Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Compiled of 304,805 letters, 42 lines on each page, and parchment sewn together, a Torah is born (Chabad). But what if that Torah could be created and shipped to you in a matter of minutes. Enter the Kindle. With four weeks into school, I’ve seen JanSport backpacks look lighter, and paperbacks become obsolete. Inevitably, Amazon’s…
I grew up big-C Conservative in a small-l liberal household and got confused when I read in the New York Times on Saturday, May 30, 1998 that Barry Goldwater, leader of the conservative movement, had died. Because I was 12, and because the New York Times capitalizes most words in its headlines, I didn’t pick…
For every critic who disparages hip-hop as being all about “booty-shaking†and liquor, there’s a rapper who defies that stereotype by putting out “conscious rap.†This subcategory of the genre often deals with real life problems that the artist faces, everyday dilemmas that are problems common to the artist’s listeners. As an area with its…
After I got home from work today, I pried my hair off my sweat-soaked neck and flopped down on my bed. Flipping on the air conditioning, I turned my computer on and searched for an episode of Friends that I hadn’t seen yet. Knowing there were none, I settled into a re-run, as happily as…
A Jewish dance troupe in Germany is attacked by young boys throwing stones. Welsh men bandy racial slurs about and tell the Jews to “go home.†Helen Thomas barks out a similar request. What is all of this hatred doing in today’s world? It’s time to take a stand and nip this racism in the…
Who are we? Where do we come from? As it turns out, Jews are just Jews: our very own ethnic group. Recent studies have shown that Jews appear to be genetically different than non-Jews and, indeed, are closely related to one another. This revelation comes through Human “HapMap” Project, which examines human genome sequences; recently,…
As I strolled through the streets of Morningside Heights, the humid air nearly suffocating me, one thing I noticed was the emptiness. Empty of students, empty of professors, empty of Jews. Where were all my comrades in religion? Home for the summer, undoubtedly, but this presented a sharp contrast to Barnard and Columbia during the…
For the first time since Angela Merkel made that weird facial expression when George Bush tried to give her a massage, I can say: the Germans did something right. Recently, the German village of Oberammergau has revised its traditional “Passion Play,†a rite of passage that has gone on since 1633, to emphasize the historical…
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. This blog post was inspired by the…
Anything ending in the suffix “ILF†can’t be good. When the latest version of the sexual phenomenon that expressed just whom the public would like to have sex with next came out, though, I was surprised. The newest “ILF†category is Jews: more specifically, Jewish women. I’ve long heard that Jewish women are whiny, kvetching…
It’s a personal relief to see so many Jewish innovators and new Jewish organizations really giving a lot of thought to the Jewish experience, which is something I feel was left out too often in my Jewish day school and Young Israel synagogue experience. But I’m confused about one thing: Where is God? The question…