Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
In the Jewish world, this has been a school year of many lists – particularly lists of the best and worst colleges for Jews. As the one and only national online magazine for Jewish college students, we’ve decided to add our voice to the mix and create a list of our own – a ranking…
When I was a student at Wesleyan University, the Jewish community was my home. It was a safe space to question, to deepen and nuance my connection to Israel/Palestine, and to learn to articulate my own beliefs about Judaism through hearing a variety of others’. Essentially, it was a place where discomfort was valued as…
Originally published in New Jersey Jewish News. “What do Jewish millennials want to read?” “What’s going on in the minds of future Jewry?” As the editor of New Voices, I field these questions constantly — at conferences, Shabbat tables, blind dates, and board meetings. Thankfully, New Voices has always had a simple answer. And per…
Originally published in The Forward. Watching the events of these past weeks unfold, we were confronted with a feeling of desperation. Nazis rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black slogans, threatening a synagogue. The president of the United States sided with racism and violence, drawing praise from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. The New England Holocaust Memorial, a landmark…
Originally published in The Jewish Exponent. For the past year and a half, I have served as president of the student board of Hillel at Temple University. Over the course of my time on board, I’ve seen students plan weekly Shabbat dinners, various types of holiday programming (including the ever-popular Chocolate Seder) and our first-ever…
Originally published at Red Alert Politics. At the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, I passed by prominent white supremacist Richard Spencer, who beforehand said, “Effectively, any policy, idea, or belief that is markedly right-wing and traditional — that evokes identity, power, hierarchy, and dominance — must be regulated by the possibility that it could potentially lead…
“Where do you go to school?” “UC Berkeley.” “UC Berkeley? Wow, the front line. You students are fighting an important battle over there. Keep it up!” I can’t tell you how many times I had this conversation – at shuls, Shabbat tables, even half a world away in Jewish communities abroad. The language always struck…
Dear Jewish community, So, you wanna understand Israel/Palestine debates on campus. The first thing you have to do is stop talking about BDS. Shocking, right? We try. But really, BDS doesn’t summarize what Israel conversations on campus are all about these days. BDS measures on major campuses are actually going down, and yet, somehow, they…
Our generation has created two gods. One of them is Facebook. Bold statement, right? But let me explain: There is a real G-d and a god we have created in our own (albeit distorted) image, and we dubbed that god “social media.” We spend all our time on it and use it to engage in…
At the root of anti-Semitism is the belief that all good things Jews do are for nefarious reasons. There is an emerging belief in the far left that LGBT Jews who are Zionist are doubly guilty of re-branding Israel as a progressive society while covering human rights abuses against Palestinians. The name for this alleged…
In the beginning God created the heavens and a round earth But for five thousand years we couldn’t see our world’s true extent. Blind and unknowing, we drew our flat paper maps with heavy lines and solid edges, Contained, finite, concrete, And when we were cast off to its four unfamiliar, foreign corners We fixed…
Dear Jewish community, Three years ago on Nov. 15, Leslie Feinberg passed away after a long battle with chronic Lyme disease. Ze was an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, revolutionary communist. I couldn’t help but think of Leslie on Nov. 20, the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to memorialize those who…
Dear freshmen, Last month, I helped facilitate an info session at Wesleyan University for 70 rising seniors from the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, where I attended elementary school. These students sat before me in the admissions office, looking slightly perplexed about why their Jewish day school had taken them to visit a liberal, off-the-beaten…
Originally published in the Winter 2017 issue of The Leviathan Jewish Journal. When I was young and told the other children at school that one of my ancestors came to America from the Mayflower, they looked at my almond-shaped eyes, my long black hair, and laughed. “You can’t be from the Mayflower,” they mocked me. “Because…
Sarah Waxman and I immediately bonded over our curly, Jew-fro-esque hair. As Jewish women have done for centuries, we swapped notes over the creams, conditioners, gels, and mousses we use to keep the frizz away. But what I really learned from Waxman, the founder of a Jewish women’s wellness initiative, was that my mental health…