Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
As my cursor hovers over the “submit” button at the bottom of my graduate school applications, I stop to consider the environment I am going to inhabit at the cost of countless dollars and hours. I am understandably wary. In the time it took to raise me to the age of 18 with aspirations of…
People who disagree with me are not worthy of my attention or my respect. At least that’s the message my fellow progressives are sending conservative students on campus. Here’s how the argument goes: Because of my superior morals and politics, I made the correct choice at the ballot box this year. I have earned admission…
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…
There seems to be many ways for presidential candidates to pander to Jews. One might look to the 2012 election, during which Republican candidate Michele Bachmann said she loved Israel so much that she put aside her fiscally conservative values to join a utopian socialist kibbutz when she was eighteen. Donald Trump, however, seems to…
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…
Women of the Wall (WoW) was founded 25 years ago as a women’s minyan at the Western Wall to meet on the first of every Jewish month. A few years ago, some of WoW’s leaders started getting arrested for wearing non-“feminine” (read: colorful) talitot and tefillin in violation of a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling….
Stereotypes, Oy [Huffington Post] Howard Meyer laments the longevity of unflattering Jewish stereotypes, claiming they are representative of the prejudices of a few discontents years ago and have little relevancy in today’s Jewish communities. He cites examples from the Seinfeld episode “The Yada Yada”, above, in which Jerry’s dentist converts to Judaism “for the jokes”,…