JVoices: your jewish wake up call

On August 1st, I participated in a small tour through Canada Park lead by Eitan Bronstein, the Director of Zochrot [Remembering], an organization of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Canada Park is run by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and lies thirty minutes outside of Tel [...]

Noted author Garry Wills wrote an excellent book last year about American Christians. Or rather, ‘Head and Heart: American Christianities.’ After reading it, I was finally able to make sense of the relationship between seemingly disparate phenomena, such as:

Where did Christian Zionism come from, and why is it strongest in the US?
Why do some Christians [...]

As a child growing up in Israel, the Holocaust was omnipresent. There was the makolet (grocery store) owners with numbers on their arms, Begin yelping ‘Never Again’ as an election slogan, and the opening line of countless comedic monologues that begin with ‘as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and the mother of a soldier to be, I hereby light this torch in the name of (fill in the blank).’ [Thank you Hanoch Levin)

(apologies to those who aren’t living in new york city - this is an event announcement)
(it seems like there are many more radical purim extravaganzas going on all over the country, though, and i’m posting this announcement in part to encourage folks to think big and exciting for next year…)
this year’s eighth-or-so edition of the [...]

Putting aside fears of anti-Semitism to reclaim an old label
First published on jew-ish.com
It was a pretty normal Wednesday evening in early December. I had picked up copy of The Stranger right by Fuel on 19th — a coffee shop conveniently located near my overpriced two-room Capitol Hill apartment. After lighting candles with friends for the [...]

whenever i start to get bored with the idea of staying vocal as one of the surprisingly few non-closeted secularists in most of the electronic jewish spaces i frequent, something like this comes up.
ruth messinger, former manhattan borough president, american jewish world service president, and makher-in-chief of the current (and problematic as well as important, [...]

one.
i’ve been meaning to write something about the destruction of temples, and whether it’s something to mourn. partly because i have a soft spot for some aspects of tisha b’av despite my secularism, and partly inspired by a friend’s experience being told by a progressive jewish organization that a drash she wrote for them [...]

From the introduction:

Two Jews, a crumbling empire, and a struggling resistance movement walk into a bar…

For people who have committed themselves to fundamental social change, the situation we’re stuck in with antisemitism is like a bad joke.

From one side, progressive and radical activists and scholars are being attacked by organized campaigns to brand us antisemites. In particular, it’s virtually impossible to speak out critically about Israel without being charged with antisemitism.

At the same time, we face real currents of unchallenged anti-Jewish oppression in our movements and the world. This endangers Jews, corrupts our political integrity, and sabotages our ability to create the effective resistance our times demand. …

Among the contents:

-Antisemitism is still a world problem
-How could Jews be oppressed?
-But Arabs are Semites!
-Meet the amazing, disappearing oppression
-Let’s look at an example of how antisemitism works.
-If you liked COINTELPRO, you’ll LOVE the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
-The Revolution, the Jews and the “Generous Offer”
-Time Out! (A Word to Jews)
-Innoculate your Palestine work against antisemitism
-Tips for every activist

…and more.

I’ve always been fascinated by the power of stories. And given that some of the stories I’ve known all my life come from the torah, those tend to be the ones that fascinate me the most. But even though I can talk about Isaac and Rebekah and their whole mishpocha as if they are my [...]

for poetry month (why april, by the way? ‘the cruelest month’? ‘with his shoures soote’? please.), here’s the text of a talk by irena klepfisz - a fantastic poet in yiddish, english, and both at once, as well as an insightful essayist and deeply committed radical - from a 2006 conference at barnard college called “Jewish Women Changing America: Cross-Generational Conversations”. at the bottom is a poem from one of klepfisz’s books. a complete transcript of the “Changing Culture” panel that klepfisz spoke on (and the rest of the conference) is available online here.