Our Torah reading this week is the combined parshiyot of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. Acharei Mot begins by recalling the tragic death of two of Aaron’s sons, which was recounted a few chapters prior: “And the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron's two sons, when they drew near before the Lord, and they died." (Vayikra 16:1) By...

“You got another wedding invitation!” my brother yelled from the kitchen. I couldn’t believe it. It was the fifth one this year! All of a sudden I had this crazy feeling of déjà vu, and soon I realized…the last time I had such an influx of invitations was during bar and bat mitzvah season in middle school! And here I...

(Photo courtesy of Daniel Alcazar / Daily Bruin)_____________________________________________Written by Tammy Rubin, fourth-year human biology and society major, and Elyssa Schlossberg, fourth-year psychobiology major. Sometimes, the best response is a simple apology. On February 10th, 2015 in one of the most egregious instances of bias in the Undergraduate Students Association Council, USAC attempted to vote down a Jewish appointment to the...

Monday morning. ______(expletive). You _____(verb) yourself out of bed and head over to your _____(subject) class. Your breath smells like_____(smell) so you pop a _____(something that goes in your mouth). After class you head over to the Hillel to _____(activity) but instead end up taking a ____(adjective) nap. You oversleep and wake up to find that night has fallen and...

(Graphic courtesy of Madeleine Isaacs / Daily Bruin Senior Staff) ______________________________________Following recent events surrounding the Undergraduate Students Association Council and the Jewish community, many Jewish students have felt marginalized and unrepresented by their student government. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, especially, created a gruesomely divided campus climate that lingered for months, culminating in the necessity for Jewish students to write a...

In today’s world, we are engulfed by symbols that hold significant meaning, and some that are connected to beliefs and traditions that date back to thousands of years. The Hamsa, better known as “the hand,” serves as a universal symbol among many religions and cultures. It wasn't until I was in Turkey last summer and a man approached me and...

Written by Akiva Nemetsky In the second of this week’s two Torah portions, Parashat Metzorah, we begin by reading about the purification process a metzorah (someone who is punished for speaking lashon ha'ra, denigrating speech) must undergo before being allowed to reintegrate with society. (The punishment is a skin affliction called tzaraat and the person is purified following a period...

On Wednesday morning, the citizens of Israel woke up, drank their morning coffee, put on white shirts, and glanced at the candles their mothers, wives, or they themselves lit the night before. Perhaps the picture of the young soldier or the innocent child delicately placed behind the candle drew a small tear from their eyes as they took a deep,...

Photo courtesy of Austin Yu / Daily Bruin Senior Staff ____________________________________________________Ha'Am, as well as many major national media outlets, have discussed ad nauseam the anti-Semitic comments and/or troubling voting record of USAC council members Fabienne Roth, Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed, Sofia Moreno Haq and Manjot Singh in the Rachel Beyda appointment fiasco. For those living under a rock, on Feb. 10, 2015,...

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...