Review: “These and Those” Tests The Limits of Jewish Safety
A new play by Ruth Geye paints a critical, intimate portrait of a modern orthodox student Shabbat lunch, asking, “how much are we willing to mutilate our souls in the pursuit of safety?”
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
A new play by Ruth Geye paints a critical, intimate portrait of a modern orthodox student Shabbat lunch, asking, “how much are we willing to mutilate our souls in the pursuit of safety?”
Over the course of my time at New Voices, I’ve been called a lot of things in comment sections, tweets, and emails from dubious Hotmail accounts. I’ve been called a radical leftist, a right-wing apologist, a snowflake, a “silly little girl who should listen to her mama.” (My mama is a progressive, too – surprise!)…
This year, I realized something new about the holiday of Sukkot. Sukkot challenges us to envision and construct a new kind of Jewish community, one that lies outside of our everyday institutions. We are commanded to dwell in a new reality, where we welcome in all those on the margins of our community, as well…
A few weeks before the election, the Wesleyan Jewish Community, a proud Open Hillel, gathered in our sukkah to discuss the meaning of Jewish values. Students from Cardinals for Israel, J Street U, and Jewish Voice for Peace talked about the complexities that led us to develop our particular beliefs about politics and justice. Inside…
Originally published in Ha’am. In our era, different societies and communities worldwide advocate pluralism heavily. Pluralism is a uniquely modern idea, in which a society allows – or even encourages – the coexistence of more than one system of thought and values. Unsurprisingly, pluralistic ideals have been heavily championed in our own UCLA Jewish community…
When I was little, I looked forward to the day in December when my dad asked us to dig the “Chanukah box” out of the attic. Out came the electric menorah to put in our window, the glitzy blue and silver garland of dreidels and Jewish stars to hang on our bannister, several rolls of…
On May 11, more than 70 students from Brown University came together to commemorate the Nakba by watching three films produced by the Israeli NGO Zochrot. Nakba is the term for the 1948 expulsion and displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians, and Nakba Day is observed on May 15, the day after Israeli Independence Day. “Within…
Yesterday, despite its official cancellation, a group of Brown University students gathered at the Brown RISD Hillel building to watch three short films about the Nakba. According to a statement from Sophie Kasakove, one of the event’s three organizers and a member-at-large of Open Hillel’s steering committee, the event had been in the works for…
The Jewish community has always been in the project of negotiating itself — what people are part of the Jewish community, what opinions are acceptable, and what are not. We also have a tradition of ideological pluralism which dates back centuries — indeed, to some of the earliest rabbinic literature. Throughout all that tradition, some…
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…
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…
by The Swarthmore Hillel Board On November 11, former speaker of the Israeli Knesset Avraham Burg was supposed to give a talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Harvard Hillel house. Instead, Hillel barred him from speaking at the Hillel house, and he ended up giving his talk in an undergraduate dormitory on campus. The…
Heresy! (?)
Heresy warning: I’m not sure I believe in God. Or, at the very least, if I believe in God, I do not believe in God as He Who Dwells on a Throne and Smites You When You Sin, as I was taught as a child. When I pray, I do so not necessarily out of…