“Jewish Media Is…”: An Unsettled Fellowship Reflection
“Jewish media is constantly questioning what I think I know, what I think I believe, and who I think my heroes are.”
Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Article Archive
Smith College Hosts a CIA Operative Who Tweeted Anti-Semitic Tropes
Originally published in The Forward. On Monday, December 11th, the Khan Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College will be hosting a panel discussion featuring Valerie Plame Wilson. After her initial invitation, consisting of a talk about her time as a CIA operations officer, was received and accepted, the news broke that Plame had retweeted an…
Are You an #AppallingYoungJew?
This week, social media users witnessed a beautiful onslaught of snark and defiance from the Jewish millennial corner of the Twitterverse. Young Jews took to Twitter appalled by a swiftly deleted tweet suggesting that Israeli Knesset member Michael Oren had called their views on Israel appalling. “The opinions of young #american #jews are appalling. They need the…
Let’s All Be Traitors
Treason has been on my mind a lot the past few weeks. In the Jewish world, the website Canary Mission – which seeks to create a “blacklist” of pro-Palestinian activists – has caused a controversy. Many of those profiled on the site are Jewish – including New Voices contributor Tom Pessah; those of our brethren…
Why Trevor Noah Is Terrible
The last time someone named Noah’s actions were so globally significant, animals boarded a boat in pairs, it rained for forty days and the world flooded. This week, it was the Twitterverse that flooded over because of comedian Trevor Noah’s: a) appointment to the highest throne in the comedic news world as the replacement for…
The Jews are (Not) White
There’s a point in academic research where one becomes somewhat monomaniacal. I wouldn’t know what that word means unless it had been on an episode of The West Wing, but here I mean to say that I’ve sort of lost the ability to think about things that aren’t Jewish identity and theology (to the eternal…
5 Ways to Make Jewish Life Less ‘Clichéd’ from an Actual Millennial
I am a Millennial. I say this proudly. I dance around Jewish tradition, modernity, and practice in a way that Millennials do. I whole-heartedly enjoy my status as a Generation Y’er. At the same time, however, I really don’t like how much of the conversation about how to engage my peers is fundamentally had…
#JSIL and the Hypocrisy of its Advocates
In recent/days weeks the hashtag #JSIL has been trending on Twitter. It has become popular amongst anti-Israel activists to the use the hashtag to promote the idea that the actions of Israel are similar to those of the so called “Islamic State” (ISIL). Users of the hashtag did not have anything particularly interesting or intelligent…
OMGWTFEXODUS: A Dialogue With the Man Who’s Bringing the Bible to the 21st Century
Part live spectacle, part Biblical scholarship, comedian David Tuchman’s OMGWTFBIBLE podcast “reframes the Bible as the world’s oldest weekly comedy serial.” A year-and-a-half after its debut in April 2013 (as seen in New Voices), he’s now heading into Exodus. I caught up with David recently in the food court of Grand Central Station to discuss…
#YesAllJews / #NotAllJews
The #YesAllWomen meme has been one of the most transformative moments in the history of social media, and it’s been exciting to watch the long-overdue conversations it has inspired unfold across all media platforms. Recently, it got me thinking: Are there experiences common to all Jews, or at least all North American Jews? My thoughts…
Two Student Censorship False Alarms
Kate Jacobson, the former Israel chair at the University of Calgary, recently bowed to pressure from other students and resigned her post due to her highly controversial views on Israel, as reported by the Calgary Jewish News. The most important thing to note here is that she was not told to leave by Hillel— upon…
#Generation
I love hashtag communication: the modern use of these small hash symbol labels meant to convey a specific point. You can sum up an entire paragraph of concepts and ideas in a single pairing of symbol and word. Who needs prepositions, gerunds, and contractions? Who wants words? I’m an English literature major, and even I…
Insult and Injury: the Difference
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…
A Failure of Sense and Torah Study: On the “Indigenous” Argument
So my last article– discussing the historical parallels between Israel today and White South Africa pre-1994 – went mildly viral. It was something I was not prepared for: I had expected the typical (warm, exciting, and fairly big, but nevertheless decidedly niche) response a New Voices article garners: a few dozen Facebook “likes,” no more…
A Brave New Hillel or More of the Same?
This has, possibly until now, been the academic year of Hillel shooting itself in the foot. Though its roots go back much further, Hillel’s troubles began in December, when then-new Hillel President and CEO Eric Fingerhut published an op-ed in the Jewish Week with AIPAC’s Jonathan Kessler announcing their intention to work together on college…