Chelly Wilson, Queen of the Deuce, Matron of Sleaze

By Lauren Hakimi November 14, 2022

How do we remember the infamous Greek Jewish lesbian immigrant porn theater boss Chelly Wilson? Lauren Hakimi reviews the documentary “Queen Of The Deuce,” showing at DOC NYC.

Read More...

Israeli and Palestinian Doctors Build Bridges Through Healthcare

By Nicole Zelniker January 25, 2018

When Khadra Hasan Ali Salami goes to work every morning, she has to pass through Israeli military checkpoints, an often dangerous prospect for someone driving a car with Palestinian license plates. Salami, an oncologist, is one of about 700 doctors from Palestine that have permission to cross into Israel every day for work. On Jan….

Read More...

Student Leaders Move the Campus Conversation Beyond Israel

By Adela Cojab September 26, 2017

Jewish students are ready to talk about more than Israel. How do I know? I asked a room full of Jewish student leaders. Earlier this month, Jewish activists from eight tri-state campuses gathered at NYU for the American Union of Jewish Students #CampusTentNYC Town Hall, a student-led effort to bring diverse young Jewish leaders under one…

Read More...

Anti-Semitic slurs found in University at Buffalo admin building

By Chloe Sobel March 30, 2016

The University at Buffalo has been added to the list of university campuses that have seen anti-Semitic graffiti this year. According to The Spectrum, the anti-Semitic slurs were found on March 23 in a men’s bathroom in Capen Hall, the university’s main administration building. The University Police Department believes it to have been an isolated incident, but…

Read More...

Dear World: Celiac is More Than Just ‘Gluten-Free’

By Rachel Chabin February 27, 2015

As far back as I can remember, I have been excited for college. Even as a young child, it was always somewhere in the back of my mind: after middle school, then after high school, I would get a chance to study away from home, learning something I loved, and practicing for something I’d do…

Read More...

Mourning Far From Home: A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz December 9, 2014

My father (z”l) died quite suddenly last month. He was young, 57, and had appeared so happy and so healthy. During his final hours, I got the call to come home. I went back to the States for the funeral and shiva. It’s been tough. I was really close with my father – he was…

Read More...

Learning to Undo Ashke-normativity – A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz October 22, 2014

Like most Jews with ties to South Africa, my heritage is extremely Ashkenazi. In fact, both sides of my family largely originate from the same region of what is now northeastern Lithuania and northern Belarus. Growing up in New York, most of what I was exposed to as “Jewish culture” was really “Ashkenazi, specifically Lithuanian…

Read More...

Bringing Holocaust Denial to Campus: Interview With ‘Hoaxocaust!’ Star Barry Levey

By Derek M. Kwait September 23, 2014

Yesterday, I reviewed Hoaxocaust!, a new play performed and written by Barry Levey that satirizes Holocaust denial simply by putting the arguments of some of its biggest proponents, Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in context. I saw the show the night of September 11 (coincidentally), then on September 12, I caught…

Read More...

Popping New York’s Jewish Bubble

By Jonathan Katz September 9, 2014

I grew up in the New York area: capital of the world, city of no rival, the Fourth Rome (defeating the Third, and there shall be no Fifth). True, I could note that this place – city and suburbs thereof – is overconfident, maddeningly arrogant, and rude to a horrifying degree. Yet it was a…

Read More...

“Even Jacob Went Down to Egypt”: On Shmemel’s “Berlin” and Israeli Out-Migration

By Jonathan Katz September 3, 2014

The Israeli band Shmemel recently released a controversial, tongue-in-cheek video single entitled Berlin(English translation and annotation here, courtesy of The Forward). In the song, the band sings a ballad of Israelis leaving the country – for economic opportunity, for the madness of living in a state of constant war, or for a better and more…

Read More...

The Bar Mitzvah Gift that Keeps on Giving

By Eric Steitz April 9, 2014

A mother wakes up and prepares for the day. The routine sounds normal: get the children ready for the day, cook, clean and provide for the family. But, what if it took six hours just to get water? This problem is real for Sub-Saharan African communities. It takes the majority of the day just to…

Read More...

How Not Driving Made Me a Better Jew

By Jonathan Katz April 8, 2014

I don’t drive. (For now.) I mean, technically I can – I’m just not licensed. My failed road test happened during a time of tumult in my life. And I haven’t been behind the wheel in three and a half years. As a 22-year-old who grew up in the car-centric United States – where your…

Read More...

Naughty Jewish Boys – Yes, Bubbe, They do Exist

By Adam Kroopnick March 18, 2014

In a studio in New York’s theater district, Duncan Pflaster, a playwright and part-time photographer, was unpacking props for his photoshoot: yarmulkes, a menorah, and a book called The Jewish Pleasure Principle. Mr. Pflaster isn’t doing a swimsuit calendar — he’s creating the Naughty Jewish Boys calendar, which will feature a Jewish man in various…

Read More...

“We’re All in This Together” – Tel Aviv From the Back of an Ambulance

By Julia Goldberg March 10, 2014

There I was. Sitting in the back of an ambulance with sirens blaring, racing through red lights, wearing proudly but cautiously the official Magen David Adom uniform I had just received the day before. All around me was a mixture of loud Hebrew, muddled directions from the ambulance dispatcher on the radio, questions for me…

Read More...

Why the Protect Academic Freedom Act Must be Stopped

By Derek M. Kwait February 11, 2014

On January 28, a bill passed in the New York State Senate punishing universities that use state funds in support of academic groups, such as the ASA, that boycott Israel. Universities transgressing this ban would lose all state funding. It was fought relentlessly by civil rights groups, unions, academic institutions, and many Jewish groups. It…

Read More...