Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Thanks to everyone who read my article (“Don’t Hate the Jewish State,” April 12) and especially to those of you who took the time to respond to it, either critically or in support. My article drew so many critical comments because it addressed an idea that makes Jews uncomfortable: that Judaism and Jewish identity do…
Tonight about a third of the world’s population is getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a descendant of King David, considered by Christians to be the Messiah, as prophesied by Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible book by the same name. So even if we ignore the stuff about JC being the Messiah,…
I like latkes, dreidels, gelt, presents, lighting the Channukhia, hanging out with the fam, and other such entailments of the that holiday that starts tomorrow night (December 11th, 2009) which has a difficult-to-spell name, because really, how could you not? But what exactly are we celebrating when we celebrate Chanukah? The discussion over the social…
College students like to sleep. Everyone in higher ed knows about the old stereotype of the lazy college student who won’t schedule a class before 11am because it will interfere with his/her sleep. Last semester one of my profs suggested that we schedule a make-up class for 10pm on a Wednesday, because, “you guys don’t…
If you think about it, Thanksgiving, or ‘T-giving’ as I have taken to calling it in the past month, while not strictly a Jewish holiday, sure seems like one—the food, the guilt, the family and things associated with each—add up to a pretty Jew-y holiday tradition. And this year my family’s celebration seemed especially so….
One of the coolest and perhaps most under-used Jewish resources at Swarthmore is our ‘Beit Midrash’. ‘Beit Midrash’ means ‘House of Learning’ and Batei Midrash around the world function as study halls expressly for the purpose of studying classical Jewish texts. Our Beit Midrash is a small room in a small quad in a relatively…
Last week I promised an exploration of Jewish/queer identity in this week’s blog post. Unfortunately, that I can’t provide…because I showed up mad late to last week’s ‘Queer Shabbat’ at my Hillel. I did get there in time to catch an interesting documentary called “Trembling Before G-d”, about the struggles of queer Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox…
Tomorrow evening, thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?) of Jewish college students across the United States will “go to†their Hillel center or a Chabad house or another Jewish communal setting, say Erev Shabbat prayers, sing blessings and songs, and eat Shabbat dinner with their fellow Jewish students. And I’ll be one of them….
Continuing in the vein of Kelly Seeger’s post last week in the New Voices blog section, I’d like to use this post to discuss an issue of great import to the Jewish college student: the Great Manischweitz (TM) debate. Of all the ways to bifurcate the world Jewish population, this one might be the most…
Sukkot reminds me of the American Midwest of popular imagination. And this Sukkot has so far been all about hardy corn-fed boys braving snappy fall weather to erect a temporary structure in which to conduct the business of life for a week. I did not build the Sukkah that currently stands proudly behind Swarthmore’s dining…
I don’t really know what the audience of the New Voices magazine/website is, but I assume that it’s one that has a better Jewish background than I do. Maybe some of the people who stumble upon this post or anything else I’ve written for New Voices will think, “this guy is an ignorant fool who…
Add this to the plethora of reflections on Rosh Hashana. My Rosh was dissatisfying; sorry if that’s bad karma or something. And it’s my fault. I will now enumerate the reasons why it didn’t live up to Roshes of yesteryear: This was my first year attempting to observe Rosh Hashana while at school. And now…
Every time I sit down with my friend ‘Megan’ (not her real name), we have the same conversation, which consists of comparing our respective “ethnicities” and discussing how we view our particular cultural grouping in America and its effect on our respective world-views. She’s a leader of a campus Asian-American group and takes very seriously…
Hi, I’m Sam Green and I’m a junior history + religion major at Swarthmore College. This semester, I’ll be writing about my experiences trying to incorporate the Jewish calender cycle into life at an irreligious liberal arts college. Topics for analysis may include, but are not limited to: do hipsters dig klezmer?, how the #@)$…