Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
There seem to be two choices in mainstream Jewish life: Either you’re pro-Zionism, or you’re anti-Zionism. A new online publication, Zionish, rejects that binary. “Our stance is to reject the traditional stances,” Zionish editor Aaron Simons told New Voices via email. “People conceive of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one where you have to be either…
Perhaps nothing characterizes the divisions I see in American and world Jewry better than the list of opening and closing keynote speakers at HaaretzQ, a conference on Israel hosted by Haaretz and the New Israel Fund in New York Sunday. The day kicked off with speeches from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, MK Tzipi Livni of…
When a UC Santa Cruz student leader is instructed to abstain from a BDS vote due to his allegiance to a “Jewish Agenda,” the proper response from the Jewish community is very simple: Such activities are anti-Semitic, and do not belong on diverse, pluralistic campuses. This is only the latest case of anti-Semitism that has…
Many are questioning the future of the Israel-Canada relationship following Justin Trudeau’s Oct. 21 inauguration as Prime Minister of Canada, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s congratulatory phone call to Trudeau suggests a continuing friendly relationship between the two countries. While Canada’s previous Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was seen as a loyal and vocal supporter of Israeli policy…
This Sunday, thousands of people will arrive in Washington, D.C. for the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Just outside the GA, they’ll be joined by the Jewish People’s Assembly, a protest that its organizers from Open Hillel expect to draw around 100 attendees. The protest, according to its website, has three…
With a new football season underway at the Ohio State University, the Buckeye community is determined to move forward in light of a report released this past summer regarding anti-Semitic lyrics in the school’s marching band songbook. OSU Hillel Executive Director Joseph Kohane told New Voices via email that the administration issued two statements condemning…
As a child, my rabbis and Judaic studies teachers cautioned me against straying “off the derekh,” which almost literally translates to off of the Orthodox straight-and-narrow. If we did, though, then the High Holidays were a time when we could return to once again being on the straight, singular path that Orthodoxy provided. As a…
The AMCHA Initiative, a watchdog organization that works to investigate and combat anti-Semitism in American universities, launched a new web page last month to collect testimonies from students of on-campus incidents. Director and co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin said AMCHA created the page because of concern over a rise in campus anti-Semitism. “We hear regularly from Jewish…
Though J Street U and Hillel moved closer to working together in June, progress is still slow. At the meeting, which took place on June 10, J Street U made several requests of Hillel, and Hillel asked for time before committing to any of them. The meeting came after Hillel International CEO Eric Fingerhut’s decision…
At 8:17 a.m. on a rainy Thursday morning, a group of nine Jewish students at Guilford College decided to make a change. Rather than continuing to label themselves as a Hillel, the students decided to dub themselves Guilford Chavurah, meaning “group of friends” in Hebrew. “I want it to be a very flexible club,” said…
After reading my coverage of last week’s J Street Conference, a campus Hillel director reached out to me to confess their thoughts on Eric Fingerhut’s withdrawal from the conference and what the new Israeli government means for Hillel and its standards of partnership. To protect themselves and their Hillel, they would only let me publish…
WASHINGTON – Hundreds of students stormed Hillel International’s headquarters Monday, the second day of the 5th annual J Street conference, demanding the organization show tangible support for them and their pro-two states agenda. The march was organized by J Street U, the lobbying group’s campus affiliate, in protest of Hillel International CEO Eric Fingerhut…
Introduction Anti-Semitism is everywhere, and it is nowhere. It is claimed to be behind every critique of Israel voiced by progressive youth, yet is said to have been vanquished as American Jews have found themselves increasingly present among the fringes of the establishment. Of course, anti-Semitism still exists. The attacks on Jews in Paris and…
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….
Last year, one of the clubs that I am a part of in school decided to hold a “Smashing the Patriarchy” workshop, to work on our group’s internal dynamics. To my mind, this was completely unnecessary. The group governed by consensus, and we were roughly half male and half female. It seemed to me that…