The Western Wall Taught Me a Lesson – And It Wasn’t What You’d Expect

By Elizabeth Zakaim October 14, 2016

There it was – the Western Wall, hakotel hama’aravi.  The sun was hanging over the top of the wall, reflecting off the stones at my feet. As I stood in front of the holiest sight in Israel, I realized I was waiting for something, some reaction to the realization that I was finally at the…

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How to travel Europe with your ghosts

By Leah Tribbett June 3, 2016

To grow up Jewish is to grow up haunted. I’ve never lived on a Civil War battleground, and I’ve never shared my closet with a ghost (two brothers who tried to scare me to death, yes — but never a ghost), and yet the feeling of being haunted is as well known to me as…

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Embracing Uncertainty: Why You Don’t Need To Have Everything Figured Out

By Amber Ikeman November 5, 2014

Do you ever get so overwhelmed about your future that you want to just stop what you’re doing, run out into a field and scream, “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE?!?” Yeah. That’s about where I am right now. I left Yellowstone National Park three weeks ago, where I was working seasonally….

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Why is a Nice Jewish Girl Like You Moving to Wyoming?

By Amber Ikeman July 29, 2014

I turned 25 this year. Something about that looming birthday made me evaluate who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. I asked myself if I was happy, if I was fulfilled and doing what I pictured for myself in my mid-twenties. It didn’t take long to realize that the answer was no. I…

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Those Awkward Moments

By David G. July 25, 2014

There is this belief that the rich and famous have these amazingly exciting lives, making some of us regular people want to live vicariously through them in the form of memoirs, tabloids, and TV documentaries. Our own lives seem boring in comparison to the recorded ups and downs of celebrities. With less than three decades…

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Costa Rica Defends its Jewish Record Against…?

By Zach C. Cohen January 29, 2014

I am blessed to have had the opportunity to travel extensively in the last six months. Following a four-and-a-half month stint in Costa Rica studying at la Universidad Nacional in Heredia, I traveled in Israel on Birthright provider Kesher. After leaving those travels, I had a lot of thoughts on what it means to be…

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From Costa Rica to Israel

By Zach C. Cohen January 23, 2014

San José is an ugly city. The streets are lined with storefronts due for a paint job. Trash and dog droppings line the sidewalks. Every afternoon, like clockwork, the tropical weather brings in a rainstorm that puts most Sunday showers stateside to shame. At night, drug dealers and (legal) prostitutes roam the streets. In this…

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How I Became a Proud Wandering Jew

By Dani Plung December 19, 2013

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…

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Finding Permanence in a Sukkah

By Dani Plung October 31, 2013

[fblike style=”standard” showfaces=”false” width=”450″ verb=”like” font=”arial”] You’d think after forty years of wandering and two thousand subsequent years of diaspora, the Jewish People would be used to spatial transitions.  I mean, we seem to pass everything else L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, so why not the nomadic nature? Don’t we even take a full eight…

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¡No hay Judios aqui!

By Harpo Jaeger July 21, 2011

Oaxaca has everything: beautiful scenery, delicious food, and a party (with parades, fireworks and more) pretty much every night.  Yet after three weeks here, I think I’ve discovered the one thing it lacks. Jews. A few days after I got here, an elderly gentleman stopped me on the street.  “¿Usted eres Judio?”  In broken Spanish,…

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Egypt II

By meuriarte March 10, 2010

This is the second post of a series. To read the first post, click here. The next morning we walked passed the synagogue on our way to the main boulevard. It was an impressive cement building with a giant Magen David centered above the entrance, which had two Greek columns on either side. The temple…

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Wandering Jew: Shabbas in Beijing

By peil August 28, 2009

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, had a special fondness for French Jews,” Rabbi Shimon Freundlich said. He raised his glass, nodding toward a cluster of guests seated in the crowded room, and took a healthy swig. It was a recent Friday night at the Chabad Lubavitch House in Beijing, a villa on a tucked-away…

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Playing the White Man: A Day with the Abayudaya of Uganda

By Noah Hertz-Bunzl December 14, 2005

Last summer, on the eve of Shavuot, during one of my visits to the Abayudaya, a Ugandan community that converted to Judaism in the 1920s, I met a young man named Israel. Later that night, Israel’s older brother, Saul, his wife Samalie, and their newborn child, were hit on their bike by a motorcycle, on…

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