The Battle Over California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum

By Naomi Friedland June 23, 2022

While major Zionist organizations lobby to change California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, many Jewish students and scholars across California have a different outlook on the issue – and are being overlooked in the debate.

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The “Halakhically Curious” Phenomenon

By Sofia Freudenstein May 26, 2021

Jewish law has often problematically been taught as a set of dogmatic rules, but a new generation of Jews and Jewish educators are calling for a more intentional vision of halakha.

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The Jewish Educator’s Distance-Learning Handbook

By Rena Yehuda Newman April 9, 2021

Best-practices gleaned from a new generation of Jewish Educators, making the Zoom makom meaningful.

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The New Jewish Educator-Activists of Instagram

By Ellanora Lerner January 20, 2021

A new type of Jewish education is going beyond the halls of Hebrew School and straight to the hearts of young diaspora Jews.

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Shouting “I am a Jewish Educator!”: A Judaism Unbound Fellowship Reflection

By Rebecca Lubow December 22, 2020

“Too many young Jews receive the message from our communities that we aren’t Jewish in the right way….That’s why New Voices Magazine’s work to connect young Jewish artists to each other and give our stories and ideas a platform is such a radical project.”

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Dear Teachers, We Have an Israel Education Problem

By Sarah Asch September 15, 2017

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…

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When rabbis fail

By Amram Altzman April 28, 2016

When Rabbi Steven Pruzansky released a column on his personal blog at the end of March, he claimed that the solution to college campus rape culture is abstinence. If more women abstained from sex, he wrote, as his Judaism warrants, then campus rape culture will magically vanish. I am grateful to have seen so many…

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Why progressive Jews should be outraged about Hasidic schools

By Amram Altzman April 12, 2016

When news broke back in September of the systematic and egregious lack of regulation of secular studies curricula in Hasidic and Haredi schools, there was little outcry from the rest of the Jewish community over the fact that a large segment of our population — already growing up cut off from the rest of the world…

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What Israel education in Jewish day schools really looks like

By Nicole Zelniker October 7, 2015

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…

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Reanalyzing That Damn Survey Again…Again

By Amram Altzman May 18, 2015

  “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…

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This is not a Blog Post about Bibi

By Amram Altzman March 9, 2015

I am done with Bibi. I’m also done with Purim, which means that I’m even more done with the various editorials analyzing Bibi’s references to the Purim story in Congress. At its root, however, my frustration lies not with Bibi himself, but with the answer that we have given to the question: How should we,…

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‘Disabled’ Does Not Mean ‘Not Able’

By Miriam Roochvarg February 25, 2015

My older brother has autism, a disorder that mainly affects social interaction and communication skills. He is one of the proudest Jews you will ever meet: He attends services every Saturday morning, reads Torah once a month, and has all the prayers and their page numbers memorized. At our shul, one of the congregation’s favorite…

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Improving Israel Comes at a Cost: $5

By Derek M. Kwait January 29, 2015

Are you a Jewish student? Are you fed up with the state of American Zionism? Have $5? Good. Click here before April 30, pay the $5, then vote to change things. I can’t explain the process, the necessity, or the candidates better than J.J.Goldberg did in two articles in the Forward, so I won’t try….

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Live Blogging the Open Hillel Conference Day 2

By Derek M. Kwait October 15, 2014

On Monday, the final day of what Previous New Voices Rebbe David A.M. Wilensky calls “Liberal Jewish Comicon,” my first interaction was with Ali Kreigsman, who was attending in support of her and Jana Kozlowski’s upcoming documentary, Between the Lines, about Jewish day school students who come to university and discover that in spite of…

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Bringing Holocaust Denial to Campus: Interview With ‘Hoaxocaust!’ Star Barry Levey

By Derek M. Kwait September 23, 2014

Yesterday, I reviewed Hoaxocaust!, a new play performed and written by Barry Levey that satirizes Holocaust denial simply by putting the arguments of some of its biggest proponents, Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in context. I saw the show the night of September 11 (coincidentally), then on September 12, I caught…

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