Archive
I will never forget the day I brought herring sandwiches to school. There I was, an awkward little seven-year-old, eating a vinegary and odorous pickled herring sandwich on brown bread in the middle of the lunch room. A delicious and very filling lunch for a first-grader. And there were the faces of my (mostly Jewish) […]
I have a hard time answering the question, “So how do you identify? Like, Jewish-ly?” On the one hand, I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and attended Modern Orthodox schools since kindergarten, but, for most of my life so far, was part of a haredi community in southern Brooklyn. On the other hand, […]
If you’ve been following the story so far, God, through Moses, has been sending plague after plague upon the Egyptians, steadily bringing the greatest empire on Earth to its knees all for the sake of a small nation of slaves. This week, in Parashat Bo, the story is coming toward its great climax, with […]
When I traveled to Warsaw on a Holocaust study tour two summers ago, my group found the city particularly warm. In the middle of the day, we stopped for a respite—from the heat as much as the emotional drain of touring Holocaust sites—at a Starbucks in the city center. The juxtaposition—of both the air conditioning […]
I am very openly willing to criticize the Israeli government. Two of my recent blog posts for New Voices have been criticisms of Israel’s Housing Ministry for announcing the constructions of new settlements at a crucial point in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and Israel’s Prime Minister in condemning the announcement of negotiations between the United States and […]
A good deal of time passed in my life where Judaism was very far back in my mind. Jewish life for me used to just mean meeting up with extended family and friends for the holidays, and here and there Friday night dinners with my family were made a little more special by turning them […]
If you are reading this, you have almost certainly been affected by the life and philanthropy of Edgar Bronfman, who passed away Saturday. An heir to the Seagram’s beverage fortune, Bronfman used much of his wealth to contribute positively to Jewish students of all stripes, including creating the Bronfman Israel Fellowships, which has sent over […]
Most of us have already seen this week’s Torah portion, Shemot. It’s taken right out of the epic film The Ten Commandments that we all grew up watching over Passover. Oh wait, it’s the other way around. This week’s portion is the opening of the book of Exodus. In it, we learn about Pharaoh being […]
In high school, I idolized Jack Kerouac. I dreamed of beatnik-esque wanderings, of driving wherever the highways took me without a particular destination in mind. I had a realization, though, when some friends and I waited on the el platform in one of Chicago’s northern neighborhoods to return to our campus in the southern part […]
When I walked into the 2010 Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) conference, I was 14, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and a newcomer to the feminist movement. Although I am now 18, slightly jaded, and been an active feminist for a few years, I was still extremely excited to attend the 2013 JOFA conference on December 8. […]