Escape the Plagues & Find Liberation: A Pesach Puzzle Game

By Lisa Stein March 18, 2021

Can an escape room be a spiritual endeavor? Can play help us feel connected to the people around us? Can games be holy work? Can puzzles help us engage with the challenging social justice themes of the Passover story?

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Rabbi Lawson Says Hineni

By Leonard Robinson III October 23, 2019

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.

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Red Line Rebellion

By Jess Schwalb July 9, 2019

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.

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Ariana Katz Weaves Her Mark Into Jewish Podcasting with “Thread”

By Ariella Markowitz June 27, 2019

“If the only thing this podcast accomplishes is to have someone resist saying even one time ‘I’m a bad Jew’… then it will have been a success. Rule #1: there is no such thing as a bad Jew.”

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New Voices’ Jewish Student Journalism Conference Helped Me Reclaim My Narrative

By Bentley Addison May 30, 2019

Two and a half years ago, I read a piece that changed my life. NPR’s Leah Donnella penned a deeply personal essay about being both Jewish and Black…I felt like she was speaking directly to my own experiences.

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Are We White Right Now?

By Sara Weissman December 15, 2016

After the election, my friend’s younger brother called from Israel. “Are we white?” he asked. Her immediate response was, “Not anymore.” As I listened to my friend talk about this exchange, I wasn’t sure which part was more telling, the question or the answer. The question – how we fit into America’s racial landscape as…

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Who Really Are ‘The Jews’: More Questions About Jews and Race

By Amram Altzman April 20, 2015

  We here at New Voices seem no strangers to the question of whether or not the Jews are white. Yet the wider American Jewish community tends to go back and forth on the issue, especially now that racial tensions in this country have reached a boiling point. Despite the advancements made in the national…

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Kendrick Lamar and Revelation: A Challenge for Jewish Theology

By Evan Goldstein March 19, 2015

I’ve wanted to write about Kendrick Lamar for a while. Mostly because listening to Kendrick seems to be what I turn to when I’m supposed to be writing, so integrating the two activities felt ideal. But what angle could possibly be found to write about hip-hop for a Jewish student website? Well, I’m not sure….

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To Check Privilege is to do Teshuvah

By Jonathan Katz May 28, 2014

  The recent debacle about the (Jewish, day-school alum) Princeton freshman who claims he “checked his privilege” dominated my social media network for a good two weeks. A few people came out in his support, but most people – myself included – were furious at his complete inability to consider the advantages he may have…

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Romancing the Sephardi

By Max Daniel February 25, 2014

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…

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