Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Dear Jewish educators, First, I would like to thank you for dedicating your lives to helping students like me understand faith and tradition. Thank you for allowing me to develop life-long friendships, for allowing me to grow my creativity and for patiently fielding my questions. Thank you for encouraging my feminism and my passion for…
With over two hundred thousand students enrolled at more than 800 institutions, Jewish day schools are becoming more and more prevalent in the American Jewish community. That’s two hundred thousand students learning about Israel from an early age — but what are these students actually learning about Israel? That’s what “Between The Lines,” a documentary…
In January 2014, Rabbi Avi Weiss’s conversions were called into question by the Israeli Rabbinate. At the time, this was the most prominent example of the differences between the Orthodoxy’s left and right wings, as well as the growing gulf between American and Israeli Jewries. This gulf widened last week when news broke of the…
Growing up, I thought I had a normal Jewish family. I had two wonderful and loving parents, and two awesome older brothers. We kept kosher, lit Shabbat candles, and were a part of the local synagogue community. The only difference between my family and yours is that my middle brother has special needs. My middle…
When I was in high school, I stopped wearing my kippah. I felt myself drifting away from the ultra-Orthodox community of my childhood and the Modern Orthodoxy my parents tried to model for me at home. I stopped wearing my kippah because I wanted to disaffiliate from the Orthodox Jews that filled New York City…
At 19, NYU freshman Jake Rosenberg is already one of the most accomplished young playwrights in the country, getting his plays put on around the country and winning multiple awards. After seeing his latest play, Muse of Fire, a comedy about Auschwitz inmates putting on a farce about the Dreyfus affair, New Voices editor Derek…
In middle school (thankfully not high school), “tzitzit checks” were a common feature of my morning. The boys in first period Judaics were required to prove to our teacher and anyone who might ask over the course of the day that that we were following the dress code by wearing tzitzit. Failure to do so…
It was already maybe the smallest stage I’ve ever seen, and much of it was taken up by black spray painted stepladders with boards between them and black theater blocks; the wall behind it painted to look like a brick wall with shadows of barracks on the sides. The woman seated next to me remarked…
I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in…
In response to the abduction of three teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, Gil-ad Shaar, and Naftali Frankel, over a week ago in the West Bank, a petition to President Obama has been circulating around the Internet asking for the Executive Office to pressure the Palestinian Authority to release the one American citizen of the three kidnapped teenagers….
Shavuot commemorates receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. It is customarily observed by participating in a night of learning. Since I last wrote, I have relapsed and gone back to residential treatment for anorexia. Going back to treatment for the second time since January took a great deal of courage and taught me a…
Israel has always been always at least somewhat present in my life. Though I have only visited once, as a Jew who was raised in a Jewish educational system, Zionism came part-and-parcel with my religious education. In school, I learned Modern Hebrew as a second language and was exposed to Israeli culture and food….
The recent debacle about the (Jewish, day-school alum) Princeton freshman who claims he “checked his privilege” dominated my social media network for a good two weeks. A few people came out in his support, but most people – myself included – were furious at his complete inability to consider the advantages he may have…
I’ve written before on my day school education and its different aspects, critiquing how it taught me (or perhaps should have taught me) to look at my history and my past; I’ve also offered what can perhaps be best described as a back-handed compliment to my Jewish education. Now, as someone who has been…
Third grade lunch at Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School. All my friends are sitting around eating Cheetos and sharing sandwiches. Me, I’m staring at the clock waiting for the little and the big hand to both land on the twelve so that I can throw the untouched lunch my mother packed me into the trash…