Let’s Talk About How We Talk About Orthodoxy

By Amram Altzman October 6, 2014

“Orthodoxy’s greatest innovation was its decision to stop innovating.” These were the words of a friend of mine in high school, a non-Orthodox student at my Modern Orthodox high school, voicing his frustration at Orthodoxy’s seeming inability to develop and adapt to (post-)modern values. When I published my last article, one of the largest criticisms…

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Queering the Liturgy: To Adjust or to Search?

By Jonathan Katz December 12, 2013

It is a problem that I and many other queer Jewish students face: as religious folk, we want to pray. But how do we – gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, queer, and other identities across the “rainbow ” – connect with a liturgy that is often seen as heteronormative, cis-normative, and well, “straight”? Some say, “the…

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An Open Letter to Young Conservative Jews

By Amram Altzman November 14, 2013

Dear Young Conservative Jews who are upset with your movement and feel abandoned, fear the death of it, or are trying to somehow assign blame for the imminent death of your movement: I understand your problem. Really, I do. You see, I grew up in a family that identified as “stalwartly left-wing Modern Orthodox” at…

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Labelship Down

By ckessler February 27, 2010

As another Friday night set in, I pondered whether to schlep out of my warm house into the snow flying sideways to make the long trek (a seven-minute bus ride) down to Hillel, and after I coordinated with some friends at the University of Pittsburgh–whom I hadn’t seen all week–I decided that the schlep was worth…

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