Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Folks at Hillel International seem worried about the future of Judaism. They seemed worried about it long before Open Hillel existed. There have been many prescriptions doled out to address this perceived problem of our generation’s apathetic and disaffected nature. Send the kids on a free trip to Israel, that’ll solve it. Make sure…
I’ve been the token Jew for much of my life. People have referred to me as “my Jewish friend, Amber” and some have told me that I’m the only Jew they’ve ever met, especially out here in Wyoming. Since I went to Israel for the first time 7 years ago, I have successfully lived up…
On Monday, the final day of what Previous New Voices Rebbe David A.M. Wilensky calls “Liberal Jewish Comicon,” my first interaction was with Ali Kreigsman, who was attending in support of her and Jana Kozlowski’s upcoming documentary, Between the Lines, about Jewish day school students who come to university and discover that in spite of…
Though If Not Now, When? An Open Hillel Conference began at Harvard Saturday night, I wasn’t able to arrive until Sunday afternoon. When I got there, the swarm of familiar black t-shirts seemed to indicate my worst suspicions would be confirmed: This is basically a student JVP conference in disguise with some Jewish SJP activists…
By now, the controversy over the Ohio University “Blood Bucket Challenge” video is relatively old news: About a month ago, Megan Marzec, president of the OU student senate, was challenged by the university president to dump a bucket of ice water over her head in support of ALS research. She responded by making a video…
Yesterday, I reviewed Hoaxocaust!, a new play performed and written by Barry Levey that satirizes Holocaust denial simply by putting the arguments of some of its biggest proponents, Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in context. I saw the show the night of September 11 (coincidentally), then on September 12, I caught…
Preliminary results of the Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 are out. Started last spring by Drs. Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, this is the first comprehensive scientific survey ever of an underrepresented and under studied demographic: American…
I grew up in the New York area: capital of the world, city of no rival, the Fourth Rome (defeating the Third, and there shall be no Fifth). True, I could note that this place – city and suburbs thereof – is overconfident, maddeningly arrogant, and rude to a horrifying degree. Yet it was a…
On Friday, August 22, Aaron Sofer was taking a shortcut through the Jerusalem Forest with his friend. The two became separated when his friend wanted to try hiking up a hill, and later that evening when the friend returned home, he discovered that Aaron was missing. When I came online Saturday night, I learned about…
I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those…
College means opening your mind and seeing a lot of new faces. You may even find yourself learning more from those around you than from of all the information in your textbooks. Of course, meeting people who think differently than you can be nerve-racking. If you’re meeting a Jewish person for the first time,…
Recently while killing time at work, I saw an email regarding a position I had applied for at my university’s Hillel. Expecting a rejection, I clicked, and realized that I was not being consoled- they were offering me a job. I’d applied for the job almost accidentally – working an event for my bike repair…
An article by Amanda Borschel-Dan in the Times of Israel has described American youth as moving with “lightning speed” towards anti-Semitism. The proof in the nationalist pudding, it seems, is a lessening support for Israel among American youth. It seems that non-Jewish teenagers and young adults associate Israel a little too much with the over…
Early in my Jewish education, I was taught that, as Jews and as human beings living in an imperfect world, we are obligated to stand up and speak out in the face of injustice. However small or large the perceived wrong, and despite our shaking legs and cracking voices or how powerful and vocal the…
On July 3, Open Hillel sent out a press release announcing its 6 recommendations for Hillel International’s new student-led Israel Strategy Committee: Amelia Dornbush, Gabriel Erbs, Andrew Farkash, Catie Stewart, Holly Bicerano, and Justin Szasz. According to the release: All the recommended students are deeply involved in their local Jewish communities. They come from college…