In honor of my Prodigious Babes series, I wanted to write this week’s Taste of Torah with a focus on the female protagonist of Behaalotecha (Numbers), Miriam. The parashah concludes with a rather bizarre incident: G-d punishes Miriam with tzaraat…
Jewish wanderlust: Jewish destinations outside of Israel
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust As a graduate embarking on a ‘year off’ before law school, I find myself curious to see the world while the…
Honey, I vaccinated the kids: Jewish bioethics of vaccinatons
In December 2014, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” Disneyland, was plagued by a measles outbreak. In all, 131 people were infected — the majority of whom were unvaccinated. Shortly after, the University of California announced that beginning in 2017, students…
Bruin Passover meal plan options
Passover is just around the corner, which means Jewish Bruins may be the hungriest students at UCLA for those eight days. Thankfully, UCLA has an amazingly supportive Jewish community that makes sure its students eat heartily. Hillel, Chabad and JAM…
Above and Beyond: My night at the film premiere
Last November, I had the pleasure of attending the 28th Israeli Film Festival LA premiere of Above and Beyond, a documentary produced by Nancy Spiegelberg about the foreign airmen of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. That eventful Thursday night was…
A “frank and open” conversation with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Lau
This past Sunday afternoon, current students and alumni of UCLA, USC, CSUN, and SMC gathered to ask questions about American Jewry and the State of Israel to Rabbi David Baruch Lau, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, during his first…
Are we breeding a society of takers?
Roughly 12% of UCLA’s student population is Jewish, and these 3,000 or so students may be the luckiest across the nation. They are not only supported by a vast network of Jewish Bruins, but also by various organizations that exist…
Prodigious Babes of Jewish History: Nitzevet
An Introduction to the Series: Judaism has always been somewhat of a romantic religion to me. Perhaps it is because it never ceases to evoke within me an authentic array of emotions, ranging from awe to love to apprehension. Through…
Prodigious Babes of Jewish History: Imma Shalom
Exposition of remarkable, yet obscured, women of holy Jewish texts.
Lag Ba’Omer: holiday of the collective soul
This past weekend, the Jewish nation celebrated Lag Ba’Omer. For the average American Jew, Lag Ba’Omer may be a bit of a mystery — there is no Christian equivalent, it is not commercialized in any way, and pop culture has…