The #1 Failure of Holocaust Education Isn’t Discussed

By Max Buchdahl May 1, 2018

According to a survey recently reported in the New York Times, 41 percent of millennials wrongly believe two million or fewer Jews died in the Holocaust and that 66 percent of millennials could not say what Auschwitz was. American Jews understandably reacted with extreme concern, shocked that so many of their fellow Americans – particularly…

Read More...

First Results of the Jewish Student Survey are In!

By Derek M. Kwait September 15, 2014

  Preliminary results of the Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 are out. Started last spring by Drs. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, this is the first comprehensive scientific survey ever of an underrepresented and under studied demographic: American…

Read More...

Why the Jewish College Student Survey Matters to You

By Derek M. Kwait March 25, 2014

For all its hype, the Pew report missed a lot of college-aged Jews, and therefore might have missed a lot about us. Two professors from Trinity College in Connecticut, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, hope to get the true picture of who we are and what we want by creating an online survey accessible here…

Read More...

Queering the Liturgy: To Adjust or to Search?

By Jonathan Katz December 12, 2013

It is a problem that I and many other queer Jewish students face: as religious folk, we want to pray. But how do we – gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, queer, and other identities across the “rainbow ” – connect with a liturgy that is often seen as heteronormative, cis-normative, and well, “straight”? Some say, “the…

Read More...

Pew Survey Conversation (Part 3)

By Derek M. Kwait October 30, 2013

Part 3 in a 3 part series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. 7.      What are your reactions to survey respondents’ answers to “What does it mean to be Jewish”? What creates Jewish meaning for you? Dr. Steven M. Cohen, sociologist: These questions pertain to areas of great ambiguity. I wouldn’t…

Read More...
Meet Steve, Sarah, Eliana, and Jonathan.

Pew Survey Conversation (Part 2)

By Derek M. Kwait October 29, 2013

Part 2 of a 3 part series. Part 1 is here. 4.      Are the survey’s categories of denomination a useful marker of determining true religious affiliation/practice in today’s Jewish world? Dr. Steven M. Cohen, sociologist: Yes. Denominational identities can be meaningful for people as many are strongly attached to Orthodoxy, Conservatism, Reform, and Reconstructionism. But…

Read More...

Torah and modern activism; don’t pray the gay away; and more. [Required Reading]

By John Propper February 27, 2012

Israel has more non-orthodox Jews than Haredim, study finds [Jewish Journal] A recent study demonstrates that Israel’s Conservative and Reform populations appear greater in number than that of its Haredim (ultra-orthodox), though not by much. Could this knowledge spell a shift in representation for an Israeli population that doesn’t seem to make as much political…

Read More...

Hillel president on his salary and number of Facebook friends

By Zach C. Cohen January 1, 2012

While reporting on the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial near Washington, D.C. a while back, I had the opportunity to sit down with Wayne Firestone, the president of the Hillel Foundation. After giving a speech to a crowded ballroom filled with 5,000+ people (embedded above), Firestone and I chatted about the future of Hillel and…

Read More...

Is American University 25% Jewish? Or 12%?

By Zach C. Cohen November 3, 2011

My father has always loved math because it’s simple, it’s direct and it’s truth. That’s not always the case, though. Statistics are finagled all the time, and the student newspaper at American University, the Eagle, of which I am the student life editor, found that AU’s Jewishness was not as black and white as we…

Read More...