Kayla Cohen

Illuminating the Diaspora in “The Full Severity of Our Connection”

By Kayla Cohen December 8, 2020

Capturing the tension between a wide-ranging diaspora and conflict-ridden Jewish state in her new book, “The Full Severity of Our Connection,” author Kayla Cohen navigates questions of peoplehood in a contemporary, global context as a Jewish college student.

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My Jewish Awakening

By Kayla Cohen January 7, 2020

“Awakening” suggested a kind of milestone, a coming-of-age, almost a second bat mitzvah. Here was my unofficial rite of passage into the real Jewish world: not an aliyah, but anti-Semitism.

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The Spaces in My Togetherness

By Kayla Cohen April 3, 2019

This essay originally appeared in ZAMAN, an arts & media collective dedicated to the remembrance, preservation, and re-evaluation of Mizrahi cultural consciousness.  Last year, my friends and I invited one of our visiting lecturers, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, to a Tu B’Shvat seder in the Charedi-turned-hippie neighborhood of Nachlaot. The event’s Facebook page asked guests to bring…

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