among Haredi Women If you are tired of Ḥaredi women being portrayed as oppressed, uneducated, and subservient to their husbands, Michal Raucher’s Conceiving Agency provides a much-needed corrective, reframing our notions of reproductive agency and religious meaning in the ultra-Orthodox community. Using the tools of ethnography and anthropology as well as the academic literature around […]
Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Read More »
Adapted from an article originally published in the Times of Israel blog, December 6, 2023. https://blogs. timesofisrael.com/lets-not-demonize-college-students/. In the weeks after October 7th, the text messages came in droves, from friends and family alike: “Oh my goodness! Are you okay? There is so much antisemitism on college campuses!” I responded that I was fine, and
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Something I never thought I would say is that October 7th pushed me to see some of the worst parts of the Jewish community. This wasn’t my immediate reaction to the events unfolding in Israel and subsequently on campus. Immediately, I sank to the ground and cried. Immediately, I texted my friends and family in
Responding to Antisemitism at Columbia University Read More »
Adapted from the written testimony of Amanda Silberstein before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on Free Speech on College Campuses, November 8, 2023. “I was alone in a world gone mad.” These are the words my grandfather wrote the day in October 1942 after his father had been shot dead
Report from Cornell: A Campus Gone Mad Read More »
On the Shabbat of October 7th, I was teaching a Lunch ‘n Learn session about Simhat Torah in Wilder Hall, the student union of Oberlin College, when one of my students said, “Rabba Amalia, I’m not sure if it is appropriate to share this information coming across my phone. There is terrible news from Israel.”
Antisemitism on Campus: A Hillel Director’s Reflections Read More »
Brandeis University Press, 2024 ($40) Reviewed by Orit Avishai Israel’s High Court of Justice recently issued what would have been a bombshell had the news cycle not been rightfully consumed by the war in Gaza: A unanimous court ruled that women are entitled to sit for state rabbinic exams. The ruling does not mean that
As a community, we have made some significant advances over the last decade in the area of equal access and membership for people with disabilities, but much work remains to be done. This is true both in terms of our institutions—our synagogues, schools, and camps—and in the area of halakhah. I would divide the halakhic
Redefining Categories and Acts: The Next Frontier in Disabilities Halakhah Read More »
