Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
In a day and age of DIY Judaism and Jewish innovation, Syd’s Queer Jewish music is modern revelation: a Jewish practice that draws from tradition and is refreshed with new melodies and media. New Voices has a conversation with Syd to talk about composition, spirituality, queer identity, and creativity in a time of quarantine.
I am queer — and my decision to be queer is a conscious decision. There were times in my life when I wasn’t queer, but it’s been a process through which I have grown into my identity as someone who identifies not as gay, but primarily as queer. And, as I’ve grown into it, that…
We, the American Jewish community, have an Israel problem, and we need to talk about it. It’s not the fact that Israel exists. It’s not the fact that it’s a politically fraught topic to discuss — although that’s certainly part of it. It’s the mere fact that Israel and Zionism as abstract concepts are…
When I first heard about the National LGBTQ Task Force’s decision to cancel A Wider Bridge’s event at the Creating Change conference this past weekend, I was sad. I know what it’s like as a religious person to feel alienated from queer spaces because of my decision to remain religious despite coming out of the…
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…
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…
“The African newscaster asked the Jewish rabbi why there were no female rabbis, and the rabbi was very clever – he asked why there were no female chiefs!” I am not sure if it was the self-congratulatory racism, rehash and ignorance of colonial dynamics, or the justification of sexism that irritated me more. There I…
Preliminary results of the Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 are out. Started last spring by Drs. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, this is the first comprehensive scientific survey ever of an underrepresented and under studied demographic: American…
The idea of “pinkwashing” is not new. The concept is defined as such: the Israeli government, having to deal with the violation of human rights in the Occupied Territories, uses its record on LGBTQ inclusion (for example, its military has never had a Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell policy, unlike some countries we know) to obscure…
When I was in high school, I had this fantasy where I told myself that I would come out of the closet as soon as I got that one text from a friend asking if they could tell me something, and then they would tell me that they are gay. That fantasy was never realized….
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…
I wrote last week about how I grew up in the Modern Orthodox world, but now feel that, in terms of practice, I identify as part of the vast, grey area between Modern Orthodoxy and Traditional Conservatism, and how I, along with peers from both my religious right and left, can build upon that vast,…
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…
We recently posted an op-ed by Carolyn Klaasen, a member of Young, Jewish & Proud. Carolyn argued that a queer safe space is one where queers can “strategize, energize, and organize to fight for our safety outside of that space.” She applies this understanding to a dispute over whether queer Palestinian solidarity activists should be…