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The Global Citizen: Israel on Campus
November 06, 2009 | Mimi Micner
I have found that Middlebury College is a wonderful place to be Jewish. Since my sophomore year, I have been actively involved in Hillel on campus, where I have not only met great people and had a lot of fun, but also engaged meaningfully on issues facing Jewish students and the Jewish people more generally.
One such issue came up this past week. After our weekly board meeting, we all got an e-mail from one of our members which voiced her concern about an Israeli flag that we hang outside our space. Her argument was that this flag is a symbol which does not represent our members nor our mission on campus, which is to support the campus' vibrant Jewish community.
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The She-Kippah, and Other Things I Can't Handle
November 06, 2009 | Ashley Tedesco
I've always been a little jealous of men, who get the opportunity to sport all sorts of kippot, full of traditional value. Yes, yes, I know--a woman can wear a kippah too. But it freaks me out.
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Text Messages
November 05, 2009 | Sam Green
One of the coolest and perhaps most under-used Jewish resources at Swarthmore is our 'Beit Midrash'. 'Beit Midrash' means 'House of Learning' and Batei Midrash around the world function as study halls expressly for the purpose of studying classical Jewish texts. Our Beit Midrash is a small room in a small quad in a relatively remote corner of the Swarthmore campus, where one can find a small collection of classical Jewish texts; lots of Hebrew Bibles, Chumashes, a few different Midrash, Halakha, and Talmud collections.
Aside from being an aesthetically interesting space, with lots of ancient and 'holy' books filling the shelves and pictures of important, wise-looking rabbis adorning the walls, the Beit Midrash is a place to study Jewish texts from a modern, critical perspective, something that I imagine isn't very common in a liberal arts environment. It's a shame to admit it, but at the present time I don't think there are any students at Swat who are currently studying the Talmud tractates in the Beit Midrash. My class is slowly (really slowly) working its way through Genesis right now, trying to read the texts from a modern, critical perspective. It's hard work when you're Hebrew is as bad as mine, but also really exciting. Reading the Torah in the original and trying to come up with valid, text-based interpretations (interpretations that do not rely on assumptions and information from outside of the text) has been one of the most rewarding Jewish experiences of my time in college. My prof pointed out to me the other day that the beauty and power of our tradition comes directly a result of the beauty, wisdom, and power of our texts. Ok, she didn't use those exact words, but she did talk about how valuable the texts are. I'm not exactly sure what exactly the value is or where it comes from, but I'm inclined to agree. She noted that as liberal American Jews become less literate in the language, style, logic, world-view, and approach of classical Jewish texts, we lose an integral part of Jewish civilization, to our detriment. One can only go so far with vague concepts of Jewish identity, as well as modern Jewish history, Israel politics and advocacy, holidays and other ritual matters, before one runs into the problem of the source of all this tradition, which is to be found in the vast collection of text we have at our disposal. These texts usually take the form of an elaboration on, or an analysis or interpretation of the Torah, the fundamental text of the religion, and by extension, Jewish civilization. These texts, though old and written from a religious perspective that often is very foreign to modern sensibilities (like my own) is definitely worth looking into.
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