Archive
The level of anti-Israel discourse at Portland State University is a “5.” What I mean to say is that pro-Israel students needn’t avoid the random keffiyah, but at the same time, a campus-wide Am Yisroel Chai party isn’t in the works either. The stairways of the student union are usually peppered with the latest BDS […]
“Israel – Worse Than Apartheid?” was written on the whiteboard of an American University classroom yesterday during a “Discussion on the Israeli Apartheid Analogy,” part of AU Students for Justice in Palestine’s roster of events for Israel Apartheid Week. Being an SJP-organized event, opinions in the room tended to be favorable toward the pro-apartheid analogy […]
Yup. You know all that debt you’re getting into paying your tuition? You better just drop out now, says presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Not really, but pretty close. Santorum, who has a BA, an MBA and JD, criticized President Barack Obama for saying in the State of the Union that everybody should go to college, […]
Up close and personal in the Gaza Strip [Vice News] After a failed attempt in 2007 to make it into Gaza, during a violent conflict there, Vice News finally makes it in, sharing their insights and experiences on one of the most hotly debated geographic regions on Earth. Licking the Lubavitcher Rebbe…? [Jerusalem Post] A […]
Students for Justice in Palestine members at American University protested the administrative detention of Khader Adnan, who was arrested last December by Israeli police forces, by going on their own hunger strike for five days. Israel believes he is an Islamic Jihad terrorist, but has been unable to produce any evidence. Authorities never formally charged […]
I’ve reached a point in my personal musings on Modern Orthodoxy that I’ve started to wonder whether such a thing is even possible: the merging of modern life and religious Judaism. Is Modern Orthodoxy a contradiction in terms? The Modern Orthodoxy ideal is living and engaging in the modern world while maintaining a lifestyle committed […]
I’ve got two items of note on the Israeli Apartheid Week front today: Tablet Magazine has a nice selection of opinions on how to deal with IAW And Brits throwing water balloons. I’ll leave the water balloons aside for a minute and focus on the Tablet piece, which brings together a variety of people all combating IAW in their own […]
Facebook is a source of endless procrastination for college students, a place for middle schoolers to explore their burgeoning sexuality via pictures taken in mirror reflects, and occasionally, a place for political and social activism. This is one of the latter stories. As Rabbi Jason Miller commented in this Jewish Week blog post, Facebook is […]
Training to be a Jew [Tablet] Jake Kohlman, a Jewish soldier in the American armed forces, reflects on how his basic training enabled him to connect to his religion. “At that Sunday service, for the first time, I started to understand. The chaplain’s words lifted my spirits. I remembered why I had joined in the […]
Rabbi Mordechai Rackover, the Jewish chaplain of Brown University and the rabbi at Brown-RISD Hillel (which serves both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design), doesn’t quite fit the popular conception of Orthodox Jews as out of touch with the modern world. He’s rarely found without his iPhone (except on Shabbat, of course), maintains a Kosher food blog, and is an almost alarmingly prolific tweeter. By any measure, he is as deeply involved in both modern American and Orthodox life as anyone can be. So what led him to strongly decry a recent statement by a group of Orthodox rabbis that condemned gay marriage, though he agrees with them that it is “halachically impossible”?