In the first-ever tie for JSPA's top prize for high school journalists, staffers of The Lion's Tale at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School and The Boiling Point at Shalhevet High School both won the 2021 Grand Prize for Jewish Scholastic Journalism, the Jewish Scholastic Press Association announced Sunday. "Is Shalom Hello or Goodbye?"  by Daphne Kaplan and Rochelle Berman of The Lion’s Tale, ...

Just this past year, in 2020, Israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain with the Abraham Accords. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was lauded in Israel, and former President Donald Trump received praise in the US. However, in doing so, Netanyahu changed his approach from “land for peace” to “peace for peace.” In the past, other Arab countries would not have...

The Class of 2021 is beginning their Irene and Daniel Simpkins Senior Capstone trip by quarantining at Alexander Muss High School for 10 days after their arrival on April 6. The class is quarantining in pods, with two pods for the 28 female students and one for the 19 males. Each pod is further subdivided into rooms of four to six people. Though students are separated by pods, they are able to see...

Although the CESJDS community could not gather as usual on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the community still came together on Zoom for a meaningful commemoration. “I think we are all suffering from Zoom burnouts, but it was really heartening to see our community come together despite all the limitations of Zoom,” Jewish History Teacher Dr. Dan Rosenthal said. “I think that the importance...

Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-born Jewish author, immigrated to Israel in 1983, where he currently works as a writer, journalist, and political activist. In 2018, Halevi published his latest book, Letters To My Palestinian Neighbor, in which he opens a profound dialogue with a hypothetical Palestinian on the other side of the border that separates West Jerusalem and the West Bank. In each chapter,...

On March 16, Robert Aaron Long shot and killed eight people in Cherokee County, Georgia, six of them of East Asian descent. Just three days later, the school joined together for Town Hall. I was expecting the topic would be about hate crimes against Asians, which have escalated by 150% this year in the U.S, But it was not. Although the topic chosen, cancel culture, was still relevant and important,...