Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
There’s an old Jewish joke about a righteous man who kept all the mitzvot. Every day, he prayed to God to win the lottery, and every day, he did not win. After the man died, he entered heaven and found himself at the foot of the Lord. In anger, he asked: “Why did you never…
I’m no stranger to issues of mental health. Depression set in shortly after the beginning of the second semester of my sophomore year. I cried incessantly for no apparent reason, I had difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, I loathed running into an ex for fear that he would trigger a panic attack….
Rabbi Steven Wernick knows that he is abandoning Conservative Jews on college campuses. As CEO of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism since 2009, Wernick saw KOACH, the campus wing of the Conservative Movement, shut down on his watch in 2013, drawing ire from many Conservative leaders and students. Almost five years later, I caught…
A new piece of right-wing Polish legislation, which criminalizes accusing Poland of complicity in the Holocaust, sparked international condemnation, hitting a particularly raw nerve with Jews in America and Israel. But for European Jewry – and Jewish students – this nerve has been exposed for years. The amendment to the Act on the Institute of…
Standing in the middle of New York’s Penn Station on her way home after her mother’s memorial service, Julia Brody, University of Delaware ’17, found a place to plug her phone in, with thoughts and memories of her mother still heavy in her head. A man using using the same outlet struck up a conversation…
I never knew that a world union of Jewish students existed, let alone the World Union of Jewish Students, until only a few months ago. My Jewish campus worldview was shaped by my time involved in Hillel and Chabad, with the assumption that because both the organizations are international, Jewish life at universities worldwide must…
This just in: A Brandeis study on campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment finds… information completely unshocking to anyone who’s ever read New Voices – or talked to more than three Jewish students. But still, we’re psyched. The details: Brandeis University’s Steinhardt Social Research Institute polled undergraduates – Jewish and non-Jewish – from four major campuses…
When Jonathan Taubes was in high school, he read a lot of Noam Chomsky – so much so that Taubes and his friends jokingly refer to him as the Rebbe, or teacher. Chomsky, an American historian and social critic, writes about a diverse array of topics: Zionism, anti-Zionism, socialism and every other –ism imaginable. As…
Over the course of my time at New Voices, I’ve been called a lot of things in comment sections, tweets, and emails from dubious Hotmail accounts. I’ve been called a radical leftist, a right-wing apologist, a snowflake, a “silly little girl who should listen to her mama.” (My mama is a progressive, too – surprise!)…
We know you’re busy. Those midterms are coming up and beer pong isn’t going to play itself. But we also know, amidst the hectic life of academia, you want to keep up with all the news for campus Jews. That’s why New Voices is reintroducing The Kvetch-Up, quick summaries of some of the top Jewish…
Jewish students are ready to talk about more than Israel. How do I know? I asked a room full of Jewish student leaders. Earlier this month, Jewish activists from eight tri-state campuses gathered at NYU for the American Union of Jewish Students #CampusTentNYC Town Hall, a student-led effort to bring diverse young Jewish leaders under one…
College campuses do not run rampant with anti-Semitic sentiment – at least according to Stanford professor Ari Kelman’s latest study. Kelman, a professor of education and Jewish studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, recently published a study called “Safe and On the Sidelines,” which explores Jewish life on college campuses. Kelman, who is…
Originally published in New Jersey Jewish News. “What do Jewish millennials want to read?” “What’s going on in the minds of future Jewry?” As the editor of New Voices, I field these questions constantly — at conferences, Shabbat tables, blind dates, and board meetings. Thankfully, New Voices has always had a simple answer. And per…
Originally published in The Forward. Watching the events of these past weeks unfold, we were confronted with a feeling of desperation. Nazis rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black slogans, threatening a synagogue. The president of the United States sided with racism and violence, drawing praise from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. The New England Holocaust Memorial, a landmark…
Originally published in The Jewish Exponent. For the past year and a half, I have served as president of the student board of Hillel at Temple University. Over the course of my time on board, I’ve seen students plan weekly Shabbat dinners, various types of holiday programming (including the ever-popular Chocolate Seder) and our first-ever…