Judea Thought: Lag B’Omer 5781
Something behind a // Maybe-belief
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
A romance from the New York Mycological Society blossoms into a trek through the world of Jewish urban foraging
“The Torah of OCD is simple: it is an important and very serious mitzvah to manage my OCD as skillfully as I am able on any given day, seeking out the support and resources I need to live well and in good health. And it is deeply complicated: I am no longer comfortable theologizing pain.”
“Zines are a lot like Torah: passed down from generation to generation, with each text inspiring more texts, more commentaries, more sparks, more light. Jewish Zines are like Torah in another way: only you can reveal what comes next.”
“The Rabbis wrote commentaries and we write zines.”
“Whether we ‘claim’ her or not, whether we knew her or not, as a Jew, Jessica Krug is part of our community. All of us must atone for her transgression, just as all of us must atone for the transgressions of synagogues who hired police and security that scrutinized Black Jews and Jews of Color entering our sanctuaries. There cannot be any evasion here.”
“The mountains, on the other hand, they weren’t afraid. They got up and did a little dance, like muscular rams hopping from rock to rock.”
In this excerpt from a collaborative High Holidays reader entitled “Our Still Small Voice”, Raffi Levi brings Jewish spiritual wisdom on enoughness and healing for readers looking to set an intention for the whirlwind Days of Awe.
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.
We are very much in the wilderness, traveling together through the desert. This fellowship has revealed to me how much all Jews need Torah – and how much the Torah needs all Jews, especially those who feel most at the edges of the camp.
We are still at the beginning of this period, and it can still feel like a miracle; we will learn more from this moment if we remember that it is nothing less than a revolution, and that we are responsible for helping this revolution reach all Jews.
This zine was created by Rena Yehuda Newman, who is a 2019 fellow with New Voices and Judaism Unbound. It was originally published on Judaism Unbound’s website.
As I pack the last box and turn out the lights to the apartment, I feel the tears begin to come. They are tears of anger, and of sadness, and of grief. They are the tears of a young woman who has had to make decisions that no 25-year-old should have to make. At the…
Content warning: discussion of sexual violence. The below is an edited version of a d’var Torah that was delivered at Yale University’s student egalitarian minyan on Friday night, August 24th. Parshat Ki Teitzei begins with a particularly haunting section: י) כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ ה’ אֱלֹקֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ׃ (יא) וְרָאִיתָ֙ בַּשִּׁבְיָ֔ה אֵ֖שֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּ֑אַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ֣…