Issue 2, Number 1 (2018) Spring 2018

Dear reader, 

I am Miriam Minsk, a Penn freshman studying bioengineering and potentially minoring in Modern Middle East Studies. I am from Rockville, Md. where I attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School for 13 years. I also spent Spring, 2017 with my grade in Israel. My Jewish education made me passionate about Israel, and when I got to Penn I enrolled in an Middle East studies class to learn more about the region as a whole. After completing the course, my professor, Heather Sharkey, reached out to me about reviving Kedma. Kedma was founded on Penn’s campus in Fall, 2005 and published its last issue in Spring, 2013. I saw this journal as an opportunity to create a space in which people could freely share their opinions pertaining to Jewish and Israeli culture, a space I believe to be necessary on Penn’s campus. 

This issue of Kedma contains essays about Arabs who served in the IDF, Israeli shows on Netflix, lovesick men in the Talmud, and Bernie Sanders’ stance on Israel. Interspersed among the essays are reviews of an Israeli restaurant and a book about digital militarism in Israel, a collection of photos from Tel Aviv, and a poem about the Arab-Israeli conflict. These works of different genres and topics weave together the complicated fabric that reflects Penn students’ views on Jewish thought, Jewish culture and Israel. 

I hope that you not only read this first revived issue of Kedma, but also engage in it. Discuss the contents with your friends. Send in letters to the editor. Write or otherwise create your own submissions to our journal so we can capture an even wider spectrum of views and better fulfil our mission. Thanks for picking up this journal, enjoy! 

Miriam Minsk