Archive
Though If Not Now, When? An Open Hillel Conference began at Harvard Saturday night, I wasn’t able to arrive until Sunday afternoon. When I got there, the swarm of familiar black t-shirts seemed to indicate my worst suspicions would be confirmed: This is basically a student JVP conference in disguise with some Jewish SJP activists […]
In recent/days weeks the hashtag #JSIL has been trending on Twitter. It has become popular amongst anti-Israel activists to the use the hashtag to promote the idea that the actions of Israel are similar to those of the so called “Islamic State” (ISIL). Users of the hashtag did not have anything particularly interesting or intelligent […]
“Orthodoxy’s greatest innovation was its decision to stop innovating.” These were the words of a friend of mine in high school, a non-Orthodox student at my Modern Orthodox high school, voicing his frustration at Orthodoxy’s seeming inability to develop and adapt to (post-)modern values. When I published my last article, one of the largest criticisms […]
By now, the controversy over the Ohio University “Blood Bucket Challenge” video is relatively old news: About a month ago, Megan Marzec, president of the OU student senate, was challenged by the university president to dump a bucket of ice water over her head in support of ALS research. She responded by making a video […]
My name is Sofia, I’m 26 years old, and I live in Italy. Like any young woman, I have many interests: I love traveling, reading, listening to music, eating, and living new experiences. I have been to the Unites States several times, and also to France and Spain, and I also lived in London for […]
Last weekend, I drove down from Burlington, Vermont with nine other activists from school to participate in the People’s Climate March. It’s hard to really explain how inspiring the march was. Maybe because it was the march finally showed a side of the environmental movement that we haven’t seen much of yet—a diverse group of […]
In the US, those of us who keep kosher in any form (and yes, that means many things) are used to kashrut wars. Is Does said person keep to that seal? Is this food OK, or is it Star-K? Will a thousand demons eat me if I have a block of Triangle-K cheddar? In short, […]
Yesterday, I reviewed Hoaxocaust!, a new play performed and written by Barry Levey that satirizes Holocaust denial simply by putting the arguments of some of its biggest proponents, Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in context. I saw the show the night of September 11 (coincidentally), then on September 12, I caught […]
It’s 9/11 in New York and I’m commemorating by seeing a Holocaust comedy. Though Barry Levey originally wrote Hoaxocaust! written and performed by Barry Levey with the generous assistance of the Institute for Political and International Studies, Tehran for the New York Fringe Festival, I became aware of it during its second run at the […]
I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in […]