Archive
When you first walk through the Mountain of Despair that marks the entrance of the new memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. on the National Mall, the vision of two massive walls of water about to collapse is inescapable. As visitors pass through and see King’s likeness etched into the part of the monument known as the Stone of Hope, it is almost as if King is getting ready to part the Tidal Basin for his people’s long-awaited escape to freedom.
“It’s gorgeous,” Rachel Silvert, a senior at American University, said. “It’s a beautiful monument.”
The intimidating mural of stylized heads and arbitrary brushstrokes in the lounge of my dorm quotes the Talking Heads: “And you may ask yourself ‘Well, how did I get here?’” The most honest answer I can give: I have no idea. I’m living in a time warp, watching my seventeenth year fly by on fast-forward. […]
For Apple, that was indeed the question. After protests from Jewish activists, the software giant removed from their App Store a French program called “Juif ou pas Juif,” or “Jew or not Jew.” For $1.08, users could find out if their favorite stars qualified as members of the Tribe. The app’s creator, Johann Lévy, is […]
It’s tempting to call freshman Penina Yaffa Kessler a rookie reporter. But that would be misleading. We first met her back in May at our Jewish Student Journalism Conference. This was right after we had moved into our new office, inside the offices of the Forward. Penina told us that she was a rising freshman […]
When Hurricane Irene blew through the Eastern Seaboard last month, the coordinators of Wesleyan University’s annual pre-orientation Jewish camping trip were faced with dropping enrollment. They scrambled to find a new location after the campsite they planned to hold the program at closed ahead of the storm.
The camping trip, a Wesleyan tradition over the past five years that is entirely organized by students involved with the Jewish community–though not all of them are Jewish–has established itself as an integral part of the Jewish community’s outreach to incoming freshmen and a way of strengthening existing ties. So when Irene threatened its continuation, its leaders fought for its survival.
Full Name: Haley Jennifer Joy Pessin Bio: Haley Pessin is a junior at Williams College in MA majoring in French and History. She thoroughly enjoys reading books, attending the theatre and classical music concerts, and consuming gelato. You identify as a “JewMaican.” Would you explain what led you to identify this way? Well, my father […]
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 […]