Archive
Last year, one of the clubs that I am a part of in school decided to hold a “Smashing the Patriarchy” workshop, to work on our group’s internal dynamics. To my mind, this was completely unnecessary. The group governed by consensus, and we were roughly half male and half female. It seemed to me that […]
Across the country, rape culture permeates life on college campuses, affecting all areas of campus life. According to the BBC, those who join fraternities are three times more likely to commit an assault. “Another fraternity on campus got kicked off for sexual harassment,” said University of Arizona sophomore and Sigma Alpha Mu brother Brent Davis. […]
Both Avigayil and I (Amram Altzman) have written extensively about the ways in which we have taken on Jewish rituals which, traditionally, fall outside of our traditional gender identities. This is a conversation we’ve been having, more specifically, about what it means to take on Jewish rituals and how that relates to our Jewish identities […]
When I was very young, I was jealous of the way my sister and her friends played together. Other boys were always so aggressive, so into breaking stuff, but girls just played nice. What they were playing–Barbies, house, Mall Madness–I thought was stupid, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t find another boy who wanted […]
It was certainly one of the stranger Jewish conversations I have had. (Mind you, I have had many.) There I was in Oxford after a hearty Sabbath lunch, walking in the beauty of Christ Church Meadow, chatting with a new friend about food. At a moment, he turned to me and said, “You said […]
On April 30, 2014 the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization, rejected the liberal lobbying group J Street’s bid for membership by a vote of 22-17. Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, wrote an editorial shortly afterward denouncing the vote, saying “The question of ‘what could be […]
At 19, NYU freshman Jake Rosenberg is already one of the most accomplished young playwrights in the country, getting his plays put on around the country and winning multiple awards. After seeing his latest play, Muse of Fire, a comedy about Auschwitz inmates putting on a farce about the Dreyfus affair, New Voices editor Derek […]
In middle school (thankfully not high school), “tzitzit checks” were a common feature of my morning. The boys in first period Judaics were required to prove to our teacher and anyone who might ask over the course of the day that that we were following the dress code by wearing tzitzit. Failure to do so […]
If we’re going to talk at all about Open Hillel, we first have to ask, “Why would someone want to stop someone else from speaking in the first place?” Presumably, because they fear the speaking invitation will lend legitimacy or act as a seal of approval to the offending view, or else it will lead […]
Do you ever get so overwhelmed about your future that you want to just stop what you’re doing, run out into a field and scream, “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE?!?” Yeah. That’s about where I am right now. I left Yellowstone National Park three weeks ago, where I was working seasonally. […]