The Most Open Hillel: South Dakota State’s B’rith Sholom

By Derek M. Kwait March 19, 2014

South Dakota State University’s B’rth Sholom is more than just the only Jewish cultural club in the state. Its nine members constitute one of America’s most diverse Jewish organizations, as about half them identify as Messianic Jews, or those with Jewish practice who accept Jesus as the Messiah. “We really don’t try to segregate by…

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Fighting B.D.S. on Campus is a Waste of Time for Jewish Advocates

By Zev Hurwitz February 27, 2014

Scores (if not hundreds) of Jewish and Pro-Israel students spent Tuesday night in a crowded ballroom at UCLA to advocate against the student government’s proposed passage of a divestment resolution. I, on the other hand, sat at my computer 125 miles away, wearing sweatpants and drinking Coke Zero with lemon watching the USAC divestment meeting…

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Admitting Awkward Things: Or, Coming to Terms with Unsavory History

By Jonathan Katz February 18, 2014

I think my education started early. I remember sitting in the car with my mother at the age of 10, en route from my Hebrew school to … somewhere. It was the spring of 2002, height of the Second Intifada,and the rhetoric that went alongside it. I was narrating all of the things we had…

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Jewish Tokenism and Tolerance: On Liberals, Narratives, and Costa Rica

By Jonathan Katz February 5, 2014

Zach Cohen’s New Voices article was not exactly the most adulatory of Costa Rica. His piece prompted responses: one from Q Costa Rica and two from the Costa Rica Star – an initial piece and a follow-up. These pieces took a largely self-defensive, mocking, and somewhat anti-Semitic tone. Yet at the same time, the pieces…

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UCSD: Please Stop “Accommodating” Me.

By Zev Hurwitz January 30, 2014

This piece originally appeared in the University of California San Diego Guardian in response to a new University of California policy of avoiding conflicts between  Jewish holidays and move-in week by cutting a week out of winter break. This decision was made without any student input.  It is being reprinted with permission of the author….

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From Costa Rica to Israel

By Zach C. Cohen January 23, 2014

San José is an ugly city. The streets are lined with storefronts due for a paint job. Trash and dog droppings line the sidewalks. Every afternoon, like clockwork, the tropical weather brings in a rainstorm that puts most Sunday showers stateside to shame. At night, drug dealers and (legal) prostitutes roam the streets. In this…

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Me and Mein Kampf

By Dani Plung January 22, 2014

    For the past few weeks I’ve seen from various sources on Facebook, and most recently on Tablet, a growing concern about a potentially frightening new trend:  Featured on several Amazon.com best-seller lists are e-book editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The first responses I’ve seen have been understandably negative, coming from some reasonably…

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Open Hillel for an Open Hillel

By Gabriel T. Erbs October 23, 2013

The Midwest does not get enough credit for its foundational role in the American Jewish community. However, the first campus Hillel was established in 1923 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In an atmosphere where Jewish campus life was largely non-existent, the first Hillel marked a new age for American Jewish students who endured…

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Self-Loathing “Jewtopia”

By Derek M. Kwait September 30, 2013

Jewtopia features Tom Arnold as a gynecologist. That could be the review right there; any further commentary seems superfluous. Yet I will go on because in truth, I have a lot more to say, or at least vent, about this movie. Its central plot concerns the unlikely friendship between Christian O’Connell (Ivan Sergei) and Adam…

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Supporters wave flags of Jobbik, an anti-Semitic Hungarian political party | CC via flickr user Leigh Phillips

From Comfy U.S. Campuses, Hard to See Anti-Semitism Facing European Peers

By Editorial Board February 27, 2013

It’s popular today to talk about the trouble encountered by Jews on American college campuses. We see it differently: As we wrote recently, there’s never been a better time to be a Jewish college student in America. Most supposed examples of contemporary anti-Semitism on American college campuses are actually examples of anti-Zionism mistaken for anti-Semitism, legitimate debate…

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From Victims to Victors: The Decay of Jewish Identity

By Koko Jaeger January 7, 2013

This article was originally posted on the author’s personal blog, and can be read here.  What I have to say is controversial. But bear with me, and let me first contextualize, with something I think we all can agree on. The Jewish narrative is one of struggle. With me so far? Since the birth of the…

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Traditions of Satire and Anti-Semitism Collide at Harvard

By New Voices Editorial Board December 6, 2012

There is a long history of anti-Semitism at Harvard University, though it is essentially gone today. There is also a long history of subtle — and not so subtle — grandiose acts of satire at Harvard. Last Friday morning, students who live in Harvard University’s nine River Houses awoke to find that the intersection of those two…

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Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and Why They’re Not the Same

By Lex Rofes October 17, 2012

This Saturday night, I embarked on a journey that was perhaps long overdue. I participated in an important Jewish life cycle event that seems to have become as vital as a Bar Mitzvah or a wedding. This weekend, I went to my first AIPAC conference ever, the 2012 AIPAC Summit in Boston. Walking into the…

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I’m Shocked, Shocked to Find Drinking Going on in This Chabad!

By David A.M. Wilensky October 3, 2012

CORRECTION, 10/24/12: The author of this piece has revised — and reversed — his take on the situation. Please see a full correction to this piece here. If administrators at Northwestern University have their way, Chabad’s days of operating openly on the Evanston, Ill. campus are over. Apparently, they’ve just discovered that Chabad serves alcohol!…

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Getting Shalom’d

By Simi Lichtman October 2, 2012

I spend most of my days in New York City, home to millions, about 95% of whom are either Jewish, somewhat Jewish, or eat at enough delis to recognize Jews at a distance. So when I walk down the street with my fiancé, who wears a kippah, it’s not unusual to get a “Shalom!” from…

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