Ilana Gunson, at The Blogs

Sep 20, 2024, 6:56 PM

Most weeks when I sit down to write this column, I do so with nothing in my head except an echo of a pressing pre-Shabbos deadline. This week, though, as I thumbed through the files my brain so neatly...

Sep 12, 2024, 10:18 PM

The Tokenization of Anti-Israel Jews

This week’s column was prompted by the recent visit of Norman Finklestein to our campus, sponsored by anti-Israel outsiders, and encouraged by on-campus student groups who took one look at his discography and deemed him the perfect pawn. For...

Sep 4, 2024, 11:44 PM

Mourner

Four windows are filled with the fliers of the Israeli hostages.

Embedded deep in the Jewish soul is the mourning one. For thousands of years, being a Jew has been synonymous with knowing how to grieve your people. We shape our calendars around it, we sit low during shiva and...

Sep 2, 2024, 10:58 PM

Returning to an anti-Zionist campus

Welcome Back, Bulls! As we kick off the new semester, it is undeniable that our campus seems to continue on the putrid vein of not only being unsupportive of Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students, but the attacks just keep...

Apr 16, 2024, 12:39 AM

The Aftermath of BDS at USF

Pro-BDS students gather in the Marshall Student Center holding big cloth signs and covering their faces.

Boycott. Divest. Sanctions. At the University of South Florida, these words have come to mean more than the sum of their parts. Last Tuesday night, we sat for seven hours in the student center’s student government senate chambers as our...

Apr 5, 2024, 6:50 PM

The Political Existence

Imagine I am sitting across from two people. Person A is Jewish, and Person B is not. I have just recited to them enthusiastically the rules of the word association game. They have agreed to play. But instead of...

Mar 28, 2024, 8:57 PM

Reclaiming a Jewish Childhood as an Adult

A young Ilana smiles behind a small menorah, lit fully on the eighth night of Hanukkah. (courtesy)

Before I write this column, and before you read it, I think it is only fair that we establish some ground rules. I am Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I bake challah every week for our Shabbat dinners. I...

Mar 17, 2024, 12:40 PM

Irrefutable

Simply from reading the title of this week’s column, I am sure many of you let out small sighs of disapproval– not with me, dear reader, no, the disapproval I am referring to comes in heavy waves after the...

About Me

Though originally from London, Ilana resides in Florida and is a junior at the University of South Florida, as well as the Student Body President of USF Hillel. Ilana is a Jewish student on the front line fighting to combat antisemitism and support Israel. She loves to read and to write, and is the author of her Hillel's weekly column, 'B is for Boobah'. She is very passionate about detailing the Jewish experience through writing!