Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
We here at New Voices seem no strangers to the question of whether or not the Jews are white. Yet the wider American Jewish community tends to go back and forth on the issue, especially now that racial tensions in this country have reached a boiling point. Despite the advancements made in the national…
In 2013, I went through an educational experience in Poland courtesy of Heritage Seminars. The name of the program says it all. Not only did we visit the places where Jewish life in Europe vanished, but also the sites where the notion of Jewish community flourished. The latter needs be examined more in today’s society…
Seventy years ago, on April 15, 1945, the British Army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and its 60,000 mostly Jewish, starved, and diseased prisoners. Among these prisoners was my maternal grandmother – who had survived several deportations, from Kovno (Kaunas) to Vaivara to Bergen-Belsen – and had lost her first child, first husband, and most…
My first experience with anti-Semitism was at 6 years old. Someone painted a swastika on the front gate of my school and I remember asking my dad why it upset him so much. I had a limited understanding of Nazism at that age, but I knew enough to understand when he told me simply that…
The last time someone named Noah’s actions were so globally significant, animals boarded a boat in pairs, it rained for forty days and the world flooded. This week, it was the Twitterverse that flooded over because of comedian Trevor Noah’s: a) appointment to the highest throne in the comedic news world as the replacement for…
Evan Goldstein’s recent contributions to New Voices have featured fascinating and insightful meditations on the cultural location of Jewishness in our world. They are a welcome move toward a critical conversation around the hybrid forms of modern Jewish identity, a project that requires a historical understanding of whiteness. Sharona Bat-Ephraim, the subject of Goldstein’s critique…
Just over a month ago, students Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were shot outside their home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “Tragedies touch everyone in a community, especially in a [small] community … like Chapel Hill,” said University of North Carolina Chapel Hill sophomore and North Carolina native Leah Johnson….
I came to the J Street Conference earlier this week with a question in mind for students: How do you advocate for Israel and for peace on campus after last week’s elections? In true Jewish fashion, their answers went beyond the question to address other important points about Israel advocacy and Jewish life on campus….
From March 13-15, Jewish Voice for Peace held its 6th annual National Membership Meeting in Baltimore. Formed in 1996, JVP has grown a lot in 19 years. “In 2011, 150 gathered [at the meeting],” said JVP Brooklyn Vice Chair Cindy Greenberg. “In 2013, 350 people were there. This weekend, there [were] over 600 of us.”…
Even after following the situation so closely for the past two years, the news that Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut withdrew his commitment to speak to 1,000 J Street U students at the upcoming J Street conference in Washington, D.C. shocked me in its ineptitude. Though Hillel credited the presence at the conference of Saeb Erekat,…
Introduction Anti-Semitism is everywhere, and it is nowhere. It is claimed to be behind every critique of Israel voiced by progressive youth, yet is said to have been vanquished as American Jews have found themselves increasingly present among the fringes of the establishment. Of course, anti-Semitism still exists. The attacks on Jews in Paris and…
It’s no secret that the war for Israel currently has two fronts: the Middle East and American university campuses. Jewish students feel increasingly threatened and intimidated by anti-Israel activity on campus that too often crosses the line into anti-Semitism, as seen recently in incidents at UC Davis and UCLA. All people concerned with the…
If we are to believe that there is truly a growing anti-Semitic presence on all college campuses these days, then what you’re about to read won’t make sense. Last May, I walked in front of the Israel “Apartheid” Wall at my campus during Justice in Palestine Week, wearing my yarmulke, and a member of Students…
We Jews have a problem: we fetishize Muslims. Not just any Muslims, though: we choose to fetishize the “Good Muslims.” The Muslims, or the Arabs, who stand up for our cause, who toe our party lines, and who stand up to protect us. To be sure, many in our Jewish community also often quite hastily…
As far back as I can remember, I have been excited for college. Even as a young child, it was always somewhere in the back of my mind: after middle school, then after high school, I would get a chance to study away from home, learning something I loved, and practicing for something I’d do…