Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
My egalitarianism started out as a compromise: it gave me most of the traditional liturgy and observance I’d grown up around, while also giving me the modernity and progressive attitudes I’d been surrounded by for most of my life. It allowed me to cling to the tradition of my childhood and the feminism and liberalism…
I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in…
In response to the abduction of three teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, Gil-ad Shaar, and Naftali Frankel, over a week ago in the West Bank, a petition to President Obama has been circulating around the Internet asking for the Executive Office to pressure the Palestinian Authority to release the one American citizen of the three kidnapped teenagers….
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…
A mother wakes up and prepares for the day. The routine sounds normal: get the children ready for the day, cook, clean and provide for the family. But, what if it took six hours just to get water? This problem is real for Sub-Saharan African communities. It takes the majority of the day just to…
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….
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…
When I traveled to Warsaw on a Holocaust study tour two summers ago, my group found the city particularly warm. In the middle of the day, we stopped for a respite—from the heat as much as the emotional drain of touring Holocaust sites—at a Starbucks in the city center. The juxtaposition—of both the air conditioning…
In high school, I idolized Jack Kerouac. I dreamed of beatnik-esque wanderings, of driving wherever the highways took me without a particular destination in mind. I had a realization, though, when some friends and I waited on the el platform in one of Chicago’s northern neighborhoods to return to our campus in the southern part…
I wrote last week about how I grew up in the Modern Orthodox world, but now feel that, in terms of practice, I identify as part of the vast, grey area between Modern Orthodoxy and Traditional Conservatism, and how I, along with peers from both my religious right and left, can build upon that vast,…
Tikkun Olam, it seems, is all the rage. Having grown up in a very Jewish area , physical acts of tikkun olam, or “healing the world” have been a part of my Jewish life since preschool. Street cleanups, community gardening, food bank packing, helping animal shelters, the list goes on. Despite all these opportunities to…
As a recent high school graduate, I can safely say that figuring out what to do with your summers can be a minefield. Going to camp is fun, but doesn’t look that great on college applications. Taking classes at a college can be education, but you don’t really want to spend anymore time in school….