When news of JDub’s impending death first hit, we blogged about it a bit. And then New Voices reporter Alisha Kinman checked in with them at their last party.
Now, Jewish Daily Forward intern Pnina Kessler is weighing in–and quoting New Voices Editor David A.M. Wilensky. Kessler writes:
…I’m here to tell those speculating about the fall of JDub, that the key to the success of ‘Hipster Jew’ startups is to “get on my level.” Mine is a generation of Jews bred in a secular state. We are the products of intermarriage, of knowing only the brachot taught at Camp Yomi when we were six, of debating whether or not to select ‘Jewish – Cultural’ or ‘Atheist’ on our religious life surveys for college.
Later, when she quotes Wilensky:
For a generation bred to be “of the world,” efforts to make Judaism “cool” are inevitably doomed to suffer from artifice, and die a slow painful death while we cringe at their pop culture references and Gefilte fish jokes. “It’s a mistake to believe you can create ‘cool’ and young Jews will buy it,” quipped David A.M. Wilensky, the Editor in Chief of New Voices Magazine, to The Forward when queried about the failure of ‘Hipster Jew’ startups.
The whole piece is worth a read, over here.
