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Last week, the Torah introduced us to the plague of tzarat, a skin disease commonly believed to be punishment for the sin of speaking ill of someone. After introducing it, the Torah continues its discussion of tzarat and its cure in this week’s portion, Parashat Metzora. After discussing the sacrifices necessary, and the process of […]
My grandmother tells this story about how a relative of hers who lived in Israel asked her, quite intensely, whether she was an American or a Jew. She didn’t know what to say; why couldn’t she be both? For many American Jews, including me, this question is ridiculous. I have no problems with the intersecting […]
“Failure will kill the political constituency of the two-state solution,” warned American Task Force on Palestine Director Ghaith Al-Omari at an event co-sponsored by J Street U Brown and Brown RISD Hillel last week. These chilling words reminded me of why it is so essential to demonstrate support for Secretary of State John Kerry’s current […]
I must have told my mother one too many times that she embodies the Jewish Mother stereotype. (She really does, by the way. Ask, as one example, the ten cast and crew members of a show I worked on in high school for whom my mother provided enough food for forty people, lest anyone starve […]
When I told people I was going to Poland for spring break, I received all sorts of responses: “Why are you going there? Isn’t it just concentration camps?” “Wouldn’t you rather be on a beach?” “I would never go to Poland after what they did to the Jews.” To be honest, before I left it […]
This academic year I am a part of the Peoplehood Project: a UJA sponsored program that brings together students from Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Oranim College in northern Israel, and ZWST, a German Jewish organization. Each cohort spends time learning in their respective home countries, then, over winter break, all three groups spend time traveling and learning […]
When I was in high school, I had this fantasy where I told myself that I would come out of the closet as soon as I got that one text from a friend asking if they could tell me something, and then they would tell me that they are gay. That fantasy was never realized. […]
As with much of Leviticus, the material found in this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Tazria, can make us, with our modern sensibilities, squirm a bit. With the description of tzarat, a specific skin disease, the text seems to be stating that any who have strange marks on their skin are sinners who must be isolated […]
I My stepfather always told me that all the best books have maps. So when I opened Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel a map was the first thing I looked for. I found it on the first page of the book, just after the title page and the […]
Two calls, a text, and three Facebook messages, all in less than a week. That was how I learned about B’rith Shalom, South Dakota’s first Jewish student culture club at South Dakota State University. You see, for years, I had been known as “The Jew.” Growing up in the middle the Sioux Empire, we were […]