Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
Jerusalem has long been the center of the world in Jewish life, but not since the time of King David has the city felt so personal and laid bare as it is in Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s new book “Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered.” Interwoven with the fighting, love, loss, and the longing of a mother, it speaks…
On Dec. 3, 2017, an unspeakable act occurred in Jerusalem. Yonatan Razel, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish musician, saw that women at his concert wanted to dance. Faced with the conflict between these women’s wants and the laws of modesty (which state that men shouldn’t look at dancing women), he took extreme action against his female audience….
Evan Goldstein’s recent contributions to New Voices have featured fascinating and insightful meditations on the cultural location of Jewishness in our world. They are a welcome move toward a critical conversation around the hybrid forms of modern Jewish identity, a project that requires a historical understanding of whiteness. Sharona Bat-Ephraim, the subject of Goldstein’s critique…
There’s a point in academic research where one becomes somewhat monomaniacal. I wouldn’t know what that word means unless it had been on an episode of The West Wing, but here I mean to say that I’ve sort of lost the ability to think about things that aren’t Jewish identity and theology (to the eternal…
John Adams famously remarked that “facts are stubborn things.” Maybe that is why Open Hillel leaders have closed their eyes to them. Open Hillel is an organization committed to abolishing Hillel International’s Standards of Partnership. These standards preclude Hillel branches from partnering with groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Besides…
In Palestinian activist circles,“Anti-normalization” broadly refers to the idea that pro-Palestinian activists should not partner in any way with Zionists or Zionist groups lest they be seen as making the occupation seem like an acceptable, or “normal” state of affairs. Normalization has been a controversial topic within Open Hillel since at least their conference at…
Holly Bicerano, a student at Boston University and the former Campus Outreach Co-Coordinator for Open Hillel, made waves in the Jewish world after publishing an op-ed in the Times of Israel called “Standing athwart lies,” explaining why she decided to leave the organization. Chief among her complaints are that, far from promoting true open dialogue…
On April 30, 2014 the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization, rejected the liberal lobbying group J Street’s bid for membership by a vote of 22-17. Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, wrote an editorial shortly afterward denouncing the vote, saying “The question of ‘what could be…
I think all of my friends are amazing people. But every now and then, some friends do such incredible work that you just want to shout about it from the highest mountaintop. But absent a mountaintop, profiling them in your magazine is the next best thing. Joseph Shamash and Andrew Lustig are two of those…
During the Nine Days preceding Tisha B’Av, the 25-hour fast commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem,we reflect on baseless hatred (sinat chinam). The Talmud teaches us that it was the baseless hatred among the people Israel that partially brought about the destruction of the Second Temple. (Along with, you know, high-level political drama…
An article by Amanda Borschel-Dan in the Times of Israel has described American youth as moving with “lightning speed” towards anti-Semitism. The proof in the nationalist pudding, it seems, is a lessening support for Israel among American youth. It seems that non-Jewish teenagers and young adults associate Israel a little too much with the over…
Kate Jacobson, the former Israel chair at the University of Calgary, recently bowed to pressure from other students and resigned her post due to her highly controversial views on Israel, as reported by the Calgary Jewish News. The most important thing to note here is that she was not told to leave by Hillel— upon…
“It is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty to use a well-established term to define a group (pro-Israel) when that group and its members such as yourself admit that the meaning of the well-established term does not in fact apply.” This was one of the many responses I received after my op-ed last month, “Hillel Student…
Hannah Silverfine’s experience with a Jewish education that taught only a very narrow definition of “pro Israel” is not only a problem in the Reform Movement. I agree that a good argument can be made for teaching children why support of Israel is important first, then leave the messy stuff for when they’re old enough…
Heresy! (?)
Heresy warning: I’m not sure I believe in God. Or, at the very least, if I believe in God, I do not believe in God as He Who Dwells on a Throne and Smites You When You Sin, as I was taught as a child. When I pray, I do so not necessarily out of…