Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
A version of this article was published in Times of Israel. Edie Windsor, who passed away last month at 88, will be remembered as many things – a hero, an icon, a trailblazer, and also rarely emphasized, Jewish. Yes, the same Edie Windsor who led the fight in overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at…
A few years ago, while I was working as a staff member at Brandeis High School Programs, someone asked me what could be done for LGBTQ people who were still in the closet. At first, I had no response. The only real way to give someone the direct help that they need is for them…
Yesterday, I was reminded that the world in which I grew up — the Orthodox world — is one toward which I feel a sense of affinity, but also fear. The stabbing at Jerusalem Pride, carried out by a man who committed a similar crime a decade ago, confirmed this for me. I can love…
On October 11, 2009, I woke up in my best friend’s apartment at 5 a.m. We had a bus to catch to D.C. We were going to the National Equality March. Before that, though, we had something to do. Together we’d decided we would come out on Facebook, in honor of the march and National…
Does a kosher bakery have the right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for an intermarried couple? If the bakery is in Indiana, the answer might be yes. Indiana’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in March caused an uproar, especially among LGBTQ rights activists, who argued that it could encourage discrimination…
“Orthodoxy’s greatest innovation was its decision to stop innovating.” These were the words of a friend of mine in high school, a non-Orthodox student at my Modern Orthodox high school, voicing his frustration at Orthodoxy’s seeming inability to develop and adapt to (post-)modern values. When I published my last article, one of the largest criticisms…
I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in…
I had the honor of speaking at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Voices of Change conference last week, where I, only for a day, became a high school student once again and spoke on a panel about navigating relationships and sexuality in high school as a feminist. While speaking, the topic of Shemirut Negi’ah, or…
It used to be, said a speaker at J Street U’s plenary session during the national J Street Conference, that students were expected to listen to learn from others. Now, he said, with the success of the fights for civil rights, marriage equality, unionizing, and women’s rights—all of which were led by student movements—the world…
Publications aimed for a queer Jewish audience, like any niche-aimed work, tend to concentrate on certain themes. There are your coming out to your community publications, there are your famous-queer-Jews publications, there are your “my story” publications. And then there is another trend: a deep, heavy, nearly-overwhelming concentration on Israel. Israel is everywhere in the…
Majority of Jews support marriage equality [Forward] Though it probably won’t come as a surprise to most of you that there are liberal Jews (GASP!), turns out an overwhelming majority of Jews support the equality of all persons to marry their partner, regardless of sexual orientation. Specifically, 81%. The Jewish Daily Forward writes: “Marriages between…