Tattoos / Freedom
“It felt so right, I could almost understand why God said no; no human should be allowed to experience the amount of joy and love from such a simple interaction.”
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Article Archive
Jewish Futurisms: Predictions For The Next Half Century
Inspired by Rabbi Joshua Bolton’s poem “Jewish Futurisms,” New Voices Fellows composed their own set of poetical predictions for the next 56 Jewish calendar years.
Consolations For the Self-Hating Jew
“Little Jew, you have no / power but the blame / takes the edge off.” A poem for T’sha b’av.
On This Very Day, One Pesach Later: A Passover Reader
After a year of pandemic, one Pesach later, four Jewish students and thinkers have assembled a Passover Seder companion, filled with reflections on a year of plague and visions of redemption.
Erev Tu b’Av
New Voices Fellow Miriam Saperstein’s poem on the evening before Tu b’Av, the Jewish celebration of love.
And The Sages Said Let Him Die
the day i bit my fingers a biblical red i found an excerpt from the Talmud; a man becomes deathly ill with love for a woman i can count the number of men my body trusts on one hand the doctors say; he will have no cure until she engages in sexual intercourse with him…
(Where) My Body Did Not End
(Where) My Body Did Not End after Loose Strife by Quan Berry Draw a map with no beginning you were not born but plucked from tree vast and placeless mark the spot in your mother’s garden ( ) you broke water, took root Draw a timeline with the texture of your hair knot the habits…
Shalem / שלם
This poem originally appeared in ZAMAN, an arts & media collective dedicated to the remembrance, preservation, and re-evaluation of Mizrahi cultural consciousness. Three calendars hang in our kitchen: One begins in spring, one in fall One in winter. The start and halt Of a well-used car. A sundial Someone keeps moving. Summer begins In my Papa…
In Which the Wall Spits Back My Prayers
In my hollowest moments I wish my mother named me after a breathing thing a name with a voice to choke it over I pray for RachelRebeccaLeah, nice Jewish girl names that never die bonded to a land we bulldozed to make our own, but a man calls me the new Josephus curses me…
Poem: Equilibrium
In the beginning God created the heavens and a round earth But for five thousand years we couldn’t see our world’s true extent. Blind and unknowing, we drew our flat paper maps with heavy lines and solid edges, Contained, finite, concrete, And when we were cast off to its four unfamiliar, foreign corners We fixed…
Poem: You Have to Keep Swimming
When Oceans Stand Between You and Your Dreams, You Have to Keep Swimming By Rachel Chabin, Stony Brook University Our Exodus begins with water. It begins with crossing when the water is over your head. It begins with a decision, a conviction; it begins with the choice to try to swim. When we fled to…
Find inspiration in Jewish history on International Women’s Day
Today is International Women’s Day, a global simcha that began as International Working Women’s Day in 1909, spawning from the Socialist Party as a way of acknowledging the world-changing contributions women have made to society. Eishet chayil, or “woman of valor,” is my kavanah for International Women’s Day. While we rejoice in the women who have…
Why Not God? The Dangers of God-Talk
Words are strangely versatile; put them on a page and they glow with intellectual distinction. Put them over music and they transcend themselves to become vehicles of beauty (or they don’t). Put them on a website for Jewish students…and who knows? Maybe words are subject to a quota system; write too many about Emil Fackenheim…
Wrestling with Faith and God – 6 Poems
Full there is a deep breath resonating through the walls and I am coming closer to catching it not concerned with lasting concerned with now not before but because of arriving not leaving made-up not fantasy there is a deep breath resonating through these paper walls not calm but…