Culture
One Woman's Quest for Holy Chutzpah. Dude.
“I’m standing on the shoulders of hilarious giants full of chutzpah,” self-described comedienne, director, and writer Jessie Kahnweiler tells Zeek about her new web-based miniseries, “Dude, Where’s My Chutzpah?” The Six Points fellow took time out of her launch celebrations yesterday to answer some questions for Zeek.
Social Justice
The Leftist Ethicist, May Edition
For her May column, the Leftist Ethicist offers sensible solutions for dilemmas dealing with anti-Semitism, race and class and being an ethical employer at home.
Religion
Counting the Omer by Drawing
This year’s project began with a scratch of an idea. In preparation for Sinai, the receiving of the Torah, I wanted to explore what it means to hold on to something.
Culture
The Bitter & the Sweet: Reflections on Motherhood
Finding words for postpartum depression, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat bravely reflects on her difficult adjustment to motherhood, sharing a deeply personal journey and the poetry that helped her navigate this new terrain, ultimately savoring both the bitter and the sweet. This Mother’s Day, she tells struggling new moms: It gets better.
Social Justice
Damage by Watching: Domestic Drones & Privacy
As domestic drones become increasingly common (cheap, too) and more states build them into public safety strategies for law enforcement, we need to think not just about public safety, but about protecting privacy and creating safeguards against abuse.
Social Justice
Chicago's Young Jews Align Against Public School Shutdowns
“We are graduate students and organizers. We are Jewish folks and others who believe education is a Jewish value and a human right. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the CPS school board have proposed massive school closings throughout Chicago’s most struggling neighborhoods.”
Culture
Madness, Mindfulness & Judaism: Meet Sascha Altman DuBrul
The Icarus Project founder talks to an old punk pal, journalist Jennifer Bleyer, “about madness, social justice and his recently sparked Jewish identity on the eve of his cross-country book tour for Maps to the Other Side.”
From The Archive
Come In, Take Your Shoes Off: A New Look at Tisha B'Av
Who is it you’re collectively remembering and mourning, each Tisha B’Av? Is it me, or your version of me? And if I’m not truly known, can I be truly mourned?
Intellectual in Translation: An Interview with Ilan Stavans
Can an Ashkenazi edit a Sephardi anthology? Are there Jewish public intellectual role models today? What should be the role of identity politics?
Fiction: The Engines of Sodom
Skinhead then straightedge, a young hardcore fan makes his way through Toronto’s punk scene in order to come to terms with his family’s ties to the Holocaust.
Daughter of Iraq: An Excerpt
Middle Eastern Jews have their own aliyah stories, too. Israeli novelist Revital Shiri-Horowitz paints a portrait of an Iraqi woman planning her departure.
Days of Future Past: Iranian Garage Rock of the 1960s
Like many locales that are retroactively said to have had garage rock scenes, Iran was not a country where many people actually had garages. It still isn’t. To imagine young Iranians hammering out tunes in a subdivision of three-bedroom homes with two-car garages is to indulge a fantasy that is simultaneously economic and political. We are drawn to the vision of an Iranian garage scene in the 1960s precisely because we perceive it as a future past. And we are drawn to Raks Raks Raks because it gives us hope that it is not a future past redemption.
Social Justice
Five years after Postville: Standing Up for Immigration Reform
Five years ago one of the worst workplace raids in American history took place in Postville, Iowa — with 389 individuals detained, many deported and a town devastated. If ever there was an event that proved why comprehensive immigration reform and worker protections are needed, it was this raid.
However, for the two of us, the story in Postville started almost two years earlier, when we met with the owners of Agriprocessors, workers from the plant, and community and religious leaders.
Fiction + Poetry
The Sacrifice of Abraham: Three Poems
Three poems from “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” a series of re-tellings of the biblical story of Isaac and Abraham. In each section, a group of rabbis gathers to re-tell and offer commentary on the story, and with each re-telling transforms it into a broader and broader vision encompassing Greek gods, revolutionaries, insurgents, love affairs, and photographic details from current events.
Religion
Being Meir
Can spiritual growth be found in the “tension between one’s own cherished beliefs and someone else’s contradictory beliefs”? Absolutely.
Social Justice
The Jewish Push for Immigration Reform: A Q & A with Abby Levine
The American conversation around immigration has taken its rightful place, center stage. Today, Abby Levine – 33 — is once again bringing Jews and social justice together to support comprehensive immigration reform, this time at the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable.
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- 5000 Pages of Zeek
- Founded in 2001, Zeek was the first Jewish online magazine, and we have over 5000 pages online to prove it, all available free of charge. Read more in the Archive.
