Archive
Today in New Voices Magazine Max Elstein Keisler recounts the tale of terror and woe that was his brief time living with the anti-Semitic roommate from hell. On top of that, the video above is Max’s rap about the same incident.
On Saturday I went on a holy pilgrimage to New York Comic-Con – the ultimate East Coast nerd gathering. Comic-Con is a convention where comic book publishers, video game companies, anime and manga makers, and local collectible stores gather to sell colorful character themed crap to people paying at least $45 for admission. It is […]
I had no idea what I was in for. The apartment was nice, for Allston. It had hardwood floors, two bathrooms, a working dishwasher, a porch and quite a bit of floor space, all for $600 dollars a month. Plus, laundry in the basement. I moved in three days after Irene didn’t hit and had my mezuzot up by the second day. The first week there was cool. Then the problems started. Let me introduce you to my fifth roommate–let’s call her Tiffani. Pink blotches in her hair, stomach bulging out from under her crop-top, omnipresent smell of stale cigarette smoke. Straight out of the trailer park, you feel me? I let her sign the lease thinking I shouldn’t be a snob, people need to co-exist, there’s enough room for everyone.
On October 3 it was announced that Alan van Capelle – a well-established activist within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement – has been appointed president of the recently merged Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ). According to an article posted by the Jewish Daily Forward, van Cappelle will […]
Students for Justice in Palestine is currently holding its first national conference at Columbia University from October 14 to 16. The keynote address — the only part of the conference open to the press — featured academic luminaries Mahmood Mamdani, an professor of government at Columbia, and Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, an anthropologist who has taught […]
It’s pre-frosh season again. I remember it like it was yesterday: the spam from colleges imploring me to apply, waived application fees to universities I’d never heard of, and the constant feeling of dread inspired by the Common Application website bookmark on my browser, an ever-present reminder that I would have to spend hundreds of […]
Whenever I attempt to explain to someone what I am doing in Israel, their first question is always, “What’s a kibbutz?” A kibbutz is a kind of gated community. It’s a collective community based on a high level of social and economical sharing, equality, direct democracy and tight social relations. A member of a kibbutz […]
I was in high school, spending the summer at a Jewish summer camp in New York, when Gilad Shalit was captured. For every generation of Americans, there is a conflict that defines the image of Israel that is most vivid to them. For some, it was the War of Independence, for others it was the capturing of the Sinai, the return of the Sinai or the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. For those not much older than myself and the writers whose reflections are presented below, it was the Second Intifada. For us, it looked like it would always be the capturing of Gilad Shalit. But it looks like we may soon be able to replace that with his release.
Those are my brief thoughts on the apparently impending release of Shalit. Below, we present the thoughts of five more New Voices Magazine writers. –David A.M. Wilensky, Editor of New Voices Magazine
There are stickers with Michigan spelled out phonetically in Hebrew characters, Jewish bling abounds and satisfying a falafel craving isn’t hard to do: Welcome to the University of Michigan.
For a lot of seniors, the beginning of the school year means being back in Ann Arbor for the first time in eight months–for others that hiatus was spent where hummus and shawarma are plentiful and shekels are the preferred form of currency. It seems only natural for these students to return even more in love with Israel than when they left. Eight months later and with much-improved Hebrew skills, two U of M students, Ben Wolf and Alyse Opatowski returned with a perspective that perplexes the creators of the programs that sent them to Israel–frustrated and disenchanted with Israel.
Question: What’s the first page that appears when you Google “Jewish social justice”? Answer: The Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice. In addition to having an awesome domain name (jewishjustice.org!), this organization is also doing amazing things to engage the Jewish community in justice work. To quote their own vision statement, “In 25 […]