We Are Someone’s Ancestors

By Avigayil Halpern August 1, 2019

Protest does not remove us from our Jewish people. Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milcah, and Tirzah are our ancestors, too. Standing for what is right can create new Torah, can change the fabric of the world entirely, and in the process make us integral to that new world.

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Ariana Katz Weaves Her Mark Into Jewish Podcasting with “Thread”

By Ariella Markowitz June 27, 2019

“If the only thing this podcast accomplishes is to have someone resist saying even one time ‘I’m a bad Jew’… then it will have been a success. Rule #1: there is no such thing as a bad Jew.”

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“Yadet Miad?”: Recollections of Jewish Life in Iran

By Sophie Levy May 8, 2019

This series of graphite illustrations on paper combines images and text from a wide range of sources to pose and address the question: “what does it feel like to remember a place you have never been?”

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Song of Descents

By Adina Singer May 2, 2019

Nurit arranges a tomato rose surrounded by green pepper spirals on a small glass plate of tuna salad. She admires her masterpiece and sets it down next to the box of spelt crackers on the table set for one.

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Book Review: “Between Iran and Zion”

By Josie Krieger April 5, 2019

Photo credit: Josie Krieger. Lior Sternfeld wants you to judge his book, “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” by its cover. Depicting the Tomb of the prophet Daniel in Susa, Iran, its movement and color speaks to the relationship between Iranian Jews with other Iranians – and other Jews. The fluid and…

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Spotlighting Unsettled: Deep Reporting From a New Series on Gaza

By Ariella Markowitz March 26, 2019

Media representation of Gaza usually falls into one of two categories. There are programs covering the facts and figures: KALW’s “Gaza Corner” comes to mind, a weekly news program reported by foreign correspondents. The second category is the generalizing documentary project: think Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow, which employs Gaza as a metaphor in a more…

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Q&A: Writer Marissa Miller on Journalism and Imposter Syndrome

By Julia Métraux February 21, 2019

Having written for dozens of publications, from Vogue to Vice, Marissa Miller’s extensive portfolio is certain to strike the interest of many journalists and media consumers alike. Miller, who hails from Montreal, Quebec, isn’t what many would consider a typical Jewish journalist. Her beat doesn’t center on the Jewish world, but rather on gender, fashion,…

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Vaybertaytsh and the Language of Exile

By Jonah Lubin January 30, 2019

Yiddish holds an extraordinary place in Jewish history. From a Middle High German lexical and syntactic base, Yiddish was shaped by the conditions of Jewish life in Central Europe. It adopted words and syntax from Romance and Slavic languages, and, of course, was heavily influenced by the Hebrew and Aramaic of traditional Jewish learning. The…

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Judaism’s “First Reformed” Moment Is Here

By Ariel Wexler January 9, 2019

The central question of “First Reformed,” Paul Schrader’s film about a pastor reckoning with climate change, is, “Can God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world?” It’s a good question for American Protestants, and for all of us living between skeptical optimism and righteous despair. It’s high time for Jews to have our…

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The Shtetl Goes Digital: Modern Yentas Turn to Facebook

By Sarah Asch November 27, 2018

Photo credit: athree23 | Pixabay.com. This past summer, Ronit Treatman read a wedding announcement in the New York Times about a successful match made at a bar mitzvah. Treatman, a 50-year-old Philadelphia native, has spent the last decade connecting the Jewish community, largely through several community forums she has built and managed on Facebook. Reading the…

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The Mad That We Feel: A Video Response from Pittsburgh

By Ilana Diamant November 14, 2018

The day that my street became a crime scene, I didn’t go to my job as a waitress. Everything was too heart-achingly fresh and the lockdown wasn’t lifted until it was too late, anyway. I went to work the next day, though. And the day after that. On Tuesdays, my second job entails teaching high…

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How Jewish Student Organizing Shaped My Family’s Story

By Leora Eisenberg October 18, 2018

My parents are too young to be historical artifacts. But they’ve seen and lived through a lot. My mother came to America in 1993 under the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a provision that put pressure on the Soviet Union to allow freedom of emigration to Jews and other groups trying to flee. My father, born in Los…

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The Dark Side of Curiosity: A Review of “Three Identical Strangers”

By Erin Ben-Moche September 14, 2018

A few weeks ago I met my boyfriend, who is an identical twin, at the movies to watch the critically acclaimed CNN documentary, “Three Identical Strangers.” Both being film buffs, we were excited to experience a film that was talked about nonstop at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It was talked about for good reason….

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“When he goes in he stumbles upon her”: A D’var Torah for Ki Tetzei

By Avigayil Halpern September 7, 2018

Content warning: discussion of sexual violence. The below is an edited version of a d’var Torah that was delivered at Yale University’s student egalitarian minyan on Friday night, August 24th. Parshat Ki Teitzei begins with a particularly haunting section: י) כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ ה’ אֱלֹקֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ׃ (יא) וְרָאִיתָ֙ בַּשִּׁבְיָ֔ה אֵ֖שֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּ֑אַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ֣…

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A Queer Reflection on Passover

By Noah Strauss April 18, 2018

“Now when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Phillistines, although it was nearer; for God said, “The people may have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.” (Exodus 13:17) In this verse, it seems like God did not trust…

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