Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
At first glance, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” seems like a movie made on a wild dare. It’s based on the fictional tome by magical zoologist Newt Scamander in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. Some may remember the 128-page encyclopedia written by Rowling in 2001 along with Quidditch Through The Ages. So, how…
Original version published on the blog “floating, falling, flying.” The election of a United States president should not be met with fear. I am in Tacoma, Washington, where the sky is usually cloudy, gray, and dripping with rain. Today, though, the clear blue sky seems to be taunting me. “Look how much better things are up…
“Punk rock?” your bubbe might say. “Funny, it doesn’t look Jewish.” But according to author Michael Croland, Jews and the punk movement go way back. In April 2016, Croland published Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, a book detailing Jews’ historic role in the punk movement and the ways in which Jewish artists use…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
When Emory University first-year Zoe Robbin got to college, she was upset by the lack of left-wing Jewish organizations on campus. With four other students, she founded a campus chapter of J Street U and set out to become a chartered organization. “We wrote a constitution … according to the college’s charter rules exactly,” said…
IfNotNow’s “Liberation Seder” in New York on Wednesday began with a march from Bryant Park to the lobby of the Anti-Defamation League’s office building, and ended with the arrests of 17 protesters. The New York action was one of five that took place from April 19-21 held by the Jewish anti-occupation group. IfNotNow was founded…
Today, the Forward published six students — five studying at American universities, one in South Africa — who answered a call to write about an experience at college that had shaped their Jewish identity in ways good, bad, or other. It’s an interesting read. The preface states that “every student interpreted the question as being about…
“Is _________ good for the Jews?” This question seems to be asked any time a major political development is revealed, especially in the Diaspora. One might ask, for example, if Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is good for the Jews; many asked if Obama’s election in 2008 was good for the Jews; and there…
Ever since the Pew Report was released in late 2013, intermarriage has been a constant topic of Jewish conversation. It’s been over two years and it hasn’t stopped. Since the report was released, there have been any number of blog posts, op-eds, and long-form pieces on the best ways to counter and combat intermarriage, and…