Dear readers, there is no R. Silverman at Ohio State. Neither is there a Judith Greene of Princeton, NJ.
When it came time to choose the letters to the editor to be printed in this issue, we pulled out the mail bin to find it full of Judaica catalogues and promotional copies of Jewish cookbooks. Not a single letter from a reader could be found. So, we wrote our own letters and signed them with false names. Probably not the best way to start our tenure here. Now I’m feeling a little guilty.
Why don’t you write? You read New Voices. We see your traffic on our web counters, and we hear regularly from students, professors, and Hillel professionals just like you at the five hundred campuses on which we distribute the magazine. Still, the letters don’t come.
A dearth of letters to the editor is frequently a sign of an unhealthy relationship between the public and the press. Juan Luis Cebrián, the editor of the liberal Spanish daily El País, claimed that his paper, which was founded in the final days of the authoritarian Franco regime, was among the first in Spain since the 1936 Civil War to receive a significant number of letters. The Spanish public under Franco had no reason to write. They understood the franquist press to be a conversation in which they had no part.
The Jewish press in America today exists primarily to publish wedding announcements. Beyond that, it is an echo chamber for the party line of the Jewish establishment. It has two messages for young Jews: first, support Israel, and second, marry a Jew. Critical introspection is rare. In parroting the buzzwords of the Jewish continuity reports and the major Jewish philanthropists, the Jewish press has sacrificed any chance of engaging Jewish students in dialogue or debate. It has become just one in a growing number of institutions that treat young Jews as statistics, numbers to be shifted from Column A to Column B. Like those Spaniards who didn’t write to their newspapers, Jewish students feel that they have no place at the table.
New Voices is a different kind of Jewish publication. We aren’t associated with any major institutions. We don’t speak for the Jewish Community. We don’t care if you love Israel or if you hate it. We’re not interested in who you take to bed. New Voices should be an argument. So send us an e-mail every once in a while. It’s editor@newvoices.org.
In this issue, Marissa Brostoff talks with former Weathermen leader Mark Rudd about the place of Jews in the protest movements of the 1960s. Jonathan Singer infiltrates Tel Aviv’s underground punk scene. Manya Treece writes on a website that brings matchmaking to the non-Orthodox Jewish masses. Risa Shoup introduces Muslim Girl, a magazine for Muslim teens that makes religious observance cool. Ryan Hardy has a scathing critique of the Israeli Consulate’s recent collaboration with Maxim magazine. Naamah Paley reports from the front lines of the recent brouhaha surrounding the firing of the principal of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn. Plus, a poem, a revived New Vices humor section, reviews, and some images. Enjoy.
