By Jonas Holdaway, Jacob Pearl, and Alex Rubel “Let them eat Challah” — a French princess once famously opined. For us, the real question is: which one? To find out, our team took to the Jewish neighborhoods of Los Angeles…
At UCLA, Waving the White Flag Turned Campus Dark
Image captured by Hailey Zill Oscar Wilde once famously said: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.” Late on Tuesday night, April 30, precisely such a…
Purim 5784: Our place in Jewish history
Upon a surface-level study of Megillat Esther, one quickly realizes that the Scroll of Esther — read twice a year on the evening and morning of the Purim holiday — is a book unlike any other in our literary canon.…
Upon Three Things…
There is a classic Jewish teaching that has become mainstream to such an extent that, I believe, it rarely gets the full contemplation it deserves. Yet, in our current day and age, when many of society’s building blocks are being…
On Campus, Jewish Students Now Confront the Quintessential “Covenant of Fate”
When he delivered his essay Kol Dodi Dofek to an audience of American Jews on the eighth anniversary of Yom Ha’atzmaut in 1956, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik formulated his vision of post-1948 religious Zionism by referencing the terrors of Treblinka,…
My Canopy of Peace
If only I could share with youMy canopy of peace If only I could envelop youIn these clouds of glory Here we dwell in the Almighty’s shadeWe’ve found favor in a spiritual abode It’s the Sukkot festival, the time of…
“Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”: A Surprising Source for Modern-Day Motivation
Perform a quick search of “motivational quotes” on Google and you will be greeted with a large sample of internet wisdom. Like these: “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” “Nothing is impossible – the word itself says, ‘I’m possible.” With…
Purim 5783: Lots of Luck
You know how it feels to search frantically for something – say, your car keys – only to discover that they were in your pocket all along? This is how I felt as I was brainstorming some topics relating to…
Hen Mazzig: Confronting the Rise of “Modern” Antisemitism
When Hen Mazzig came to speak at the UCLA Hillel in late October, I had no expectation of seeing him again ten days later at the Jewish National Fund’s National Conference in Boston, some 2,500 miles away from Westwood. While…
Chanukah 5783: What’s in a name?
Warren Buffett has famously said that while it takes 20 years to build a reputation, five minutes is sufficient to ruin one. As someone who is only a few months older than twenty myself, I think I’ll have to take…