Jewish Queeries Series: The Modern Yentas

By Nat El-Hai June 23, 2021

Real advice. Real Nice Jewish Queers. Introducing the Jewish Queeries Series.

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Beyond Continuity: Speaking Out Against Toxic Hookup Culture in Jewish Youth Groups

By Lila Goldstein October 30, 2020

“Four years after my entry into youth groups, I’ve finally been able to process the harmful culture I was subjected to. Now, I’m more than ready to join a discussion about consent and power in Jewish spaces; there is still much work to be done, and we need participation from the community as a whole in order to create a healthier culture for every Jewish teen.”

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Two Editors on Revelation and Transition

By Rena Yehuda Newman September 9, 2020

In July 2020, Rena Yehuda Newman became the second transgender Editor of New Voices magazine. As Rosh Hashana approaches and the year changes, Rena Yehuda sits down with their predecessor Daniel Holtzman to reflect on writing, yearning, revelation, and transitioning on the job.

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My queerness is more than just a Bible verse

By Amram Altzman May 6, 2016

On this weekend, five years ago, a community member of the synagogue in which I’d grown up stood up at the podium of my teen minyan, and talked about the verse in this week’s Torah portion — one that’s served as the basis for discrimination against queer Jews for decades. I had just come out…

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When rabbis fail

By Amram Altzman April 28, 2016

When Rabbi Steven Pruzansky released a column on his personal blog at the end of March, he claimed that the solution to college campus rape culture is abstinence. If more women abstained from sex, he wrote, as his Judaism warrants, then campus rape culture will magically vanish. I am grateful to have seen so many…

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My Life as a Gay Fratstar

By Anonymous March 31, 2015

Being gay in a fraternity has not been the easiest experience. I joined Alpha Epsilon Pi as a wandering, socially inept freshman. I was at lunch at Hillel and one of the brothers of the fraternity, a fellow psychology major, took an interest in me. He brought me out to a party, and after meeting…

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The Real Scandal of Open Hillel

By Rachel Sandalow-Ash January 22, 2015

In the fall of 2011, Yeshiva University demanded that The Beacon, a student-run publication, remove a ‘scandalous’ story about premarital sex from its website. The student editors fought back, but the administrators threatened them with sanctions if they did not comply with the Orthodox university’s perceptions of modesty. Ultimately, the editors decided to sever ties…

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This Week, I Have Nothing to Say

By Amram Altzman December 8, 2014

  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…

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‘Gay!’ vs. ‘Goy!’: Examining ‘Manliness’ in Yeshiva vs. Public High Schools

By Yitzi Turniansky November 20, 2014

This semester, I read C. J. Pascoe’s Dude, You’re A Fag, an ethnography of a typical American public high school. To summarize some of Pascoe’s “findings” (I put “findings” in quotes because to most teenaged American boys, what follows may come as no surprise), high school boys become men in a two-part process: 1) embracing…

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White, Straight, Male, and Born this Way: An Intro to New Voices #GenderWeek 2014

By Derek M. Kwait November 17, 2014

When I was very young, I was jealous of the way my sister and her friends played together. Other boys were always so aggressive, so into breaking stuff, but girls just played nice. What they were playing–Barbies, house, Mall Madness–I thought was stupid, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t find another boy who wanted…

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On Dress Codes and the Abdication of Privilege

By Amram Altzman November 10, 2014

In middle school (thankfully not high school), “tzitzit checks” were a common feature of my morning. The boys in first period Judaics were required to prove to our teacher and anyone who might ask over the course of the day that that we were following the dress code by wearing tzitzit. Failure to do so…

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The Israeli Government Isn’t Pinkwashing — We Are

By Amram Altzman June 18, 2014

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…

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Torah Secrets for Avoiding Hangovers, Cheating Partners, and Jewfros

By David G. May 30, 2014

  In this week’s Torah portion, Naso, we receive two new laws. First, is the law of Sotah, a process in which women accused of adultery are given a special water that will prove whether they are innocent or guilty, then the Nazirite, someone who has taken a special oath to not drink alcohol, cut…

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Try to Read This and Not Think About Sex

By David G. April 25, 2014

“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” Parashat Kedoshim begins with this powerful command, telling us to be holy because God is holy. It pushes us, giving us an expectation that we just can’t work our way around. We aren’t commanded to be holy because it will extend our lives,…

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Toward a Queerer, Jewier Tomorrow

By Amram Altzman March 31, 2014

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….

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