Archive
Most Americans are familiar with what the media has dubbed the “War on Women,” or Congress’ relentless attacks against many basic women’s rights. Fewer know that Israel is also suffering from a resurgence of conservative ideologies and consequent rollback of feminist gains. In her book The War on Women in Israel: How Religious Radicalism is […]
The Israeli band Shmemel recently released a controversial, tongue-in-cheek video single entitled Berlin(English translation and annotation here, courtesy of The Forward). In the song, the band sings a ballad of Israelis leaving the country – for economic opportunity, for the madness of living in a state of constant war, or for a better and more […]
A section of this article was featured in the Daily Northwestern on September 1st, 2013. She fell into the ditch thinking she was dead. All around her she breathed and touched dying human flesh. The bullet had apparently missed her. She desperately raised her arms to push through the masses of bodies that were […]
As someone with quite an anti-authority bent, this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Shoftim, has always been one that I have struggled with. Parshat Shoftim lays the foundations for the future government of the Kingdom of Israel, establishing five different leadership roles. These roles include judges, law enforcers, kings, priests and prophets. The former anarchist in […]
On Friday, August 22, Aaron Sofer was taking a shortcut through the Jerusalem Forest with his friend. The two became separated when his friend wanted to try hiking up a hill, and later that evening when the friend returned home, he discovered that Aaron was missing. When I came online Saturday night, I learned about […]
There is an anachronistic story in the Talmud in which Rav Ashi, a 4th Century Sage from Babylon, engages the infamous Judean King Menashe in a debate. Rav Ashi, shocked by King Menashe’s knowledge of Jewish law, had to ask how such a great Torah scholar could commit one of the gravest sins in Judaism […]
I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those […]
College means opening your mind and seeing a lot of new faces. You may even find yourself learning more from those around you than from of all the information in your textbooks. Of course, meeting people who think differently than you can be nerve-racking. If you’re meeting a Jewish person for the first time, […]
If nothing else, the over-discussed Pew Report from almost a year ago (almost a year ago — and here we are, still quoting it like it’s the Bible itself!) heralded the death of the American-Jewish religious middle. This summer’s Operation Protective Edge seems to have heralded the death of the American-Jewish political middle, as […]
Some people study whales. Some people study epistemological analysis. I study white people. More specifically, I am interested in diaspora networking and migrant housing stock, but I am also interested in the way whiteness as a concept affects these in host countries. A lot of the time, that idea means things like deeply […]