This is not a Blog Post about Bibi

By Amram Altzman March 9, 2015

I am done with Bibi. I’m also done with Purim, which means that I’m even more done with the various editorials analyzing Bibi’s references to the Purim story in Congress. At its root, however, my frustration lies not with Bibi himself, but with the answer that we have given to the question: How should we,…

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Apocalypse Now: Preparing for the Potential End of Jewish Statehood

By Jonathan Katz June 25, 2014

  Attention: I am doing something that is heretical across much of the Jewish spectrum. Very heretical – for two-state JStreet-ers, for your right-wing grandma at synagogue Kiddush, and certainly for anyone remotely associated with StandWithUs and other organizations dedicated to apologetics for the Occupation. I am preparing for the potential end of Israel as…

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Past Meets Future: Ground-Breaking Rabat Genizah Project Fueled by Students

By Derek M. Kwait June 17, 2014

A storied community in a room. Hand-written notes, wedding documents, and Mezuzahs piled everywhere. When Oren Kosansky discovered these items and more in bags and boxes in a small room in the old synagogue of Rabat, Morocco as a Fulbright Scholar in 2005, they would change his life and the lives of his future students…

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What Stake Should American Jews Have in Israeli Affairs?

By Amram Altzman June 2, 2014

  Israel has always been always at least somewhat present in my life. Though I have only visited once, as a Jew who was raised in a Jewish educational system, Zionism came part-and-parcel with my religious education. In school, I learned Modern Hebrew as a second language and was exposed to Israeli culture and food….

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On Why I Take Yiddish Now

By Dani Plung February 19, 2014

Yiddish is my favorite class. This isn’t new information, I’m sure; I’ve written about it on several occasions, including a piece entitled “On Why I Take Yiddish.”  I furthermore use Yiddish allusions and colloquialisms as a matter of practice—in writing as well as in general conversation—so I’m sure my new found passion for the language…

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Admitting Awkward Things: Or, Coming to Terms with Unsavory History

By Jonathan Katz February 18, 2014

I think my education started early. I remember sitting in the car with my mother at the age of 10, en route from my Hebrew school to … somewhere. It was the spring of 2002, height of the Second Intifada,and the rhetoric that went alongside it. I was narrating all of the things we had…

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Teach Modern Hebrew

By Noah Westreich October 17, 2013

Jewish education in American synagogues is often compartmentalized into a curriculum: an hour of Judaic Studies and an hour of Hebrew, twice weekly. Judaic studies includes watered-down lessons on holidays and Torah stories. Mastery of the alef-bet, the Hebrew alphabet, is often all students gain from the Hebrew class. By the Bat/Bar Mitzvah  age of…

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