Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Kosher haggis was everything I hoped it would be — oaty, savory, and smooth. I scooped spoonfuls alongside fellow UK Jewish students at the Edinburgh Jewish Society’s annual Burns Ball. The night was a fusion of Scottish and Jewish cultures, and the kosher food — delivered from Glasgow — was well worth the wait. Until that night, I’d…
We’ve come a long way since the days when a matchmaker was the main way for a young Jewish person to find romantic connection. Now, in the middle of a milieu of anxieties about assimilation, continuity, and online dating, young Jews no longer have such a clear guide to finding love. For many millennial Jews,…
Several weeks ago, 11 people were gunned down while attending Shabbat morning services at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Throughout the United States, people mourned with the Jewish community after the worst act of violent anti-Semitism in our country’s history while candidates campaigning for the upcoming midterm election promised to make sure nothing like this ever…
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…
The first time I got Jew-outed in Spain, I stood in a group of my fellow American exchange students outside our medieval Christian art class. It was the beginning of my semester abroad, back when I could only understand 40% of any given lecture and I spent my days struggling alongside Spaniards who had been…
Being a Jewish student at Western Kentucky University (WKU) feels like attending college in a ghost town. There are no hallmarks of Jewish collegiate life here. No Hillel, no Jewish student group, not even a synagogue in Bowling Green, the town surrounding campus. It’s an experience of alienation, but ironically also the basis for connection….
Growing up was weird. I always had fish salad for lunch. My parents were overly concerned with my math grades. My grandparents had funny accents. We didn’t speak English at home. I grew up believing that, for all intents and purposes, I was Russian, despite the fact that I was born and had grown up…
With years of mainstream journalism under his belt, former New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer decided to use his voice in a more personal way in 2016. He collaborated with Tablet Magazine’s Stephanie Butnick and Liel Leibovitz to create Unorthodox, a weekly podcast that discusses all things Jewish and Jew-ish. The best part –…
Eva Watler, age 41, has been dealing with Nazis in Tennessee since she was 13 years old when she was jumped by a pack of skinheads in Dragon Park in Nashville. “They were looking for Jews to beat up,” she said. “I was 13 and I didn’t know how to fight. It was shocking.” As…
There’s an old Jewish joke about a righteous man who kept all the mitzvot. Every day, he prayed to God to win the lottery, and every day, he did not win. After the man died, he entered heaven and found himself at the foot of the Lord. In anger, he asked: “Why did you never…
Young Jews are increasingly disaffiliated from mainstream Jewish institutions and those institutions are panicking. But many young Jews aren’t lost at all. They’re just expressing their Jewishness elsewhere – Facebook. In fact, they’ve built their own institution of sorts: Jewbook, a term referring to a community of Jewish Facebook groups. “I think there are several…
I’m no stranger to issues of mental health. Depression set in shortly after the beginning of the second semester of my sophomore year. I cried incessantly for no apparent reason, I had difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, I loathed running into an ex for fear that he would trigger a panic attack….
Rabbi Steven Wernick knows that he is abandoning Conservative Jews on college campuses. As CEO of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism since 2009, Wernick saw KOACH, the campus wing of the Conservative Movement, shut down on his watch in 2013, drawing ire from many Conservative leaders and students. Almost five years later, I caught…
Rebecca Wahba’s family had been in Egypt since at least the Spanish Inquisition. But in 1939, when Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” became a bestseller in Cairo, her great-grandfather left, landing in India by 1945 just as the war was ending. “All the news was coming out about what was happening to the Jews. He was…
Jewish high school students want to celebrate Shabbat by protesting gun violence, and their Jewish communities are stepping up to help. Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, recently announced that USY (United Synagogue Youth) would support students wishing to attend the Washington D.C. March For Our Lives, a rally to…