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…
My feet are aching, but I keep walking. I’m stopping 4 a.m. traffic, clogging Pittsburgh’s throughways as I march through the streets, screaming, “Trump is not my president.” My toes start to blister as I hear the sound of 2,000 feet stomping with me. It’s been days since that “me” became a “we” – since…
With Thanksgiving here and Halloween behind us, ‘tis the season to discuss the role of secular holidays in our Jewish lives on campus. Hillels across the country work to keep college students engaged in Jewish programming and within a Jewish community while they are away from home. They are continuously battling increasing secularism, and in the…
There it was – the Western Wall, hakotel hama’aravi. The sun was hanging over the top of the wall, reflecting off the stones at my feet. As I stood in front of the holiest sight in Israel, I realized I was waiting for something, some reaction to the realization that I was finally at the…
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…
On this weekend, five years ago, a community member of the synagogue in which I’d grown up stood up at the podium of my teen minyan, and talked about the verse in this week’s Torah portion — one that’s served as the basis for discrimination against queer Jews for decades. I had just come out…
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…
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…
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…
On February 7th, over 150 young adults of religions ranging from Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic to Sikh, Hindu, Baha’i, and humanist, gathered together at the Howard University School of Divinity for the DC Interfaith Leadership Summit. Hosted by the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington as part of World Interfaith Harmony Week, it was a celebration…
I am queer — and my decision to be queer is a conscious decision. There were times in my life when I wasn’t queer, but it’s been a process through which I have grown into my identity as someone who identifies not as gay, but primarily as queer. And, as I’ve grown into it, that…
When my Rabbi first told me about Kitty Genovese, it was my sophomore year of high school. After that, he would often invoke the story of how she was murdered while witnesses stood by. He would use Kitty to make a point about personal responsibility, or accent a story about not standing idly by, or…