

Between Politics and Religion: Jewish Activism at Columbia

By Solomon Wiener December 20, 2016

Originally published in the Fall 2016 edition of The Current. Since the famed student uprising of 1968, many generations of Columbia students have felt an obligation to perpetuate the legacy of the late 60s by creating a myriad of activist clubs and organizations here on campus. And not uncommonly, Jewish students have occupied prominent lay…

Read More...

How to travel Europe with your ghosts

By Leah Tribbett June 3, 2016

To grow up Jewish is to grow up haunted. I’ve never lived on a Civil War battleground, and I’ve never shared my closet with a ghost (two brothers who tried to scare me to death, yes — but never a ghost), and yet the feeling of being haunted is as well known to me as…

Read More...

UC Irvine students protest IDF presence on campus

By Nicole Zelniker June 1, 2016

On May 18, students at the University of California, Irvine, protested a screening of the documentary “Beneath the Helmet,” an Israeli film about the Israeli Defense Forces. “They were screaming. They tried to push open the door, but we were holding the door from the inside,” said President of Students Supporting Israel Katrin Gendova in…

Read More...

In defense of organized religion

By Amram Altzman May 31, 2016

There’s a stereotype that engagement programs for Jewish young adults are geared solely at producing the next generation of Jewish children. Many stereotypes exist for a reason — and this one is no exception. Many efforts to engage youth make a desire to produce the next generation of engaged Jewish youth explicit — and that’s…

Read More...

How to be socially Jewish

By Rachel Chabin May 27, 2016

“What do you mean, you’re not allowed to have bacon?”  “If you go to public school, how do you have time to daven every morning?”  “So, you don’t believe in Jesus?” “You never learned to speak Hebrew?” It seems unlikely that every one of these questions — expressions of bewilderment about Judaism, and confusion about…

Read More...

How I discovered Jewish strength and history in the pages of a comic book

By Leah Tribbett May 25, 2016

Comic books, for me, were an acquired taste. Growing up, I devoured anything with words — the backs of Pokémon cards, books pilfered from my mom’s shelf, the booklets stuffed inside CD cases — but never comics. Nobody in my life read them, and my weekly TV rotation was tuned into Rugrats rather than the…

Read More...

Modern Orthodoxy must act on inclusion

By Amram Altzman May 23, 2016

Unlike many other people I know who grew up in but have since left the Modern Orthodox community, I don’t look back on my childhood religious experiences with sadness. Instead, many of the decisions that I have since made in my religious life have been because of — not despite — having been raised in the…

Read More...

Tevye the Dairyman’s Seventh Daughter

By Chloe Sobel May 16, 2016

i. Tevye Comes to Brooklyn My dad and I read Sholem Aleichem when I’m young. He has a copy of Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, but we stick to Tevye. We sit on the couch and he reads out loud to me. I grow up on Aleichem, not Fiddler on the Roof; my…

Read More...

Brown students hope to continue events like the one that broke Hillel’s Standards of Partnership

By Nicole Zelniker May 13, 2016

On May 11, more than 70 students from Brown University came together to commemorate the Nakba by watching three films produced by the Israeli NGO Zochrot. Nakba is the term for the 1948 expulsion and displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians, and Nakba Day is observed on May 15, the day after Israeli Independence Day. “Within…

Read More...

Brown students break Hillel Standards of Partnership to discuss Nakba

By New Voices Staff May 12, 2016

Yesterday, despite its official cancellation, a group of Brown University students gathered at the Brown RISD Hillel building to watch three short films about the Nakba. According to a statement from Sophie Kasakove, one of the event’s three organizers and a member-at-large of Open Hillel’s steering committee, the event had been in the works for…

Read More...