Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
This essay is part of Gufim: Our Jewish Bodies, a 2024 series by New Voices writers that explores embodiment, physicality, and our relationships to our bodies through a Jewish lens. Gufim focuses on disability & chronic illness, eating disorders and body liberation, queer/trans experiences, race/racism, and more. Our writers explore these issues through writing, art,…
“Survival is shattering the mirror / trusting the tree to support you.”
“I once wept outside / a Domino’s in Jerusalem while the buses didn’t run, / parted ways with the child who grew up believing / that somewhere home was waiting for her.”
When she calls us to tell us she’s in the hospital / She being my sister / Or She being my homeland / We drive to the hospital / It’s Shabbat / We drive to the hospital
“Let us dance, feel, celebrate the rarity of this fleeting life before we return to stardust in the cosmos / Let us usher our descendants in for a good time.”
Rachel, Tamar, and I are feygele girlboys boygirling In birdy glory and flirt we enter my 3 stached tallitot katanot Smocking to the mess of chants through our unruly and threaded, draping lungs in the freaky heap of each other’s gravity, we are mundanely adorned, matching into men part follow part plea and to freedom….
“My beloved’s hair is the color of coffee /
And she drinks from the finest waters in Sefarad.”
“I didn’t know what G-d looked like until I met Him this afternoon in the bathroom mirror.”
“The fact that every natural wonder, from the sight of a rainbow to the smell of a spice, is given a brachah – the fact we are commanded to notice the world for what it is and what it offers – is such an awesome thing.”
“It felt so right, I could almost understand why God said no; no human should be allowed to experience the amount of joy and love from such a simple interaction.”
“because I feel most like myself when I start stroking my nose / & projecting my insecurities / onto some tiny piece of land”
Inspired by Rabbi Joshua Bolton’s poem “Jewish Futurisms,” New Voices Fellows composed their own set of poetical predictions for the next 56 Jewish calendar years.
“Little Jew, you have no / power but the blame / takes the edge off.” A poem for T’sha b’av.
