I Don’t Want a ‘Woman of Valor,’ I Want a Lover

By Avidan Halivni May 14, 2015

When I envision the rituals that will someday characterize my family’s Judaism, singing “Eishet Chayil“, or “A Woman of Valor” to my future wife is not among them. However beloved and time-worn a tradition the singing of this particular chapter of Proverbs is, it seems odd to me that I should strive so hard for…

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Why Small Campus Jewish Communities Are the Best

By Miranda Cooper March 17, 2015

When applying to colleges, I gave barely any thought to Jewish life on campus. This was not because I didn’t care about being engaged with a Jewish community; on the contrary, between leading my Temple Youth Group, attending regional NFTY events, working as a teaching assistant at a religious school, and moving up the ranks at…

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‘Hillel 2.0’ at Amherst College

By Isa Goldberg March 12, 2015

It was my first college Shabbat and I was beginning to doubt that I was in the right place. Where was everyone? I glanced back down at my watch. It was definitely 6:30. Surely I could not have been the only mildly observant Jew on campus. I had just returned from a three-day orientation hike….

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Baruch Dayan ha-Emet: A D’var Torah For a Shabbat Seeking Shalom

By Evan Goldstein January 9, 2015

As I write this Friday night, several things are true. A prolonged manhunt continues in France, pursuing suspects involved with an attack on a kosher supermarket. The Grand Synagogue of Paris is closed on Shabbat for the first time since World War II, a harrowing start to 2015 following a year of resurgent, ugly anti-Semitism….

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A Scavenger Hunt for Jewish Community

By Dani Plung May 8, 2014

This is a busy week at the University of Chicago. For one thing, we students are consumed with the mid-quarter rush of exams and paper due dates. This week in particular, though, we are also exceedingly busy non-academically—if you can imagine anything but academics ever occurring at the University of Chicago. Two major events are…

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What!?

In Search of Something to Unite the Jews

By Dani Plung February 26, 2014

In last week’s article, I talked about a need for klal yisrael—or Jewish unity—and how Jewish languages are ultimately not great means for fulfilling this goal. While I didn’t have anything else to say about this once I finished writing, I kept thinking about it afterward: is a Jewish unity really possible, or are we…

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Jewish Musical Dreams

By Dani Plung February 12, 2014

Every night, I fall asleep to a playlist titled “Jewish Sleep Music.”  Once upon a time, as a child, it consisted of mainly Kol B’seder’s covers of melodies that I’d learned in Hebrew School, like Shalom Rav and Oseh Shalom. At the time, before I really knew what their lyrics meant, the songs relaxed me because…

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New Years 2013 Was a Lifetime Ago

By Dani Plung January 8, 2014

Well, by the Gregorian calendar, we have officially lived in the year 2014 for a week. For one thing, this means I will spend about three more weeks dating assignments “2013,” only to see autocorrect bluntly demonstrate the error of my ways.  For another, this means that both the Jewish and secular seasonal winter holidays…

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Prayer and Sensory Overload

By Dani Plung December 11, 2013

The first time I went into sensory overload while at college was during a Kabbalat Shabbat service. The just concluded school week had been stressful, and I probably hadn’t eaten enough that day, so perhaps it is not surprising that I went into a sensory attack that evening, while surrounded by about twenty people singing…

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Finding Permanence in a Sukkah

By Dani Plung October 31, 2013

[fblike style=”standard” showfaces=”false” width=”450″ verb=”like” font=”arial”] You’d think after forty years of wandering and two thousand subsequent years of diaspora, the Jewish People would be used to spatial transitions.  I mean, we seem to pass everything else L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, so why not the nomadic nature? Don’t we even take a full eight…

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