Happy Halloween from the staff of Ha'Am!Whether you choose to celebrate tonight by dressing up, trick-or-treating, devouring candy, partying, or watching a scary movie (or doing nothing special because Halloween is a pagan holiday and Purim is better), treat yourself to something sweet by trying our Pumpkin Blondies recipe. They're perfect for bringing the fall pumpkin flavor into your home....

As my friend and I sat in a Kosher Cafe in the heart of Paris this past summer, we looked around the room and noticed the large amount of Parisian Jews. Although they live in a society that is highly anti-Semitic, they continue to strongly observe their faith, their tradition and their Judaism. Furthermore, the inside of the cafe was...

The soothing sounds of the pipa (Chinese lute) and other Chinese instruments resonated through the grand ballroom on the third floor of Hillel on Sunday, Oct. 27. The Jewish Refugees in Shanghai (1933-1941) symposium convened at 11 a.m. with the first session, “Cosmopolitan Sounds and Jewish Music in pre-1949 Shanghai.” The walls surrounding the audience were filled with large posters...

In his 1997 work "American Pastoral," novelist Philip Roth depicts the tragic decline of an assimilated Jew, Seymour "Swede" Levov, and his family in a New Jersey suburb. In doing so, Roth underlines a recurring theme throughout American Jewish literature and a persistent trend in the American Jewish experience: assimilation and the retention of a Jewish identity. Over the last...

This past Tuesday, after more than seven hours of deliberation and debate, USAC voted down a resolution (5-7-0) brought forth by Internal Vice President Avi Oved and sponsored by General Representative Sunny Singh and Academic Affairs Commissioner Darren Ramalho. The resolution called for something that should be inherent and unnecessary to ask for in a healthy campus climate: support for...

On October 9, 2013, three men were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, two of whom were Israeli. In fact, Arieh Warshel and Michael Levitt are the fifth and sixth Israelis to attain this honor within the past decade, an achievement of impossible statistical proportions for such a small country. However, only three of the six Nobel Laureates still live...

If you couldn't find Room 314 in Royce Hall, all you had to do was follow your nose. The aroma of meat and vegetable pastries, cooked vegetable dishes, and decadent desserts began somewhere around the offices of the Italian Department and led to the chattering crowd of professors, students, researchers, and general public celebrating the 20th anniversary of the founding...

It’s a rainy day, which, besides from forcing all of the umbrellas and slightly warmer jackets out from the back of students’ closets, signals another change in the UCLA landscape: endless lines at Kerckhoff Coffee House. Eager caffeine addicts and warm beverage connoisseurs spill out into the hallway on the second floor of Kerckhoff, chatting with friends or looking down...