Shabbat, Chronic Illness, & Radical Rest
“I have seen Jewish wisdom anchor chronically ill and disabled people amidst a society that is built, in many ways, to exclude us.”
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
“I have seen Jewish wisdom anchor chronically ill and disabled people amidst a society that is built, in many ways, to exclude us.”
“Zadie’s fork clatters on the table, startling me. So, he says, taking a breath to steady himself, I have been told that you are gay.”
“I told you, you can. You’re a Jew, I’m a Jew, it’s what we are. We take things. You can take it.”
“What would these Jewish futures look like? What would our canon become, and what would new Jewish media look like? Maybe most importantly, what choices can we make to bring these Judaisms into the present?”
A new play by Ruth Geye paints a critical, intimate portrait of a modern orthodox student Shabbat lunch, asking, “how much are we willing to mutilate our souls in the pursuit of safety?”
“To my surprise, Shabbat dinners became a predictable and grounding occurrence every week. My mom cooked, I set the table, and my dad and brother cleaned up after the meal. Sometimes it was twenty minutes of near silence then everyone scurried off to their bedrooms again. Sometimes it ended in explosive arguments and someone finishing their plate an hour or two later in the kitchen. But sometimes it worked.”
I remember telling my mother on the first night of Hanukkah sometime in high school that I didn’t want to sing “Hanukkah O Hanukkah” or anything else in English while we lit the candles. However, I also didn’t want or know how to sing the Hebrew prayers, wrapped as they were in religiosity, complicated words, and foreign melodies.
If your family is anything like mine, you were raised on mandel bread and ridiculous family stories that felt like a “Seinfeld” reboot in the making. Growing up, I was a proud member of the Metro Detroit Jewish community. I went to shul regularly, sang in the congregational choir, taught at Sunday school, and attended…
My initial reaction after the fact was relief. After months of planning, weeks of searching for the perfect readings, and a few crazy days of racing around like a chicken with its head cut off, I had finally crafted my first Friday night Shabbat service. And thankfully, it was a success. Earlier this year, as…
Originally published in J. Weekly. Being isolated from community tests one’s commitment to the values and practices that normally bring that community together. This is what the experience of being a Jew in China has taught me. I grew up in the warm embraces of Judaism, spending many hours at Yavneh, a Jewish day school in…
Every Friday at 7:30 p.m., University of Minnesota students pile into the Steiner family’s Chabad House for dinner. As usual, there is homemade challah and matzo ball soup, but there’s also something special – the dinner was made by the students themselves. That’s because of the Kosher Cooking Club, or KCC. Every Thursday, students get…
Sarah Waxman and I immediately bonded over our curly, Jew-fro-esque hair. As Jewish women have done for centuries, we swapped notes over the creams, conditioners, gels, and mousses we use to keep the frizz away. But what I really learned from Waxman, the founder of a Jewish women’s wellness initiative, was that my mental health…
My mom lights the Shabbat candles as she covers her eyes with the palms of her hands. The room is dark except for the light in the kitchen, a lamp in the dining room, and the yellow glow from the flames. “Baruch atah Hashem,” she recites the prayer alone, my sisters and I sitting in…
With Thanksgiving here and Halloween behind us, ‘tis the season to discuss the role of secular holidays in our Jewish lives on campus. Hillels across the country work to keep college students engaged in Jewish programming and within a Jewish community while they are away from home. They are continuously battling increasing secularism, and in the…