Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
For young working-class Jews stuck in abusive living situations, ritual observance can become difficult or impossible – a struggle often erased in American Jewish communities, where classism and assumptions of wealth pervade.
Jewish law has often problematically been taught as a set of dogmatic rules, but a new generation of Jews and Jewish educators are calling for a more intentional vision of halakha.
“There are still 25 hours of the week where time holds still, makes room for something quiet and eternal. It is, by its very nature, a world designed to exist outside of capital.”
“To my surprise, Shabbat dinners became a predictable and grounding occurrence every week. My mom cooked, I set the table, and my dad and brother cleaned up after the meal. Sometimes it was twenty minutes of near silence then everyone scurried off to their bedrooms again. Sometimes it ended in explosive arguments and someone finishing their plate an hour or two later in the kitchen. But sometimes it worked.”
“The Torah of OCD is simple: it is an important and very serious mitzvah to manage my OCD as skillfully as I am able on any given day, seeking out the support and resources I need to live well and in good health. And it is deeply complicated: I am no longer comfortable theologizing pain.”
A cornerstone of Jewish identity is a fierce love of argument and discussion- coupled with intoxication, of course. At least that’s what I saw that one time at Chabad.
We are still at the beginning of this period, and it can still feel like a miracle; we will learn more from this moment if we remember that it is nothing less than a revolution, and that we are responsible for helping this revolution reach all Jews.
As an Orthodox Jewish feminist, I’ve struggled my whole life with what feels to me to be stubbornly sexist interpretations of halacha and my own loyalty and love for observant Judaism. Mavoi Satum fights to protect the rights of women in the rabbinic courts, but does so from the basis of religious observance.
Kosher haggis was everything I hoped it would be — oaty, savory, and smooth. I scooped spoonfuls alongside fellow UK Jewish students at the Edinburgh Jewish Society’s annual Burns Ball. The night was a fusion of Scottish and Jewish cultures, and the kosher food — delivered from Glasgow — was well worth the wait. Until that night, I’d…
Millennials, we get a bad rap for a lot of things – many of them undeserved. We know the stereotypes: We’re self-obsessed, we’ve ruined the English language with our lol-worthy emojis and text speech, and we demand intellectual baby blankets in the form of political correctness. Basically, if there’s a venerated institution out there, someone…
Originally published in Ha’Am. There is perhaps no decision more representative of the difficulties of being a practicing Jewish college student than the quintessential question of whether or not to attend class during Chag. To me, this is not a question of grades or even the inconvenience of having to spend long, sleepless nights catching…
Unlike many other people I know who grew up in but have since left the Modern Orthodox community, I don’t look back on my childhood religious experiences with sadness. Instead, many of the decisions that I have since made in my religious life have been because of — not despite — having been raised in the…
Two years ago, I wrote my first blog post for New Voices. I invited young Conservative Jews, unhappy with the current situation within their movement, to enter into conversation with me and the many other young Jews I know who grew up Modern Orthodox. We, too, were discontented with what we perceived as our movement’s…
Does a kosher bakery have the right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for an intermarried couple? If the bakery is in Indiana, the answer might be yes. Indiana’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in March caused an uproar, especially among LGBTQ rights activists, who argued that it could encourage discrimination…