April marks the seventy year anniversary of the allied liberation of Jews and many other peoples from concentration camps all over Europe. During the Holocaust, German Nazis killed approximately twelve million people, six million of whom were Jews and one and a half million of whom were children. With time distancing the present from the Holocaust, survivors are slowly passing...

Although students often dread Mondays, they can turn out to be sunny and exciting if they’re filled with the right people. This past Monday, I had the pleasure of interviewing the president-elect of Bruins for Israel, Omer Hit, a third-year neuroscience major and theater minor. We met at Kerkhoff patio and, like any successful leader, Mr. President-elect was right on...

Resistance does not have to mean rejecting the system, or even aiming to change the system. Resistance means not letting the system change you. In case someone has not caught up yet, money is the name of the game and the overwhelming majority of us are not winning. Even those with houses, cars or a guaranteed retirement plan are getting...

The Impetus: What happened?As most of the world is abundantly aware, on Jan. 7, two radical Muslim terrorists charged the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 journalists whom they held responsible for depicting the prophet Mohammed. The following day, a policewoman was gunned down by the same attackers. And on the third day, after the initial...

I’ve never eaten the much vaunted In-N-Out hamburger; I’ve never tasted the rumored deliciousness of a sizzling slice of bacon; and I’ve certainly never bit into a savory ribeye steak at an upscale restaurant. As a product of a conservative Jewish household and extensive Jewish education, I have for my entire life joined with my family in keeping kashrut (to...

In the world of ever-evolving consumer high tech, it should come as no surprise that an app has been created to assist Shabbat-observant Jews. There are other apps to assist Jews out there, like Rustybrick’s Minyan app or G-dscast’s Wake Up World app, which is narrated by Randi Zuckerburg, but the current talk of the town is the Shabbos App,...

The tragedies of the summer of 2014 in Israel began with the abduction and murder of three Israeli children, Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. Though the vast majority of Jews across the world had no direct connection to the boys, we held our collective breath, hoping for their safe return. Our communities banded together in prayer and then, tragically, in mourning,...

Background: Throughout our history, Jewish communities across the world have developed slow-cooked stews in order to have warm food on Shabbat without violating its laws. Ashkenazi Jews developed Cholent, and Sephardic Jews came up with similar stews like Chamin and Dafina. The following highly imprecise recipe for a large batch of Cholent was conveyed to the author by a Rabbi...

In the Torah, a hero is not someone who chooses to do precisely what he or she wants to do as an individual, not someone who never does wrong, and certainly not someone who never errs. In the Torah, a hero is someone who accepts responsibility for his or her people and looks out for them, even at great personal...

It used to bug me that my best friend was a bit of a health nut. I was horrified one Shabbat when she leaned over to me and said, “Hey, you know that banana bread you love so much…the main ingredient is cauliflower!” I looked at her in shock as she proceeded to reveal all the secret ingredients hidden in...