As the Stroum Jewish Studies Program prepares to host Professor Steven Cohen when he delivers the Stroum Lectures next week, we at JewDub thought we would highlight issues of Jewish identity trending in the internet world this week. Of course, what we found is that nearly every news story and opinion piece on Jewish topics is consciously or subconsciously attempting to answer the question: what does it mean to be Jewish?

In the words of the new US Poet Laureate Philip Levine:

“I think I’m a typical example of a certain kind of an American Jew. That is: liberal, radically left, independent, big-mouthed, angry, proud. I know a lot of people like me. My family did not come to the United States for religious reasons: They came to survive. None of them were religious, not in the conventional sense. They didn’t keep kosher, they didn’t go to shul. They didn’t much care about that at all. What they cared about was being proud, raising their children to be like them—strong, proud.”

How Jews Became Germans. Again.

Converting to Judaism…from Judaism: Orthodox definitions of Judaism and one New Jersey Jew’s story.

Anti-Semitism in the New Europe: the case of Malmö, Sweden.

Jews without money: U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine (quoted above) talks to Tablet’s Jake Marmer on growing up Jewish and working class in Detroit.

Previous Stroum Lecturer Jonathan Sarna’s new book When General Grant Expelled the Jews (written while on sabbatical in Jerusalem) reviewed by the NY Times’ Janet Mesling.