Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
We here at New Voices seem no strangers to the question of whether or not the Jews are white. Yet the wider American Jewish community tends to go back and forth on the issue, especially now that racial tensions in this country have reached a boiling point. Despite the advancements made in the national…
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…
When I was in high school, I stopped wearing my kippah. I felt myself drifting away from the ultra-Orthodox community of my childhood and the Modern Orthodoxy my parents tried to model for me at home. I stopped wearing my kippah because I wanted to disaffiliate from the Orthodox Jews that filled New York City…
In high school, my friends and I dubbed our childhood neighborhood “The Shtetl.” Though we didn’t boast Yiddish names or a pushy matchmaker, like in the shtetls our grandparents grew up in, our shtetl, with its disproportionately high concentration of Jews, nevertheless rivaled its prior European counterparts in its sense of community and strong commitment…
Last week was New Voices’ #GenderWeek, and many of us (including yours truly) chose to write about the gendering of Jewish ritual, as well as the need to de-gender — or create a new paradigm for— ritual and gender performances. At the same time, however, part of what draws me to rituals seen as traditionally…
This summer, I had the opportunity to do something that few other men my age do: immerse in the mikveh. Normally, my Jewish rituals are public: I don my kippah wherever I go, I generally pray every morning with my tallit and tefillin in the presence of at least ten other people, and I light…
Staring across a room filled with tiny chairs and colorful books, I felt a great fear. The other people there were all strangers, the person across from me had bright red spiked hair, and only about 8 teeth. He looked sort of like my glue-sniffing boss from my days as a janitor. This was way…
Headwear is kind of a big deal in Judaism. The accurate assertion is often made that, in Jerusalem, you can learn a lot of information about someone just by looking at what hats they wear. On college campuses, certain flat-brimmed baseball caps or the occasional fedora might tell you something about an individual, but they…
There’s a lot of talk about personal modesty as it applies to the religious life. Religions around the world often encourage a codified form of dress to distinguish their practitioners from “the rest of us.” Fights over the Muslim hijab are excellent examples of the firestorms sparked by the modesty question. For Jews, recent events…
Exactly what they sound like. “Obama yarmulkes.” This year, “Jewish Students Wear Their Politics on Their Heads” (clever, PR-guy-who-sent-me-this-press-release. Very clever) with the reemergence of kippot branded with the Obama’s campaign logo. Don’t be confused, the Obama campaign actually has nothing to do with this. Though the story goes Obama got a real kick out…
The headline says it all: “Council of Jews welcomes Hitler exhibition” [Deutsche Welle] Speaking of anti-Semites, the Riverdale bombers are going to prison. [CNN] Speaking of New York Jews, here’s what GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino taught us about the ultra-Orthodox and elections. [Yeshiva World News] What’s driving the Palestinian economy? The kippah industry. [BBC] Should the…