Campus anti-Semitism isn’t always about Israel

By Chloe Sobel March 29, 2016

Today, the Forward published six students — five studying at American universities, one in South Africa — who answered a call to write about an experience at college that had shaped their Jewish identity in ways good, bad, or other. It’s an interesting read. The preface states that “every student interpreted the question as being about…

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The Dangerous Myth of the ‘Good Muslim’

By Amram Altzman March 2, 2015

We Jews have a problem: we fetishize Muslims. Not just any Muslims, though: we choose to fetishize the “Good Muslims.” The Muslims, or the Arabs, who stand up for our cause, who toe our party lines, and who stand up to protect us. To be sure, many in our Jewish community also often quite hastily…

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Egalitarian Men: It’s Time to Move Beyond Comfort

By Avigayil Halpern January 20, 2015

  I read with enthusiasm and appreciation my good friend Amram Altzman’s recent piece on Jewish masculinity and egalitarianism. So much of Amram’s work centers on exploring the significance of egalitarian practice for him and other men, and this is necessary and important. I was deeply disturbed, however, by how little women with egalitarian practice…

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Moments in the Mikveh: 3 Poems for Gender Week

By Michele Amira November 21, 2014

Tupac, Anne Frank, & Hannah Szenes – Poetic Justice Of Beshert In this shtetl known as life, I wonder if I will see a brighter tomorrow when everyday seems darker than night. I wonder if heaven has a shtetl, and if I will go there tonight to escape another hate filled day for a brighter…

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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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The One Wish Project is Coming to a Campus Near You

By Derek M. Kwait August 20, 2014

I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those…

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Meeting New People: A Five-Step Guide for Non-Jews Meeting Jews for the First Time

By Ed Mighell August 19, 2014

  College means opening your mind and seeing a lot of new faces. You may even find yourself learning more from those around you than from of all the information in your textbooks. Of course, meeting people who think differently than you can be nerve-racking. If you’re meeting a Jewish person for the first time,…

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Insult and Injury: the Difference

By Derek M. Kwait May 22, 2014

  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…

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My Shabbat Dinner with Muslims

By Audra Gamble April 3, 2014

My grandmother tells this story about how a relative of hers who lived in Israel asked her, quite intensely, whether she was an American or a Jew. She didn’t know what to say; why couldn’t she be both? For many American Jews, including me, this question is ridiculous. I have no problems with the intersecting…

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A Jewish Daughter Reads ‘The Jewish Daughter Diaries’

By Dani Plung April 2, 2014

I must have told my mother one too many times that she embodies the Jewish Mother stereotype. (She really does, by the way.  Ask, as one example, the ten cast and crew members of a show I worked on in high school for whom my mother provided enough food for forty people, lest anyone starve…

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The Most Open Hillel: South Dakota State’s B’rith Sholom

By Derek M. Kwait March 19, 2014

South Dakota State University’s B’rth Sholom is more than just the only Jewish cultural club in the state. Its nine members constitute one of America’s most diverse Jewish organizations, as about half them identify as Messianic Jews, or those with Jewish practice who accept Jesus as the Messiah. “We really don’t try to segregate by…

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Bedbugs, Jewish Mothers, and Other Myths

By Dani Plung January 29, 2014

I begin this piece with a massive thank you and apology to the University of Chicago housing staff. A few weeks ago, shortly after returning to school and before the work for the grading quarter had become intense, while absentmindedly perusing the UChicago Housing policy book , I came across the section concerning bedbugs. I…

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Self-Loathing “Jewtopia”

By Derek M. Kwait September 30, 2013

Jewtopia features Tom Arnold as a gynecologist. That could be the review right there; any further commentary seems superfluous. Yet I will go on because in truth, I have a lot more to say, or at least vent, about this movie. Its central plot concerns the unlikely friendship between Christian O’Connell (Ivan Sergei) and Adam…

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When joking crosses the line [Stereotypes]

By pkessler April 17, 2012

I am Jewish, and in my eyes this gives me the right to be self-depreciating. It’s the same for every culture I have encountered: each pokes fun at themselves slyly amongst themselves and (usually) gets offended if an outsider tries to do the same. So when I read Howard Meyer’s critique of tired Jewish stereotypes…

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Oy with the Jewish stereotypes already; Palestinian prisoner hunger strike; Free the press, and more [Required Reading]

By pkessler April 17, 2012

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”,…

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