Not long ago, if you were to survey religious liberty litigators regarding the biggest obstacle to defending religious liberty, many would have pointed to a Supreme Court case called Employment Division v. Smith. In Smith, the Supreme Court determined that…
Off Campus
Unraveling Unity: How Chaos Won at Universities
When was the last time you defended something that you believed in? Was it discussing dinner with your partner? Perhaps talking about an upcoming election or standing up for a friend in need? Now, think about why you defended it. Was…
Opinion: Good Discussion Requires Good History
Rational discussion about the Israeli-Palestine conflict has been overridden by morally loaded language that hinders achieving productive dialogue. The rise of social media and the subsequent spreading of misinformation has exacerbated this problem. Morally loaded language such as “apartheid”, “settler-colonialism”,…
Believe Israeli Women
Recently, Amit Soussanna, an Israeli woman who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th, held hostage for 55 days, and eventually released as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel, said that a Hamas terrorist raped her at gunpoint.…
Opinion- An Encampment of Ignorance
Written by Bella Brannon and Adam Thaw There’s something almost too ironic for jest about setting up a faux refugee camp in a city where 75,000 face homelessness, miles away from Rodeo Drive. As of this morning, UCLA’s SJP has…
Choosing to Intervene: Jewish Perspectives on End-of-Life Decisions
The following is an opinion piece submitted to Ha’Am by Rachel Fox who is a third-year Neuroscience student at UCLA. ——————— Our tradition teaches that all are made in the image of G-d, but provides little explicit guidance when it…
“Ben Gurion Looks at the Bible” Holds Wisdom for the Current Chapter of the Jewish Story
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was a socialist who rejected the Marxist belief that all important struggles are economic. Rather than believing that religion, nationalism, and moral ideals obscure economic struggles, he saw intellectual and moral struggle as important…
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,…
SATIRE: World Peace at Last- UN Agrees that Israel is the Worst
Notes: This story is inspired by current events. The situation in this story is exaggerated, and the quotes are created to be satirical. The views expressed in this post reflect the views of the author(s) and not UCLA or ASUCLA…