Archive
College is supposed to challenge your assumptions, but right now I’m experiencing the most annoying challenge possible. As planned, I went down a couple of days ago to talk to the rabbi—ordained Reconstructionist, though he insists that the congregation is “unaffiliated”—about my options for converting. He told me, of course, that I and my patrilineal […]
In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians, under King Nebuchadnezzar, decimated the Temple in Jerusalem, forever ending ancient Israelite culture. With the Temple destroyed and most of its worshipers exiled to Babylon, it seemed that God had left His “Chosen People.” Yet, after defeating the Babylonians in 539 B.C.E., King Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemendid […]
When I was looking for 10 reporters to become this semester’s New Voices National Correspondents, the field was full of Cohens, Fines and Silvers; among seven others, we hired Zach C. Cohen, Dafna Fine and Carly Silver. But there was also this Chen in the mix, one Jun Chen. Jun is a graduate student at […]
Here’s the thing about your year in Israel: You plan for it for a full year, you make lists, you buy clothes (skirts that cover your knees!), you stock up on toiletries, you book your flight and you Facebook-stalk your future roommate. And yet, however prepared you might think you are, nothing can possibly prepare […]
Judah Cohen felt like he was living in a different world when he heard the news Sept. 11, 2001. Then teaching at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, he said his scare began the moment he turned on the TV, and continued throughout the next couple of weeks as he saw missing persons’ pictures plastered everywhere on the streets of Manhattan.
Over the last few weeks, a discourse has taken place between Rav Shlomo Riskin—chief rabbi of Efrat—and Rabbi Andrew Sacks—the director of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Masorti (Conservative) movement in Israel. The conversation started when Riskin wrote in the Jerusalem Post about the conversion controversy in Israel. For the not-yet-up-to-speed: Debates have surged in the past […]
Today in New Voices Magazine, we present “September 11, 2001: Half a Lifetime Ago,” seven essays by people for whom the decade since 9/11 represents one half of their entire life. Today’s college students grew up in the post-9/11 world and can hardly remember the pre-9/11 world. These essays were co-published with The Jewish Daily […]
If you’re in college today, you were as young as 8, as old as 12. The events of September 11, 2001 hover just at the edge of your memory, though growing up in post-9/11 America is an inescapable fact of life. Here, we present seven brief essays, the personal memories of New Voices contributors about that day.
–David A.M. Wilensky, New Voices Editor
One of the most shocking facets of Israeli culture, especially as a growing Jew who has experienced a scant half-dozen different observant communities, is reliance on symbols and outward signs of Jewish practice. The first day in Israel, I went to the Old City. Right after dinner, I turned toward the Kotel, the western wall […]
I’m told that Modern Orthodoxy has a look. It’s funny to think of the Modern Orthodox as a stereotype, but only because I’m part of it and have been my whole life. You can see the stereotype of Hasidim in pretty much any Hollywood movie (test my theory–1 in 10 movies has a clip of […]