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We spent the night before Passover in different rooms. Some of us were in kitchens with our families, clearing our drawers of chametz. Some of us were in the library finishing homework before the start of the holiday. And some of us spent hours in the last Tufts University senate session of the year. Yet […]
When I was in first grade, my family set high academic standards. From day one, my father told me I was going to Harvard, despite my learning barriers. For years, that belief was instilled in me, and I made sure to fit his dream, skeptical of whose passions drove me. To get the grades, I […]
My mom lights the Shabbat candles as she covers her eyes with the palms of her hands. The room is dark except for the light in the kitchen, a lamp in the dining room, and the yellow glow from the flames. “Baruch atah Hashem,” she recites the prayer alone, my sisters and I sitting in […]
Dear Sean Spicer, You had to do it, didn’t you? You had to play the Holocaust card. With Steve Bannon watching smugly from his perch on the president’s shoulder, you held Hitler up as a model fascist, because at least he didn’t use chemical weapons. You said this on the first day of Passover. And […]
When I first came to Boston University in the fall of 2014, I split my time about evenly between two places – the Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (CGSA), home to all the LGBT-centric groups on campus, and BU Hillel, the center of Jewish life. But as time went by, I gravitated more and […]
Other than the mention of holidays like Christmas and Easter in the Wizarding World, J.K. Rowling avoided the topic of religion in her “Harry Potter” books. After all, the complexities and controversies surrounding faith would have felt a little out of place in a young adult series and would have bogged down the momentum of […]
Ohio State University Hillel cut ties last week with an LGBTQ Jewish student organization, and possible homophobia is just the beginning of why it’s a problem. To recap, the split occurred after the group, B’nai Keshet, hosted an event to help queer refugees. They co-sponsored the event with Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish group […]
There are anti-Semites in the White House. They rank among the president’s closest advisors. Still, when I tell student activists that I feel unsafe in Trump’s America, I’m met with blank stares. I may be Jewish, sure, and everyone knows Jews have been persecuted. But in today’s student activist circles, Jews don’t count as a […]
Dozens donned tacky pink yarmulkes, danced the hora, and had a l’chaim at Drom in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, March 23 to celebrate the nuptials of the band Golem – and, well, it’s not really clear what that means. The event, titled Golem Gets Married was an irreverent, gender-bending riff on an old Catskills tradition, […]
LGBTQ Jews have long been on the front lines, fighting for social justice. We are found on every page of the LGBTQ movement, from Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected to office in California, to Avram Finkelstein, who co-founded the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. We are found on every page […]