Some People Just Shouldn’t Talk

By Carly Silver June 30, 2010

Louis Farrakhan is ridiculous. Let me begin by putting that out there. I first came into contact with Minister Farrakhan when I was about 12, when hip-hop stars Ja Rule and 50 Cent sat down for a special “mediation” with him on MTV. Rule and 50 were interviewed separately about their “beef” with one another,…

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Take a Stand

By Carly Silver June 24, 2010

A Jewish dance troupe in Germany is attacked by young boys throwing stones. Welsh men bandy racial slurs about and tell the Jews to “go home.” Helen Thomas barks out a similar request. What is all of this hatred doing in today’s world? It’s time to take a stand and nip this racism in the…

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Battle of the Catchy Palestinian Children’s Extremist Indoctrination Songs

By Ben Sales June 23, 2010

Egyptian pop heartthrob Amr Diab has many hits throughout the  Arab world, such as “Nour al Ain” and “Habibi.” The one I’ve watched most on YouTube, however, is “Al Quds De Ardina,” which translates to “Jerusalem is Our Land.” There aren’t any subtitles, but the title and music video make the point pretty clear. See if you…

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Hungarians and the Holocaust

By David A.M. Wilensky June 18, 2010

Crossposted to Jewschool You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that’s what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can’t deal with it, you know? Someone’s killed 100,000 people, we’re almost going, “Well…

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Fifth Column at the Town Hall

By Elle Mikulincer-Weiss June 18, 2010

Christian-Muslim Kulturkampf comes to the neighborhood

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350 Jews Watch Two Jews (Successfully) Talk about Israel

By Ben Sales June 17, 2010

On June 16th, J Street NYC and the New York Society for Ethical Culture hosted a vital conversation between Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street Founder and President and Jeffrey Goldberg, National Correspondent for the The Atlantic entitled, “Who Speaks for Me? Israel and America in the 21st Century.” .The Center for Ethical Culture on 64th…

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Who Speaks for the Irvine MSU?

By eweiss June 17, 2010

The college campus has always been a place for heated debates, but has it gone too far? When protesters from the UC-Irvine Muslim Student Union shouted down Ambassador Michael Oren, the school came under fire for allowing students to overstep their bounds as activists.   Freedom of speech is important but the event was a black…

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Circle Up

By Carly Silver June 16, 2010

This summer, I’ve been lucky in my work: my interest in ancient history has led me to work at Archaeology Magazine and my love of family history resulted in an internship with the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. Enter my Jewish heritage. One of the projects NYG&BS interns work on in the summer is…

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On the World Cup

By smelamed June 15, 2010

This week, the 2010 World Cup kicked off in South Africa. The biggest sporting event in the world, the monthlong slate of games is being hailed as the greatest thing to hit Johannesburg since democracy. Organizers have promised boosts in jobs and tourism, and promoters are convinced that this event will raise the profile and…

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The Real Problem with Helen Thomas

By Ben Sales June 15, 2010

Helen Thomas’s statement, and the equivocating reaction it elicited from the anti-Israel left, opened up the question of which rhetoric is just, and which is just hateful.

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A slim sliver of hope for a more religiously pluralistic Israel

By David A.M. Wilensky June 15, 2010

Crossposted to Jewschool God bless the supreme court of Israel. They aren’t always as daring as I want them to be, but sometimes they do the right thing. And that’s what they did yesterday when they decided that the state may no longer subsidize the learning of yeshiva students. Here’s the full Haaretz article, and…

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An Honest Look at Israel

By Ben Sales June 14, 2010

One Thanksgiving during college, my father told us that though we criticize many of the United States’s policies and actions, we should never forget that we live in the greatest country in the world: a country that pioneered and sustains religious and civic freedom, political equality, tolerance and democracy. His point was that criticism and appreciation should…

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Boo Hookah

By Ben Sales June 10, 2010

In case you were wondering, tobacco is terrible for you. And in case you were wondering, hookah is tobacco. If you’d chosen to forget that until now, don’t worry: I’d sublimated it for some time too. Hookah used to be, for me, a way of looking exotic, feeling Israeli and trying out low-risk smoking, and…

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The People of Israel and Genetics

By Carly Silver June 9, 2010

Who are we? Where do we come from? As it turns out, Jews are just Jews: our very own ethnic group. Recent studies have shown that Jews appear to be genetically different than non-Jews and, indeed, are closely related to one another. This revelation comes through Human “HapMap” Project, which examines human genome sequences; recently,…

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The Punishment of Gazans Must End

By smelamed June 8, 2010

I know we’ve all heard enough about a certain clash on a certain boat in the waters off a certain strip.  So forgive me for once again using this space to talk about the Mavi Marmara melee.  If it’s any consolation, the bulk of this post won’t focus on the early morning events of last…

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