On June 29th, the US Supreme Court voted in favor of protecting abortion access when it ruled against an attempt by the state of Louisiana to prevent doctors from providing abortion unless they had admitting privileges at hospitals within in 30 miles of where they treated patients. (For more on this case,...
Whither morality in this moment of Annexation? Is it withering? Or is it reviving? For decades, Israelis and Jews around the world have been taught that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is the “most moral army in the world.” Derived from the concept of “purity of arms,” the Spirit of the IDF...
Hannah Smith is a Master’s student at Stanford University in Latin American Studies. This week I opened my drawer at my family’s home in Maryland to find the t-shirt I received upon my acceptance to Stanford four and a half years ago. The back of the t-shirt taunted me – “We have...
There is a Jewish folktale from Egypt called “Elijah’s Violin” and I had to go track it down after I, along with so many, became aware of the heartrending story of Elijah McClain. One year ago, McClain suffered fatal injuries at the hands of arresting officers in Colorado who held him...
If the annexation debate has achieved anything, it has proved one thing: the mainstream American Jewish community is dead. It is failing all of us, right, center, or left. Community Failures Mainstream organizations like the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, Conference of Presidents, and others that have long claimed to represent...
Protests have been taking place across the US over the last three weeks in response to the continuation of police killings of unarmed black people. George Floyd, a 46 year-old black man whose murder has been at the center of the demonstrations, was killed by Minneapolis police officers on May 25th. He...
I stand at the intersection of many competing and sometimes incongruent identities finding it hard to breathe. I say this acknowledging that I am able to breathe and am alive while others like George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and more have been murdered....
“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” — Final social media post of Charlottesville martyr Heather Heyer; may Hashem avenge her blood. We are living in days of rage. During the first 11 weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., America’s billionaires have hoarded over half a trillion additional dollars,...
Erin Graff Zivin is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, and Director of the Graduate Certificate program in Translation Studies at the University of Southern California “The language of color blindness—like the language of ‘not racist’—is a mask to hide racism.” -Ibram X. Kendi, How to...
On June 3, more than 100 organizations in the mainstream of the American Jewish community issued a statement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd declaring outrage, calling on the government and law enforcement agencies to make change, and pledging to stand with the black community to bring about that...