Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
As the Fall semester sets in across the country and 8 PM sunsets begin to fade away, there is something on the mind of many college students – what clubs do I join? From the many pre-professional business frats to the local community advocacy groups, there are an overabundance of options for students wanting to…
The ultranationalist rabbi whose successors are now at the helm of Israel’s government had an intimate history with Maryland’s Jewish community — one which has been long-since forgotten.
An unearthed history of the North American Jewish Students Appeal and its legacy of independent, alternative Jewish student life is more colorful than Hillel wants you to know.
“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.”
Listen to a new two-part High Holidays podcast “Here We Are,” fresh out of Providence, Rhode Island. In a time of unprecedented turmoil, this group of Jewish students has gathered stories and reflections on how they’re entering the new year in the face of a pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, and personal struggle.
By unequivocally condemning SJP’s statement while claiming to “advocate for Jewish students,” Hillel director Brawer makes very clear which Jewish students are welcome and which are not.
“The reason that I went was that everything was paid for,” she said, adding, “It was so clear that there was an agenda, but I didn’t ask who funded it. I didn’t really want to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
After the service, everyone exits the sanctuary to return to the Hillel House where an oneg awaits. Lawson’s wife Susan presents her homemade vegan challah for the rabbi to bless and the students to nourish themselves with. Despite many requests, neither Susan nor the rabbi will give up the secret recipe.
Judaism On Our Own Terms (JOOOT), a network of college students attempting to build Jewish communities without major donor-fueled organizations like Hillel and the Jewish Federations, has only existed since last April. The weekend of September 16th, they held their second-ever national conference on the campus of Brown University. According to one attendee, a former…
My first encounter with a hyper-masculine Israeli man was on my Birthright trip in the summer of 2017. He was a soldier – stout, muscular, uniformed – paired with my group as a part of mifgash for the whole 10 days we were there, and a few days into the trip he decided he would sit in the empty seat beside me on the bus.
Though JOOOT-affiliated independent groups lack the financial resources and name recognition of Hillel International, they offer students a powerful invitation: create the Judaism you want to be a part of. Kahn believes that JOOOT’s impact will extend far beyond the campus. “We’re giving people a taste of what the potential of radically inclusive Judaism can be,” he says.
Sitting at the dinner table over winter break with her parents, holding her very own three-person Shabbat service, Adrienne Sugarman got the distinct sense that home was not quite the place it used to be. Sugarman, a Middlebury College sophomore, was intent on recreating the Shabbat services that she attends every week on campus. Needless…
Walking through Jerusalem’s Old City, the tour guide brandished his gun in front of a group of students from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. “I’ll shoot,” he said. “I’ll shoot an Arab if I have to. I’m not scared.” Ben Friedman, a business honors major at UT, remembers this moment well. He was…
This is part 1 in a 3-part series about politics, identity, and Jewish community on college campuses. Click here to view part 2, and here to view part 3. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah in 2015, a new wave of violence arose in Israel. Often referred to as the “stabbing intifada,” it led to…
It was a warm Wednesday in the fall of my first year at Brown University. As I meandered through the main green, a child with with tzitzit poking out of the bottom of his shirt walked up to me and asked, “Are you Jewish? Would you like to say a prayer or come to dinner?”…