Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I am proud of being Jewish, and the people I live with know this. Though it’s not Halachally required, my dorm room’s door frame sports a mezuzah (which is kosher, according to Chabad.com—I checked!). Friends from my residence hall know that I don’t make plans on Friday nights, because I go to Hillel for services. …
There’s been a bit of news about Sephardim lately. Although the attempt began a few years ago, the Spanish government recently announced a more concerned effort at paving the way for Sephardim – ancestors of those Jews expelled in the Inquisition of the 15th century – to acquire Spanish citizenship. The ways of determining who…
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…
I post a lot of things about the Holy Land on Facebook. I mean, I post about a lot of things – South Africa, migration politics, tasty coconut-based desserts – but also a lot about Israel and Palestine. And many of the things I post are not terribly adulatory of Israel. In fact, they’re starkly…
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…
Just a few days after my blog post from last week ran, the Israeli rabbinate decided that it would, indeed, accept Rabbi Avi Weiss’ testimony as legitimate for people he vouched for as Jewish. This is a step in the right direction for the Israeli rabbinate, which had previously called Rabbi Weiss’ validity into…
So apparently, Israel’s government is going to spend billions of dollars in a project to “bolster” Jewish identity in the Diaspora – focusing not just on North America – in an effort to counter “assimilation” and “intermarriage” among young Jews abroad. This initiative is being pushed by Naftali Bennett, the Economy Minister, best known for…
[fblike style=”standard” showfaces=”false” width=”450″ verb=”like” font=”arial”] You’d think after forty years of wandering and two thousand subsequent years of diaspora, the Jewish People would be used to spatial transitions. I mean, we seem to pass everything else L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, so why not the nomadic nature? Don’t we even take a full eight…
Bernard Avishai has a really excellent essay (PDF) based on survey data (summarized by Haaretz here) from the Macro Center for Political Economic Research. It’s a long read, but worth every bit of it. A highlight: Approximately 40% of young Israeli Jews believe (about a third, strongly) that the state should not offer civil marriage….
Read part one here The sounds were piercing sometimes, shrill even, hitting high dissonant tones that were mocking any tacked-on western harmonies. This wasn’t strummy guitar music, or beery St. Patricks day music. This was realer than that. Klezmer straddles the line between Eastern and Western. Usually it has the harmonic chords and 4/4 feel…
It’s really striking just seeing Tzfat– there’s nowhere else like it. It’s so old looking, city walls and stone arches, but then you see the bullet scars in a wall and you remember the whole city was evacuated just five years ago. Despite that, it’s peaceful. For all the talk about the divisions in Israel…
Who are we? Where do we come from? As it turns out, Jews are just Jews: our very own ethnic group. Recent studies have shown that Jews appear to be genetically different than non-Jews and, indeed, are closely related to one another. This revelation comes through Human “HapMap” Project, which examines human genome sequences; recently,…
Part of my volunteering in Israel consists of talking with junior high students. The idea is that when the students are talking to someone who exclusively talks English, unlike their teachers, they will improve their communication skills. The idea of sitting with students for an hour at a time, just talking, at first seemed like an…