Sh’ma Blog: Voting My Issue

BY: ZOE JICK
When George W. Bush was up for re-election, and I was certain that a president so universally mocked could never earn a second term, I saw a t-shirt that changed my mind. This shirt had big bubble letters across its front that read “Vote Your Issue.” The bubble letters were colored blue and [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Jews and African Americans: Inside the Voting Booth. A discussion with Black poet, Jaron Varner.

BY: MATT BAR
I find myself asked to defend my song, “I’m Not White, I’m Jewish” just about as often as you might suppose. Maybe more. I understand the critique. I feel it. I certainly have been given all the privileges a beige face is granted in this country. Jews pass as white, [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Politics

BY: EMILY GOLDBERG
I despise politics.
Between the Democratic hippies and the right-wing Republicans, I consider myself somewhere in the middle, where most of the ignorance lies. I simply do not see the point for politics to consume the lives of average Americans. Because of politics, families have been torn apart; something as futile as a misunderstood [...]

Sh’ma Blog: To complicate that which seems simple and to simplify that which seems complicated

BY: JULIE PELC ADLER
When I was the director of Santa Monica College Hillel, my husband, Ami, and I (both rabbis: he, Conservative, and I, Reform) co-led a popular lunch-and-learn we called “Ask the Rabbis Adler”.
The program was an opportunity for the students to ask us anything: no holds barred.  Aside from the expected questions about [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Voting for Life and Peace, Sing the Voice of Your Heroes

BY: LEE FRANKEL-GOLDWATER
There are always heroes, and they walk among us.  Great figures from the past live in our hearts and minds for generations to come.  Images stirring recollections of old, and we breathe their spirit back into us as we need wisdom, guidance, and courage.
For the past year, I spent time in the [...]

Sh’ma Blog: An American Voter in Jerusalem

BY: RACHEL PETROFF KESSLER
I was studying abroad at Hebrew University when Bush bested Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election. A Brandeis alumna living in the neighborhood of French Hill (near the University’s Mt. Scopus campus) graciously opened up her home to Brandeis students to watch the returns come in. And so I tagged along as [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Confessions of a First Time American Jewish Voter

BY: JUAN MEJIA
My American soul is still in its infancy.  I have been living in this wonderful country for only six years.  This coming April I will celebrate one year of becoming a citizen. As far as being and feeling American, I am just but a baby.  I came to this [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Vote because I can’t

BY: RACHEL KAHN TROSTER
I’m an anchor baby. Born in the U.S. while my Canadian father was in rabbinical school, I was supposed to be born in Toronto. Indeed, my mother had plane tickets for Canada three days after my sister and I came a month early, surprise twins. I’m not supposed to be an American. [...]

Sh’ma Blog: On politics, shame and anger

BY: CARYN AVIV
“Shame is the work of memory against forgetting.  Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely – yet not entirely – forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification….And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent….The shame of parenthood – which is a good [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Clowns & Looney Tunes

BY: JAKE GOODMAN
NOTE:  After having written this blog, it is clear that at least part of my thinking was inspired by “Kaddish for an Unborn Child,” by Imre Kertész.  It is one of the most brilliant books I’ve ever read;  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Like so many other Americans, I have been paying attention [...]