Halloween and Judaism: a contradiction or a coalition?

Halloween—the night of disguised merriment and childhood dreams. The night where it doesn’t matter if you were an all-star on your high school baseball team, genius enough to discover the theory of relativity, or had the body of an angel—you…

Tenure Shields Professor From the Consequences of Hate Speech

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY — On Monday evening, KSU students were treated to a presentation by Ishmael Khaldi, a rising star in the Israeli diplomatic corps. Khaldi has served as Israel’s deputy consul general to the Pacific Northwest, and he currently serves…

אליעזר גפני: Israeli-American wisdom beyond computer science

Sitting in his office in Boelter Hall, I imagined that Professor Eliezer Gafni seemed to fit the image of the typical Israeli—he is blunt, enjoys hiking, and has a huge Indian tapestry hanging on his office wall. The mountains of…

Plaskow’s feminist theology lacks one thing — Theology

Welcome back to Steiner’s Two Cents — the section in which I probe the interaction between feminism and Judaism as it is filtered through traditional text. Last week, I assessed Moshe Meiselman’s “Jewish Woman in Jewish Law,” which, in my opinion,…

Free Speech, Made Equal: a lesson for Daily Bruin opinion writer

In the October 21st Opinion section of the Daily Bruin, In the Know: Irvine 11 Appeal,  writer Brittany Chu attempts to contest the charges of the infringement of free speech, for which the Irvine 11 were convicted. Despite her best…

Ha’Am Staff Parties, Plays, and Brings Peace to the Galaxy

Rage – /rey-j/ – verb –1. To lose self-control in an impassioned display of anger; “to hold sway with unabated violence” 2. To party hard; excessively enjoying oneself through the consumption of alcohol, music, and dance. THE TREEHOUSE – Music,…

Interfaith challah sales help to prevent genocide

Photo by Jacob Goldberg Arriving at Hillel on the last night of sukkot and passing the wooden sukkah on your right painted green, yellow and red, you have the unmistakable feeling of entering a homogenous Jewish environment. Upon ascending one…

Jewish Ideals Stand Strong Amidst Occupy Wall Street Anti-Semitism

What began on September 17th, 2011 at Zuccotti Park in New York City as a protest against purportedly greedy Wall Street executives has become a global mutiny of epic proportions. As of October 20th, demonstrators in nearly one thousand cities…

The Jewish Vote, Reappraised

With the coverage of the election season saturating nearly every media outlet, we cannot escape discussion of partisan politics. Politicians from across the board are working long and hard to earn your vote. They’re assembling teams of image consultants, speechwriters,…

גלעד שליט חוזר הביתה – Gilad Shalit Comes Home

Gilad Shalit, the Israel soldier held captive for five years by Hamas, has been freed today in Gaza in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. [slideshow] Gilad’s first statements (in an apparently coerced interview by Egyptian media):…