| News Briefs |
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| Written by New Voices | |||||
| Wednesday, 17 April 2002 | |||||
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New Jew Review Debut, Jews on Ice  New Jew Review Debut New youth-oriented magazine garners media attention, and controversy It's not every new magazine that has its debut issue written up in The New York Times and its editor invited on CNN. But that's exactly what happened with Heeb, a new quarterly geared toward young Jews that debuted this January. Heeb: The New Jew Review is edited by 26-year-old Jenn Bleyer, a New York-based writer and former New Voices contributor. Bleyer, who also founded the punk 'zine Mazeltov Cocktail, started Heeb with a $60,000 grant from the Joshua Venture, an organization that cultivates young Jewish "social entrepreneurs." Some of the press attention Heeb has garnered--much of it well before the first issue even came out--is due to its use of a traditionally anti-Jewish epithet for its title. And not everyone in the Jewish community approves. "I understand the magazine's intent is to try and attract disaffected Jews, which sounds like a fine purpose," Ken Jacobson, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Los Angeles Times. "But why have a name that really distracts from its purpose? Words like that still have power, and this tends to diminish the sensitivity to them." Heeb's debut issue demonstrates that the magazine's ironic take on Jewish identity will not be limited to its provocative title. It features a review of Manischevitz cherry wine ("Different fruit, same toxic dreck."), a five-page feature on "Jewfros" (Jewish Afros), a seven-page mock Orthodox wedding fashion spread ("Love, Challah, and Betrayal"), a Neil Diamond centerfold, and a Jewish grandmother commenting on the latest CDs ("I like rap. I like the rhythm of it, but I don't understand the words," to which her 77-year-old friend retorts: "You're just saying you like it because the young people like it. You want to be in with the young people"). The issue does also contain a handful of more serious items--a writer reminiscing about a love affair with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a profile of a Jewish prisoner-turned-anti-prison-privatization-activist, and interviews with several Jewish artists. But Heeb clearly leans toward the irreverent side, hence its somewhat dubious exposé of the relationship of Pizza Hut's twisted crust pizza to Nazism: "...the common German word for the Swastika is Hakenkreuz--literally, Twisted Cross...you don't have to be a Brown semiotics major with a trust fund, an Asian model girlfriend and a million-and-a-half dollar loft on Broome Street to make the aural connection between Twisted Crust and Twisted Cross." Jews on Ice World Jewry controls women's figure skating A gold, a silver, and a fourth-place finish--it's not a bad showing. Skaters of Jewish descent took three of the top four places in the women's figure skating competition at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Sixteen-year-old American Sarah Hughes upset the favorites to win the gold medal, while Russian Irina Slutskaya took the silver and American Sasha Cohen finished fourth. Hughes's victory took the world by surprise, and so did her Jewishness. For the most part, the country's Jewish media failed to note that the skater from Great Neck, Long Island was Jewish until after her victory. "The danger in counting Jews is that sometimes you miss one, and this time we missed a big one," Jewish Telegraphic Agency editor Lisa Hostein told the Forward. It's understandable that Hughes's Jewishness would be overlooked, what with her not-so-Jewish-sounding last name and press materials that name Christmas as her favorite holiday. But Alina Sivorinovsky, author of Sarah Hughes: Skating to the Stars, told the Forward that Hughes's older brothers have been bar mitzvahed. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency did list Slutskaya, whose father's family is believed to be Jewish, on its pre-Games list of Jewish Olympians, only to have the skater cross herself at the end of her televised routines. "The Russian Jews are a breed onto themselves," Jewish Sports Review co-publisher Ephraim Moxson explained to the Forward. "She doesn't practice anything. She goes to Israel to visit her aunts and uncles. She wears a Jewish star on occasion. Our editor spoke to her agent, who said that for all intents and purposes she is Jewish." Chinese-American figure skater Michelle Kwan won the bronze medal. The Chinese are often referred to as the Jews of the East.
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