Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
This is a response to Evan Krasner’s Why is Yom HaShoah not recognized by my high school?, which was posted yesterday on this blog. Evan asks an important question: How could a school that is mostly comprised of Jewish students not commemorate Yom HaShoah? This certainly seems odd, if for no other reason than the…
One of the most famous poems expressing the devastation of the Holocaust comes from Pastor Martin Niemoller: THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, 
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
…
I cannot remember a time when my high school, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale, NY, commemorated Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). Even though the school has a large percentage of minority students, the majority of the students are white and Jewish. Many of these students have grandparents or family members that were either…
In South Africa, there’s a conspiracy theory that has spread among the white population since the fall of Apartheid. It goes by many names: Uhuru, Operation Vula, Operation White Clean-up, and – in a nod to Nazi Germany – Night of the Long Knives (in Afrikaans, Die Nag van die Lang Messe). Â What it says…
The Global Citizen is a joint project of New Voices and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Throughout the year, a group of former AJWS volunteers will offer their take on global justice, Judaism and international development. Opinions expressed by Global Citizen bloggers do not necessarily represent AJWS. My friend Marcus wears a whistle. Not…
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…
Wednesday January 27th, 2010, marked the 65th year since the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces. Each year, leaders from around the world make their way to Germany in order to commemorate the day. This year, photo ops showed Bibi in Auschwitz and Shimon Peres giving a speech in the German parliament. People all over…
Succos is over and everyone around here is getting back into school mode, including university students. Well, actually, my girls still have another week until school gets under way and back into its rhythm- the school’s annual heritage trip to Poland is next week. While not everyone goes, and there is an alternative plan for…
Have you been here? I have a classmate at Brandeis who has. She’s originally from Bangladesh but now resides in the Netherlands. She’s not Jewish. She chose to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau after her high school history teacher sparked her curiosity in the famous exhibit of victims’ shoes in the Auschwitz museum. This summer, she had the…
Yesterday, the Forward published this article on restitution for property confiscated from Jews by the Nazis and the Soviet Union. “In a significant gesture this week, 46 countries signed a declaration at the close of a Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague aimed at easing the restitution process for Jewish property taken during the Nazi…
Despite a brief dalliance with Voyager, I’ve never been a Star Trek guy. Forgive me, then, if I’m restating the obvious. Also, spoiler alert, or whatever. I gather that there’s long been a vague association between the Vulcans and the Jews, based mostly on the Cohenic origins of the split-fingered Vulcan greeting. Watching this latest…