Daily Blog
S Blog: Choosing Justice
BY: RACHEL KAHN TROSTER
Sometimes I feel like corporations think we can consume our way to a better world. If we only buy the right (green/local/organic/fair trade) products, we will make things better. Or we buy something and it makes a donation to a cause. What a bargain! I got to take something home and someone [...]
S Blog: Google has become a Verb – On the Ethical Consumption of Intellectual Resources
BY: JULIE PELC ADLER
We are blessed (I think) to live in an age of an endless supply of information on any given subject. “To google” something means to know, somewhat definitively, an overabundance of perspectives on a topic. In the Information Age, there is no down time from the possibility of knowing.
It’s possible to research [...]
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. [...]
