Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I hate New Year’s resolutions. I apologize to those of you who committed to some sort of positive change in your lives at the beginning of 2012 or of 5772, but I think that our current system of once-a-year goal-setting is silly. The problem with New Year’s resolutions is evident from their title: They only happen once a year! We decide to go to the gym on a daily basis on Rosh Hashanah, and by Sukkot most of us are already attempting to convince ourselves that shaking the lulav counts as a legitimate workout. In the Jewish world that I envision, effort toward self-improvement would be the foundation for all of what we do. We would set personal kavanot (intentions) on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, and the result would be a thoughtful, purposeful community, constantly working to become better Jews and better human beings.
Editor’s note, July 2012: As the 40th anniversary of the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German police officer approach, and as the 2012 London Olympics games begin, a call for some recognition of the Munich Massacre goes unheeded by this year’s organizers. We present this piece, written by our co-founder, David Twersky, in September of 1972, in aftermath of that tragedy.
I was in high school, spending the summer at a Jewish summer camp in New York, when Gilad Shalit was captured. For every generation of Americans, there is a conflict that defines the image of Israel that is most vivid to them. For some, it was the War of Independence, for others it was the capturing of the Sinai, the return of the Sinai or the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. For those not much older than myself and the writers whose reflections are presented below, it was the Second Intifada. For us, it looked like it would always be the capturing of Gilad Shalit. But it looks like we may soon be able to replace that with his release.
Those are my brief thoughts on the apparently impending release of Shalit. Below, we present the thoughts of five more New Voices Magazine writers. –David A.M. Wilensky, Editor of New Voices Magazine
When Hurricane Irene blew through the Eastern Seaboard last month, the coordinators of Wesleyan University’s annual pre-orientation Jewish camping trip were faced with dropping enrollment. They scrambled to find a new location after the campsite they planned to hold the program at closed ahead of the storm.
The camping trip, a Wesleyan tradition over the past five years that is entirely organized by students involved with the Jewish community–though not all of them are Jewish–has established itself as an integral part of the Jewish community’s outreach to incoming freshmen and a way of strengthening existing ties. So when Irene threatened its continuation, its leaders fought for its survival.
If you’re in college today, you were as young as 8, as old as 12. The events of September 11, 2001 hover just at the edge of your memory, though growing up in post-9/11 America is an inescapable fact of life. Here, we present seven brief essays, the personal memories of New Voices contributors about that day.
–David A.M. Wilensky, New Voices Editor
When news of JDub’s impending death first hit, we blogged about it a bit. And then New Voices reporter Alisha Kinman checked in with them at their last party. Now, Jewish Daily Forward intern Pnina Kessler is weighing in–and quoting New Voices Editor David A.M. Wilensky. Kessler writes: …I’m here to tell those speculating about the…
The New Jersey Jewish News, a weekly print publication in New Jersey has honored our new editor, David A.M. Wilensky, with a profile and a charming mug shot (see that thing to the right). In the article, Wilensky says some things about New Voices and about the voices we represent: Speaking about the “official” Jews,…
This is a guest post written by Australian student and blogger Liam Getreu. We asked him to write it in response to this JTA article, “Study finds one-fourth of Australians harbor antisemitic prejudices.” For a country of supposedly happy-go-lucky beach-goers without a care in the world, it’s shocking to think that Australia could, perhaps, be…
Rugrats Tags: Rugrats Episodes,Rugrats,Rugrats Games Over a decade ago, the ADL added “Rugrats” to its tabulation of anti-Semitic propaganda. Despite the fact that it brought us the story of Hanukkah, viewable above, the ADL said the show’s depiction of Jewish characters perpetuated stereotypes. One NW blogger analyzes below: I recently read something surprising about “Rugrats,”…
Unless you are living under a rock, you know that the Internet is forcing pre-existing institutions to revolutionize and keep up with the times. Education is one such sector, and Hebrew education is changing as well. Logan Wall, one of our Northwestern bloggers, sheds an interesting light on the concept of how Hebrew schools would…
This article was reported from the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans by Caroline Kessler and written by Ben Sales. Five activists from Jewish Voice for Peace disrupted Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans today. The activists stood in five separate locations near the front of the room and shouted slogans saying…
This is a post by Coco Keevan, the student editor of the New Voices-Northwestern blog. Frankly, it’s been a rough weekend for the Jewish community here at Northwestern University and in Chicago. On Friday, word reached Northwestern’s Fiedler Hillel Center that several explosive packages were intercepted by government officials en route to Jewish institutional targets…
This is a guest post by Moriel Rothman, a senior at Middlebury College and the president of J Street U. The Israeli government did not renew the ten-month settlement freeze that ended on Sunday, so settlement construction restarted. No surprise. Netanyahu would have displayed courage and conviction by renewing the freeze, given his hawkish history…
This is a post by Moriel Rothman, the president of J Street U and a senior at Middlebury College. The recent rise in American Islamophobia has taken many forms. This past May, someone attempted to bomb a Florida mosque in which 60 worshippers were praying. Perhaps more disturbing than the specific event itself was the…