Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
A few months after the Pittsburgh shooting, I had my first panic attack. It was triggered by something inconsequential, but my anxiety had been one the rise since that Shabbat. I could feel it in little moments—a rush through my chest, a clench in my stomach, a film behind my eyes.
In Elizabeth, New Jersey, when I shouted “Close the camps!” and sang “Which Side Are You On,” a song I remembered from the Ferguson rebellion in my hometown of St. Louis when I was young, I meant it.
For me, being out as a trans person and standing in solidarity with others are not choices. They are ways of living that allow me to access the fullness of my own humanity and history, and that of others.
Last month, J Street U announced that they will offer a “Let Our People Know” trip to Israel as an alternative to Birthright. As part of their campaign, J Street is asking their members to “only participate in trips that include meetings with both Israelis and Palestinians and that show participants how the occupation impacts…
This essay originally appeared in ZAMAN, an arts & media collective dedicated to the remembrance, preservation, and re-evaluation of Mizrahi cultural consciousness. Last year, my friends and I invited one of our visiting lecturers, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, to a Tu B’Shvat seder in the Charedi-turned-hippie neighborhood of Nachlaot. The event’s Facebook page asked guests to bring…
As I pack the last box and turn out the lights to the apartment, I feel the tears begin to come. They are tears of anger, and of sadness, and of grief. They are the tears of a young woman who has had to make decisions that no 25-year-old should have to make. At the…
Three weeks ago, a journalist named Aisha Sultan published a column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch detailing the experience that I and a student named Shaadie Ali each had with the website Canary Mission. Canary Mission places people who speak out about Palestinian rights – mainly undergraduates like me – on a blacklist, listing us…
The new rabbi is running late. It’s the first day of eleventh grade and there is a buzz of hushed excitement in the room. Our brothers have been studying Talmud since they were seven or eight and we know its cadence. We’ve heard its rhythm chanted and recited at our kitchen tables while we stood…
Until recently, I had never heard of Rabbi Ben Packer. And then I read two detailed reports about a summer trip to Israel led by Texas Hillel’s Rabbi Moshe Trepp that went ‘off the beaten path.’ Multiple students from the University of Texas at Austin reported meeting with this far-right extremist and receiving a tour…
When I first saw my profile on Canary Mission, I felt a sense of violation and fear that I had never experienced before in student activism. My hands shook as I washed the dishes at my campus cafe job, and I mulled over who could have taken the time to hunt me down online and…
A few weeks ago at JFK airport, I huddled with fellow Brown University students and members of IfNotNow near the El Al check-in line. The airport was crowded that night. It was filled with anxious travelers of all sorts, including dozens of young Jewish adults searching for their Birthright groups. As they wandered the airport,…
I get a call at 10:12 p.m on Tuesday, October 30th from my dad and my heart sinks. He says: “Zaida died at 10:10 p.m., two minutes ago. You’re the first one I called.” For a second I feel tears come to my eyes, and then a rush of relief. My Zaida was 92, and…
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…
When I saw the news I tried to think if I know anyone who lives in Pittsburgh. If any of my Jewish friends have family there. If any of the first years we’ve welcomed to Hillel over the last few months grew up there. I couldn’t think. I called my friend and cried on the…
When I was a little girl, my family took a trip to Switzerland every year. My dad is from Switzerland, so we (my dad, my Jewish American mother, my twin brother, and I) would go every single summer until my grandparents passed away. I always enjoyed these trips – my Disney Princess-loving self was always…