YU’s Basketball Stardom Can’t Dazzle Away Assault Allegations

By Dylan Caine January 18, 2022

Yeshiva University’s win-streak is overshadowing the team’s assault allegations. Jewish Press coverage is complicit.

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Modern Orthodoxy: Stop Appeasing Orthodoxy

By Amram Altzman June 1, 2015

 In January 2014, Rabbi Avi Weiss’s conversions were called into question by the Israeli Rabbinate. At the time, this was the most prominent example of the differences between the Orthodoxy’s left and right wings, as well as the growing gulf between American and Israeli Jewries. This gulf widened last week when news broke of the…

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Undoing the Non-Orthodox Inferiority Complex

By Amram Altzman February 9, 2015

When I was in high school, I stopped wearing my kippah. I felt myself drifting away from the ultra-Orthodox community of my childhood and the Modern Orthodoxy my parents tried to model for me at home. I stopped wearing my kippah because I wanted to disaffiliate from the Orthodox Jews that filled New York City…

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Reflections of a Day School Graduate, One Year Out

By Amram Altzman May 26, 2014

  I’ve written before on my day school education and its different aspects, critiquing how it taught me (or perhaps should have taught me) to look at my history and my past; I’ve also offered what can perhaps be best described as a back-handed compliment to my Jewish education. Now, as someone who has been…

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Stopping Orthodox Erasure

By Amram Altzman April 14, 2014

Dear Jew in the City:   I understand what you’re trying to do on BuzzFeed with your articles about trying to normalize Orthodox Judaism. You are trying to show that, no, those of us who were raised in the Orthodox world (or are Orthodox now) do not actually have to be that different from you…

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Hart Levine Brings Grassroots Judaism to Campus with the Heart to Heart Project

By H. B. Rubin March 13, 2014

It all started with Chanukkah caroling. Late one night, in the midst of finals week stress, a few male Modern Orthodox University of Pennsylvania students decided to carol some Channukah songs at the doors of their Jewish friends. As they walked down the hallway, snapping their fingers and singing in a loud messy harmony, they…

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Dine N’ Meet: A Radical New Concept

By Simi Lichtman October 29, 2012

The target audience of YUConnects, Yeshiva University’s matchmaking website, is those young marriage-hungry singles who, due to religious reasons, wouldn’t be able to meet on their own accord. Let me explain. A few younguns gather around a Shabbas table, three guys and three girls. What transpires? Total gender segregation. You see, as Orthodox Jews, socializing…

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Latest on Rav Bina: Karate rabbi comes to aid of abuse rabbi [Parsing]

By David A.M. Wilensky February 9, 2012

Rabbi Ari Fuld wrote to Jewish student press hero Yedidya Gorsetman to say, among other things: ‘I truly believe you are an evil person’ for ‘trying to murder Rav Bina with your pen.’ He also compared Gorsetman to a dead fish and began his missive by saying, “I am not trying to threaten you in any way.” Which…

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Jewish seminaries doing it right (and by it, I mean ‘it’) [Sex!]

By David A.M. Wilensky February 1, 2012

Big news, folks. Three American Jewish seminaries have been pronounced “sexually healthy:” Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform seminary with branches in Cincinnati, New York City and Los Angeles Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the — you guessed it — Reconstructionist seminary in Philly Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative seminary in New York City The Religious…

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The Reading List: The Student View on Goldstone

By Ben Sales April 8, 2011

Students at Harvard say that the world’s military powers need to be more attentive to how they confront non-state actors in the wake of Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent retraction. [Harvard Crimson] This article on JVP should have quoted leaders from other groups involved in Israeli-Palestinian discourse. [Brandeis Justice] Yeshiva University’s neighborhood is the rat capital…

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The Reading List: Yet Another “Just Had Sex” Parody

By Ben Sales April 6, 2011

Jewish A Cappella groups are going crazy with the videos. Above is the latest offering, from Kol Ish: “Just Had Chametz,” a parody of “Just Had Sex” that I like better than “Just Broke Shomer.” And here’s a video of an awesome Jewish student with two moms. And here’s a kid who’s extremely excited to…

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The Reading List: Sorry, Jewish Boys…

By Ben Sales December 28, 2010

Natalie Portman is engaged and pregnant. [People] American Football hits Israel, a step up from the storied Jerusalem yeshiva boys’ flag football league. [NYT] All the young Jews get together on Christmas Eve. [JIDaily] Seven YU high school students will get to take a class with a renowned Israeli author. [YNet] Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian…

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The Reading List: YU gets a Chabad…

By Ben Sales December 27, 2010

To reach out to all of those wayward YU Jews… [Frum Satire] How inflated is your grade? [NYT] Even on your e-reader, the siddur stays shomer shabbat. [JPost] Newsflash: Religious expression is okay on campus. [HuffPo] Is Zionism Satanism? This bishop says so. [NYT Lede]

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