Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
I have a hard time answering the question, “So how do you identify? Like, Jewish-ly?” On the one hand, I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and attended Modern Orthodox schools since kindergarten, but, for most of my life so far, was part of a haredi community in southern Brooklyn. On the other hand,…
I had the honor of speaking at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Voices of Change conference last week, where I, only for a day, became a high school student once again and spoke on a panel about navigating relationships and sexuality in high school as a feminist. While speaking, the topic of Shemirut Negi’ah, or…
It is a problem that I and many other queer Jewish students face: as religious folk, we want to pray. But how do we – gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, queer, and other identities across the “rainbow ” – connect with a liturgy that is often seen as heteronormative, cis-normative, and well, “straight”? Some say, “the…
For a kosher-keeper like me, Kosherfest 2013 was almost too good to be real. A huge room full of free food I can actually eat coming at me from every direction, the longer I stayed, the further my train of thought devolved to the level of a dog in a sausage factory: I see they’re…
Part 3 in a 3 part series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. 7. What are your reactions to survey respondents’ answers to “What does it mean to be Jewish”? What creates Jewish meaning for you? Dr. Steven M. Cohen, sociologist: These questions pertain to areas of great ambiguity. I wouldn’t…
Women of the Wall (WoW) was founded 25 years ago as a women’s minyan at the Western Wall to meet on the first of every Jewish month. A few years ago, some of WoW’s leaders started getting arrested for wearing non-“feminine” (read: colorful) talitot and tefillin in violation of a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling….
The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest organization of Modern Orthodox American rabbis, recently released a controversial paper regarding the halakhic status of organ donation. The involved and controversial topic has been, for the past week, the subject of much debate. At stake is the basic question of whether modern orthodox Jews should be allowed…