It’s a studio apartment in Brooklyn for which I pay far too much. Making rent would be easier if my roommate pulled his weight, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He has no money. Actually, he possesses nothing. Except for me.
Strictly speaking, this freeloader should be paying me directly. After all, it’s really me he inhabits more than my little place across the East River. He’s a dybbuk you see—a spirit that steals into the bodies of unsuspecting mortals and bends them to his will. If you didn’t know that, my dybbuk is very disappointed in you. He suggests you bone up on your Jewish folklore and read Isaac Bashevis Singer, or at least do a Google search.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when my dybbuk took hold of me. (It’s pronounced “dib” as in “dibs on your soul,” and “book” as in “don’t read the book of Kabbalah until you’re forty or you’ll be sorry.”) But it was definitely after I took a job at this magazine two years ago. In theory, that makes no sense. Anywhere else I would have been doing someone else’s bidding, blowing on coffee and collecting paper cuts at the photocopy machine. This was the one place where I could hew to my will. Can you think of any other institution that would entrust an entire media outlet to a 22-year-old contrarian with absolutely no experience? They even paid me (very poorly) for it.
The premise of New Voices is the antithesis of demonic possession: a place for young people to say and do whatever they want. That’s a rare, and perhaps unique freedom. I’m hard pressed to come up with any other forum that gives young people the power to communicate their views, to wrestle with their identity with no holds barred, and to create a Jewish culture entirely their own.
Jews don’t run the media, at least not all of it. And young Jews run none of it. Except here. Convention calcifies. The status quo is by definition static. Culture cannot develop, cannot be new, vibrant, or fulfilling without a means of expression. And that is what New Voices provides.
But that freedom comes at a price, literally. Paper and ink cost money. A few months into the job, I realized that our mission rested on something of a contradiction: providing something very expensive free of charge. Then again, I thought at the time, who wouldn’t want to fund our efforts—who wouldn’t be eager to give young Jews the chance to express their ideas and opinions? My dybbuk must have had a good chuckle about that one.
It was when I first heard the words “continuity” and “engagement” coming from my mouth that I realized something was up. I would never have used those words if it was just me speaking. Granted, I was sitting across the table from a potential funder and it had become clear by then that these were the terms potential funders wanted to hear—sound bytes of jargon repeated so often in Jewish fundraising circles they’d become like shibboleths. But they weren’t what I wanted to say.
In life, I suspect, my dybbuk was an accountant. He always has his eye on the bottom line. He knows that a great number of people in the Jewish philanthropic community—the people whom my colleagues and I try to convince of the value of New Voices—are deeply concerned about “continuity” and “engagement.” “Look,” he tells me, as we struggle for control of the remote, “these funders are convinced that Jews in America are in crisis. They’ve read the Jewish population surveys with their doomsday intermarriage rates. And regardless of the fact that those figures are based on dubious calculations, they’re certain that unless we entice Jews with flashy, superficial displays of Jewish heritage [engagement] they will not date and marry other Jews, and so will have fewer Jewish babies [continuity].” We’ve got to at least talk the talk, says my dybbuk. We’ve got to pay the piper.
Like those funders and Jewish professionals, my dybbuk cares only about survival. Only for him, it’s the financial survival of New Voices that is all-consuming. His spirit is somehow bound to this institution. Perhaps he dated a former editor when he was in accounting school. In any case, as with Judaism to those funders, what matters to him is the institution, not the content.
As far as that goes, he’d really like to see a few changes so we’d go over a little better with our “audience”—by which he means the people with cash. We’re too left-wing for a start, and definitely not pro-Israel enough. “Israel”—that’s the other word that’s sure to get a funder’s attention. Many leaders of the organized Jewish community believe this is no time to be critical of Israel, my dybbuk tells me. If the image we present of the Jewish state doesn’t shine like an IDF bulldozer in the sun, our readers will become less pro-Israel, less Jewish, and less likely to have babies with each other. Lest you forget, we’re in crisis.
Here I put my foot down. “You can possess me all you want, my demonic guest,” I say. “But editorial is a no-dybbuk zone. Don’t even think about it. Money’s one thing, but these pages are off-limits to you.”
My dybbuk shrugs my shoulders. “I’m just telling it how it is,” he replies. “Jewish institutions won’t see any point in New Voices unless we function as an engagement tool, helping to ensure that no more Jews disappear.” He makes me open the pages of Contact—a publication of philanthropist Michael Steinhardt’s Jewish Life Network. The people behind Contact believe Jewish organizations should be in the business of selling Judaism. “Judaism is like soap to them,” says my dybbuk. “We just have to find the best way to brand and market it so more consumers will buy the product—that’s how they think.”
And indeed, there on the cover is a graphic of a box of detergent, emblazoned with the slogan “Jew and Improved.” The subtitle: “Marketing Jewish Life.” Inside are tips for marketing to the “Jewishly unengaged,” for marketing synagogues, Jewish day schools, even “the Jewish future.”
I think that approach ultimately “sells” only to the Jewish philanthropists and professionals who are selling it. It will lead to a stale, superficial culture from which most Jews will want to dis-“engage.” But it’s been hard to fight the dybbuk, especially when there are bills to pay. There have been times when I managed to wrest back control of my vocal chords for a moment or two in fundraising meetings. I’ve even sat in Hillel International’s opulent offices, engaging in futile arguments with shlubby underlings about the value of an independent New Voices.
But then I would hear him railing inside my head: “Stop harping on about this independent Jewish voice nonsense. They don’t care about it. Can’t you see that?” He’s right. If we filled our pages only with pro-Israel screeds and first-person accounts of tearful epiphanies at the Kotel, we’d probably never have to worry about money again. We’d probably be better off not knocking the Jewish establishment either, or questioning the priorities of institutions whose benevolence we need to survive. But if we didn’t do those things, we might as well not exist.
There’s nothing wrong with more Jewish babies. Or with reaching out to as many Jews as possible. But being Jewish can’t just be about making sure there are more Jews. There has to be more to this than just keeping the mohels in business.
The exorcism should be a simple affair, no writhing or screaming. At the end of the academic year my term will be over. New Voices will kick me out onto the street to chase after that coffee-fetching job. That’s when my dybbuk will no longer have any use for me. He’ll gather himself up and leave.
I’ll be ceding control as well&m
dash;I’ll have absolutely no say over what happens in the pages of this magazine after I’m gone. That’s the beauty of it: young people—editors and writers—creating and transforming Jewish culture as they see fit, without deference to any outside agenda. Sadly, that’s of little value to many in the Jewish community. As my dybbuk says, they want us to be something quite different. No doubt that demonic rogue will stay lurking in the shadows after I’m gone, haunting our offices, waiting for his chance to take complete control. I hope he never gets his way.
