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I don’t mind Occupy Wall Street. I don’t mind civil disobedience. I don’t even mind police officers trying to do their jobs. Here’s what I do mind: People getting between me and taking that first look at my work email in the morning. I’m getting a little weary of OWS at this point. I’m not […]
Around a table of ice-cold of beer and steaming pizza, one of Judaism’s oldest traditions thrives in a weekly session of raucous Torah study.
It’s called Torah on Tap. This guided discussion of Jewish topics meets every Thursday night on the back patio of Leonardo’s by the Slice in Gainesville, Fla. Leonardo’s is a Gainesville staple and has seen many businesses around it come and go since it opened in 1973. But for the last 10 years, Leonardo’s has also been home to Torah on Tap. Because of Hillel and Leonardo’s, hundreds of students have sat and discussed timeless Jewish concepts over pizza and beer.
Wringing their hands over the imagined plight of “the youth,” the Jewish Federations of North America came together in Denver last week for their annual General Assembly. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer — a founder of Manhattan’s traditional egalitarian yeshiva, Yeshivat Hadar — was the scholar-in-residence at the GA this year. In his address, Kaunfer drew the connection between our generation’s increased willingness to criticize Israel and our generation’s decreased involvement with the Jewish establishment. But the post-GA discussions that have emerged indicate a broader misdiagnosis of what ails the Jewish community — it’s the very definition of community.
We have created a Jewish community so torn by internal politics about Israel speech that we can no longer so much as propose a social justice trip to Israel without creating a political divide in the Jewish community, alienating Jews of good conscience who have already been marginalized for their views.
Pursue is an alumni program cosponsored by Avodah and the American Jewish World Service. Knee-jerk reactions abounded when Pursue announced that it would sponsor an Israel trip. One Avodah staffer resigned in protest and a group of current Avodah participants circulated a petition, which demands that the trip include some Palestinian components like a visit to the territories and interactions with real live Palestinians.
The JTA has an interesting round-up of #Occupy’s Palestinian solidarity issues: While the pro-Palestinian events have been organized by outside groups, the closest Occupy Wall Street has come to endorsing Palestinian activism was a Nov. 3 tweet from the New York branch’s unofficial communications team expressing solidarity with the Freedom Waves mini-flotilla, which tried to […]
While researching my article about Jewish Greek life here at American University, one of the most Jewish private universities in the country (depending on who you ask), I ran into someone interesting. Ibraheem Samirah is a normal college student. He’s a junior studying political science and pre-dentistry, he likes hanging out with friends, he ran […]
Some consider Nick Griffin a racist, some a hero. The British National Pary Chairman was (almost) invited to debate the death penalty at Nottingham University. If you haven’t heard anything about the backlash, check out Rebecca Schapira’s latest article for the Global Jewish Voice: Education Should Battle Ignorance at University By Rebecca Schapira in Nottingham […]
“‘Pi’ me in the face! Save a child’s heart!” It’s a typical shout on the quad from brothers in the local chapter of historically Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi during their biannual AEPi-in-the-Face fundraiser. Passersby pay for the privilege of pushing plates full of whipped cream into brothers’ faces to raise money for Save a Child’s Heart, an organization that provides life-saving services to underprivileged children. The sight is what one would expect from a fraternity: an image of a bunch of fun-loving guys, flirting with female students and laughing along with — or at — their dessert-covered comrades. But beneath the surface, the chapter of this historically Jewish frat is exactly that: Jew-ish.
When I attend a large Jewish conference, I come into the experience with a healthy dose of cynicism and a quick trigger to critique. As a committed Zionist and Social Justice activist, not to mention a philosophy major, I consider myself to be blessed with the ability to see past the explicit messages that these organizations put forward on the surface and to the implicit messages underneath. So it was that I attended the General Assembly (GA) of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) 2011, in Denver Colo., as a part of the Do The Write Thing student journalism conference. My main question was: As JFNA focuses more on Israel experiences, are they developing a truly Zionist initiative? Or is it merely window dressing, a way to capitalize on the trend of Israel experiences?
My group traveled to Jedwabne on July 11, 2011. We were not meant to go to Jedwabne; it was not on our original itinerary. We left Warsaw early in the morning, and by the time we pulled into Jedwabne, it was a beautiful day — the first nice day after a week of rain. The […]