Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Most of us have already seen this week’s Torah portion, Shemot. It’s taken right out of the epic film The Ten Commandments that we all grew up watching over Passover. Oh wait, it’s the other way around. This week’s portion is the opening of the book of Exodus. In it, we learn about Pharaoh being…
Anyone who has seen the movie Joseph King of Dreams or experienced the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat will recognize the early scenes of these productions in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev. Vayeshev starts with Jacob finally thinking he could take a break, only to have things turn sour for his favored son, Joseph….
In last week’s Torah portion, we saw Jacob confront the twisted future image of himself in the shape of his father-in-law Lavan, coming out of his dealings with the crook as the better man. This week, in Parshat Vayishlach, Jacob confronts his past when he returns to the land of Canaan to find himself immediately…
Gaza, I wanted to be unbiased about Israel. I really did. I went to a Zionist school as a child, and grew up in a Zionist home. My whole life I’d been taught that Israel was right and our haters were ignorant, cruel, and just plain wrong. It was easy enough to believe, and I…
I never know what to do on Yom Hashoah. Some students read names in the library foyer – a powerful experience, especially in a room with vaulted ceilings where sound reverberates throughout the entrence of the building. Some educators strive to reach out, to teach the messages of the Holocaust so that everyone, not just…
When I think of summer, I think of home. Not in the spiritual sense of Israel, or even the flesh and blood sense of Toronto. The home I think of is a summer home, and no, that is not as spoiled as it sounds. The home in my head involves 18 cabins, 4 migrashim (fields),…
Have things gotten so bad for the leader of the free world that he’s slumming it on the op-ed pages of college newspapers? Last week, an op-ed written by President Barack Obama targeted at the college crowd appeared in a handful of college newspapers, including The Harvard Crimson and the University of Texas at Austin’s Daily Texan.
For a sitting president to run an op-ed in student newspapers is uncommon, to say the least; this one drew the ire of some commentators. The College Media Matters blog said, “A related post yesterday on Fox Nation ran with the headline, ‘Obama Reduced to Writing Op-Eds in Student Newspapers.’ A separate commenter on a Politico story wrote, ‘It’s a transparent and ethically challenged vote-buying gambit.'”
We’re not convinced.
Students for Justice in Palestine is currently holding its first national conference at Columbia University from October 14 to 16. The keynote address — the only part of the conference open to the press — featured academic luminaries Mahmood Mamdani, an professor of government at Columbia, and Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, an anthropologist who has taught…
If you’re in college today, you were as young as 8, as old as 12. The events of September 11, 2001 hover just at the edge of your memory, though growing up in post-9/11 America is an inescapable fact of life. Here, we present seven brief essays, the personal memories of New Voices contributors about that day.
–David A.M. Wilensky, New Voices Editor
Before I start, let me just say that I intended to write this post. Try buying tzitzit on the internet. Just try it. I learned something quite fascinating at about 4:30 AM last night. You may not have known this, but there are lots of different types of tzitzit. Not just techelet and non-techelet, oh…
The Goldstone Report, which sought to analyze the 2009 Gaza War, has become one of the most controversial documents of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But those who want a less polemicized debate over the Report’s findings should not look to Nation Books, which published a biased analysis of the document this year.
At five o’clock in the morning arose crabby, sleep-deprived teenagers. Hair dream-tousled and expressions vacant, the group made its way to the table with instant coffee and little slices of cake. Dressed to hike, but clearly not ready to, they slumped in the plastic chairs at the pre-hike rendezvous point, grasping at last moments of…
In Judaism, when we pray, we always turn our bodies so that we face Jerusalem. The reason for this is that within the walls of her old city resides The Kotel. The Kotel, more commonly known as the Western or Wailing Wall, is the last remaining wall of the destroyed temple in Jerusalem. Its oldest…
Today the concerned and compassionate editors of New Voices are offering you a double reading list to apologize for dropping the ball on these roundups yesterday and on Monday. Enjoy these ten worthwhile links from the Jewish internet: We all love Maccabeatlemania, but here’s how we shouldn’t use the craze that’s sweeping American Jewry. On…