Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I usually read, but do not respond to, the comment threads on my articles for this publication and others. Why, then, do I read them, despite my editor’s adamant suggestions not to? To a certain extent, I have a perverse pride in rankling ideologues of all stripes (and for those of you critical of my…
“Middle ground is just another word for failure. I do NOT want to make a deal! We deserve it all!” That’s the philosophy of the “NO-gotiatior,” a man who wants to teach you how to make the power of “No” work in your life. It got me to thinking: What advice might the NO-Gotiator…
Recent occurrences on campuses have greatly undermined freedom of expression and should serve as a forewarning of what will happen in the future. While the hardliners of any ideological camp will seldom admit it, the perpetrators and victims have been people on both the left and right; both Zionists and anti-Zionists. In a…
“I felt my feet were praying.” – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his experience in the third Selma to Montgomery march for civil rights. I was marching through a display of Christmas trees with a group of Jews screaming for the rights of people of color when I was first struck by the question of…
This past week has left me, and many others, searching for answers to questions I only recently realized I had. What follows is a series of thoughts that I had over the last ten days. Privilege, at perhaps its most basic and functional iteration, is the ability to wake up in the morning and…
“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…
If we’re going to talk at all about Open Hillel, we first have to ask, “Why would someone want to stop someone else from speaking in the first place?” Presumably, because they fear the speaking invitation will lend legitimacy or act as a seal of approval to the offending view, or else it will lead…
My name is Sofia, I’m 26 years old, and I live in Italy. Like any young woman, I have many interests: I love traveling, reading, listening to music, eating, and living new experiences. I have been to the Unites States several times, and also to France and Spain, and I also lived in London for…
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…
If nothing else, the over-discussed Pew Report from almost a year ago (almost a year ago — and here we are, still quoting it like it’s the Bible itself!) heralded the death of the American-Jewish religious middle. This summer’s Operation Protective Edge seems to have heralded the death of the American-Jewish political middle, as…
Staring across a room filled with tiny chairs and colorful books, I felt a great fear. The other people there were all strangers, the person across from me had bright red spiked hair, and only about 8 teeth. He looked sort of like my glue-sniffing boss from my days as a janitor. This was way…
During the Nine Days preceding Tisha B’Av, the 25-hour fast commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem,we reflect on baseless hatred (sinat chinam). The Talmud teaches us that it was the baseless hatred among the people Israel that partially brought about the destruction of the Second Temple. (Along with, you know, high-level political drama…
April, 1944. Just weeks after the Nazis invaded Hungary, 15-year-old Ben Lesser and his family were forced to Munkachevo, Hungary. After months of avoiding the Germans in Hungary, the town was liquidated. Lesser and his family were marched to a brick factory shadowed by freight trains. In early May, they were loaded into cattle cars….
The recent debacle about the (Jewish, day-school alum) Princeton freshman who claims he “checked his privilege” dominated my social media network for a good two weeks. A few people came out in his support, but most people – myself included – were furious at his complete inability to consider the advantages he may have…
Here’s why I usually hate Twitter: We will never get to the bottom of the big issues facing humanity—poverty, disease, warfare, Israel on campus—without a long dialogue held in good faith between dissenting viewpoints. In other words, getting to the bottom of the world’s ills will take more than volleying 140-character spitballs with a…