Archive
Bloggers made much ado as Julia Lipnitskaia took to the ice in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. It wasn’t because she was one of the best figure skaters in the world at only 15 years old. It wasn’t that in Lipnitskaia Russia had a representative on the rink for the first time in 10 […]
Yiddish is my favorite class. This isn’t new information, I’m sure; I’ve written about it on several occasions, including a piece entitled “On Why I Take Yiddish.” I furthermore use Yiddish allusions and colloquialisms as a matter of practice—in writing as well as in general conversation—so I’m sure my new found passion for the language […]
I think my education started early. I remember sitting in the car with my mother at the age of 10, en route from my Hebrew school to … somewhere. It was the spring of 2002, height of the Second Intifada,and the rhetoric that went alongside it. I was narrating all of the things we had […]
In my more angsty, middle-school days, Jimmy Eats World’s “The Middle” ranked up there with my personal anthems alongside Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid,” and other songs playing into adolescent angst. However, the middle is no place to be for anyone — politically, socially, or religiously. Francine Klagsburn’s article in last week’s Jewish Week […]
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” We all have good intentions, yet in the end, whether through procrastination or distraction, we usually fail to accomplish all we had hoped. I’m often saying, “Today, I’m going to start my diet and workout,” but instead find myself forgetting to even do the most basic […]
An all-star panel of influential Jewish thinkers, writers, and community leaders addressed the questions of Jews and power Sunday at the Inaugural North American Symposium in Memory of Avi Schaefer at Columbia/Barnard Hillel, sponsored by The Avi Schaefer Fund and Mechon Hadar. The event was organized in large part by the Avi Schaefer Fund’s executive […]
Every night, I fall asleep to a playlist titled “Jewish Sleep Music.” Once upon a time, as a child, it consisted of mainly Kol B’seder’s covers of melodies that I’d learned in Hebrew School, like Shalom Rav and Oseh Shalom. At the time, before I really knew what their lyrics meant, the songs relaxed me because […]
On January 28, a bill passed in the New York State Senate punishing universities that use state funds in support of academic groups, such as the ASA, that boycott Israel. Universities transgressing this ban would lose all state funding. It was fought relentlessly by civil rights groups, unions, academic institutions, and many Jewish groups. It […]
Last week it was discovered that New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, held an off-the-record meeting with AIPAC. This caused the Jewish political left in New York to draft a letter to Mayor de Blasio expressing their disappointment over his decision to ally himself with AIPAC, as opposed to taking a harder look at […]
Al Jazeera. Simply hearing the name would bother me two years ago, like nails on a chalkboard. In my ethnocentric view, I believed Al Jazeera existed for the sole purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda with the utmost criticism of the nation. How could I trust any of their other journalism with their articles containing blatant […]