Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I don’t have much to say about this, but check out some Palestinian protesters in the West Bank utilizing the latest 3-D movie hit/best picture nominee for their own ends. Pretty impressive, at the very least, that they were able to get all that blue paint: It seems dubious to compare the message of “Avatar”…
The first time I heard about Im Tirtzu I was in a kosher Florida pizzeria that was selling the organization’s shirts in exchange of a substantial donation. I asked the cashier what the group was all about. “Tzionut,” she said. Zionism. Bu what kind of Zionism? She didn’t give any specifics. Last week, I found…
We don’t usually plug for events on the NV blog, but students in New York with progressive views on Israel should check out the launch of J Street’s local branch in NYC at the kickoff event this Thursday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. on 27th and 5th. The event will include a webcast of a…
She was Natalie Portman before Natalie Portman was Natalie Portman, Isla Fisher before Isla Fisher was Jewish and definitely before she married Borat. She was the Jewish “it” girl of the mid-to-late ’90s, the time of my pubescence. She was the Semitic goddess, Alicia Silverstone. You know how a lot of guys secretly love “Mean…
December Issue Editor’s Note: What I learned after one Shabbat in the settlements.
To the extent that the subway-riding population is representative of the citizenry of New York, I feel privileged to live in a diverse metropolis. The subway’s signs and ads, in turn, reflect this diversity: I’ve learned more Spanish during my commute to and from work than I did during the week I spent in Mexico…
Given the opportunity, I would shoot Hitler in the face. That’s why, when I saw “Inglorious Basterds” for the first time, I sat in my chair near the end of the movie laughing and high-fiving the person next to me as Donny Donewitz, the Bear Jew, pummeled the Fuhrer right in the Charlie Chaplin mustache…
I love forgetting Christmas. In America, this was impossible. Come Thanksgiving I would lose myself in a rush of jingles, trees and presents, but when I went to Israel in the December of my senior year I noticed that everything seemed quieter: fewer songs blared through public speakers, the malls were less crowded and the…
A dog in Montana speaks Hebrew. That could have been the first sentence of a recent NYTimes article that used a vignette about an ex-IDF German shepherd living in Helena as the lead-in to a story about the small but surviving Jewish population in the Treasure State. The article spent perhaps an inordinate amount of…
An evening in Crown Heights with Chabad’s international emissaries reveals a world of passion and paradox.
Jews have no homeland; they spread out among the nations and seek to control them through a vast underground conspiracy. This was the central claim of Western ethnically-centered anti-Semitism; the point of Zionism, in the writings of Herzl and practical plans of Ben-Gurion and Begin, was to invalidate that claim by providing a nation-state for…
“In 100 years, the situation will be the same as it is now. Nothing will change.” So said a friend of mine on my final night in Jerusalem last summer. She rolled her eyes and sipped a beer. “What about the demographic issue?” I said. “Whatever. We’ll just import a million more Russians. Why do…
Reflections and commentary from the first conference of the new Israel lobby
I was a junior at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy during the height of the second Intifada in 2003 and I remember that for Israel’s memorial day that year our school put up a large banner across the stage, quoting the biblical verse, “And I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live!’ And…