Archive
Originally published in J. Weekly. Being isolated from community tests one’s commitment to the values and practices that normally bring that community together. This is what the experience of being a Jew in China has taught me. I grew up in the warm embraces of Judaism, spending many hours at Yavneh, a Jewish day school in […]
Originally published in The Jewish Exponent. For the past year and a half, I have served as president of the student board of Hillel at Temple University. Over the course of my time on board, I’ve seen students plan weekly Shabbat dinners, various types of holiday programming (including the ever-popular Chocolate Seder) and our first-ever […]
Originally published at Red Alert Politics. At the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, I passed by prominent white supremacist Richard Spencer, who beforehand said, “Effectively, any policy, idea, or belief that is markedly right-wing and traditional — that evokes identity, power, hierarchy, and dominance — must be regulated by the possibility that it could potentially lead […]
Now more than ever as I am trying to make sense of the world and find employment, I find myself looking for female role models. I realized quite recently that my Jewish grandma is the only female icon that I really need. To put it simply, my grandma is a badass who pursued her dreams […]
Throughout the 20th century, American Jews – particularly young Jews – were agents of social change. The pre-war generation stood for worker’s rights, while the generation after the Holocaust marched at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Why then are there so few Jews active in the contemporary resurgence of progressive student activism? Some […]
“Where do you go to school?” “UC Berkeley.” “UC Berkeley? Wow, the front line. You students are fighting an important battle over there. Keep it up!” I can’t tell you how many times I had this conversation – at shuls, Shabbat tables, even half a world away in Jewish communities abroad. The language always struck […]
Every Friday at 7:30 p.m., University of Minnesota students pile into the Steiner family’s Chabad House for dinner. As usual, there is homemade challah and matzo ball soup, but there’s also something special – the dinner was made by the students themselves. That’s because of the Kosher Cooking Club, or KCC. Every Thursday, students get […]
Dear Jewish community, So, you wanna understand Israel/Palestine debates on campus. The first thing you have to do is stop talking about BDS. Shocking, right? We try. But really, BDS doesn’t summarize what Israel conversations on campus are all about these days. BDS measures on major campuses are actually going down, and yet, somehow, they […]
Our generation has created two gods. One of them is Facebook. Bold statement, right? But let me explain: There is a real G-d and a god we have created in our own (albeit distorted) image, and we dubbed that god “social media.” We spend all our time on it and use it to engage in […]
My favorite childhood books, “Curious George” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” always gave me a smile. They’re both fun light reads with lovable, mischievous main characters. Their creators, however, share a dark, trying past. The authors and their ancestors, H.A. and Margaret Rey and Maurice Sendak, respectively, survived the Shoah before creating some of […]