Journalism by Jewish college students, for Jewish college students.
A green text bubble flashed across my phone. “You should write about the Farrakhan, Women’s March, anti-Semitism, intersectionality thing.” I turned my screen dark. I’d been avoiding this. I know. I’m a Jewish feminist writer. I drink my morning coffee out of an Emma Goldman mug and my phone auto-predicts the term “intersectional feminism.” I…
The University of Southern Florida student government passed a resolution last month entitled “New Hope,” critiquing President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But what makes this bill different from all other controversial student government bills? Drafters and campus Jews worked on it together. The resolution came out…
This just in, Jewish millennials. Young Jews increasingly feel distanced from Israel due to a perceived conflict of values, warned the CEO and director-general of the Jewish Agency Alan Hoffman last week. He concluded that Israel is losing young American Jews in an “extremely worrisome” trend, requiring a new approach. “I think it’s very important that…
The first time I encountered a progressive view about Israel was when I went on my first college tour at the age of 16. On UC Berkley’s campus, across the Bay from my house, I noticed small black flags planted in the grass. A sign informed passersby that these flags represented the movement for justice…
After Jewish summer camp, USY, and a Talmud Torah education, my friend told me he was disillusioned with Zionism. “I’ve always found the idea of Diaspora to be super meaningful,” he said. “The majority of Judaism is based on Diasporic tradition and the allegory of Diaspora. Modern Zionism sort of spits at this.” He explained…
Although left-leaning Jewish college students sympathize with progressive movements, like Black Lives Matter, social justice causes have often excluded them over their support for Israel, at least according to an expert panel at this year’s Israeli-American Council conference. Founded over a decade ago, the Israeli-American Council is an umbrella organization created to connect Israeli-Americans and…
This year, I realized something new about the holiday of Sukkot. Sukkot challenges us to envision and construct a new kind of Jewish community, one that lies outside of our everyday institutions. We are commanded to dwell in a new reality, where we welcome in all those on the margins of our community, as well…
Dear Jewish educators, First, I would like to thank you for dedicating your lives to helping students like me understand faith and tradition. Thank you for allowing me to develop life-long friendships, for allowing me to grow my creativity and for patiently fielding my questions. Thank you for encouraging my feminism and my passion for…
When I was a student at Wesleyan University, the Jewish community was my home. It was a safe space to question, to deepen and nuance my connection to Israel/Palestine, and to learn to articulate my own beliefs about Judaism through hearing a variety of others’. Essentially, it was a place where discomfort was valued as…
At the root of anti-Semitism is the belief that all good things Jews do are for nefarious reasons. There is an emerging belief in the far left that LGBT Jews who are Zionist are doubly guilty of re-branding Israel as a progressive society while covering human rights abuses against Palestinians. The name for this alleged…
In the beginning God created the heavens and a round earth But for five thousand years we couldn’t see our world’s true extent. Blind and unknowing, we drew our flat paper maps with heavy lines and solid edges, Contained, finite, concrete, And when we were cast off to its four unfamiliar, foreign corners We fixed…
Dear freshmen, Last month, I helped facilitate an info session at Wesleyan University for 70 rising seniors from the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, where I attended elementary school. These students sat before me in the admissions office, looking slightly perplexed about why their Jewish day school had taken them to visit a liberal, off-the-beaten…
When Oceans Stand Between You and Your Dreams, You Have to Keep Swimming By Rachel Chabin, Stony Brook University Our Exodus begins with water. It begins with crossing when the water is over your head. It begins with a decision, a conviction; it begins with the choice to try to swim. When we fled to…
In an oddball crossbreed between leftist language and retro anti-Semitic tropes, posters that read ‘End Jewish Privilege’ appeared on University of Illinois at Chicago’s campus earlier this month. The posters proclaimed, “Ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege,” followed by an image of a pyramid with Jews at the top and “goyim not drawn to scale” at the bottom. Eva…
This week, social media users witnessed a beautiful onslaught of snark and defiance from the Jewish millennial corner of the Twitterverse. Young Jews took to Twitter appalled by a swiftly deleted tweet suggesting that Israeli Knesset member Michael Oren had called their views on Israel appalling. “The opinions of young #american #jews are appalling. They need the…