This November, many within the Jewish community observed Mizrahi Heritage Month, a time dedicated to bringing visibility to a historically underrepresented Jewish demographic in the Western world, the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East. After the Jewish people…
Persian Jewish Life at UCLA: A Reflection
At UCLA, Bruins are encouraged on a daily basis to familiarize themselves with their origins so as to better understand how their identities were formed and have shaped their lives. Persian Jewish Bruins are no exception to this campus phenomenon.…
Losing Their Religion: American Jewry
In his 1997 work “American Pastoral,” novelist Philip Roth depicts the tragic decline of an assimilated Jew, Seymour “Swede” Levov, and his family in a New Jersey suburb. In doing so, Roth underlines a recurring theme throughout American Jewish literature…
Yiddishkayt’s Helix Project: a modern adventure into the forgotten Yiddish past
Cobblestone paths and narrowly winding streets. Freshly painted yellow buildings and crumbling courtyards boarded up in disrepair. Vilnius, summer 2012, or as the Yiddish speaking Jewish population called it prior to World War II, Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Ten…