I'm very excited to announce that, as of today, Jewcy has been adopted by JDub, the non-profit dedicated to innovative Jewish content, community, and cross-cultural dialogue. What does this announcement mean for you, the Jewcy reader? A few things:

• We'll be making it easier for you guys to participate on Jewcy and be part of our community, making sure all voices are heard.
• Jewcy is no longer a for-profit company. We're a non-profit. So stop asking to bum twenty bucks already. In fact, speaking of twenty bucks...
• Our vision and editorial integrity will not change. We are still committed to bringing you up-to-date, relevant, challenging, interesting content.
• Another thing that won't change: me. I'll be giving up my title of "Head of the Jewcy Government in Exile" and going back to just "Jewcy Editor."

Want to know more? Check out the official press release below, but first a quick note from JDub's Jacob Harris:

Huge thank yous go out to Jon Steingart and Jenny Wiener for their visionary leadership in the creation of Jewcy, Tahl Raz for his editorial expertise and creative passion, and Michael Tive and Craig Leinoff for leading us to this new opportunity and shaping it into a reality. We are very excited to welcome Lilit into our organization and continue the important work they began!

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Today, gay marriage is legal in two states, and nine million Americans identify as multiracial. Almost half of all parents are unmarried. Two million children in America are adopted, 4 million are stepchildren, five million live with unauthorized immigrant families. And because America has the highest incarceration rate in the world—one in 100 Americans is in prison— two million children have parents in jail.

Women make up more than half of the American workforce, and the number of stay at home fathers, or “househusbands,” is steadily rising. Americans travel more than almost any other population in the world, and are also more obese, infertile, and Internet savvy.

For these reasons and more, the face of America’s families is almost unrecognizable compared to thirty years ago. Today, a dad ushers a mom out the door (or onto the laptop) and then purees pesticide-free food to feed their half-Mexican child, who was conceived in a doctor’s office and carried by a surrogate—living in India. A mother leaves her daughter with friends to board a midnight bus to a high security prison eighty miles away, where she’ll spend forty-eight hours with her husband--in a trailer designed for conjugal visits. On the way, she creates a spreadsheet on her laptop for a multi-national human resource firm that wires her wages directly into her bank account--from a branch in Korea.

And as I write this, our nation appears to be coming to grips with our unhealthy relationship with oil. Researchers predict that within the next three decades, suburbia will be thrown into chaos as a result of inevitable shortages. McMansion living may morph into off-the-grid habitation for the masses; family rooms once filled with flat-screens and marble and glass furniture will be grow houses, not for drugs, but tomatoes, carrots, and spinach.

CHANGE is everywhere, my friends. It's in our house and the White House. It's pounding on our front door, demanding we adapt, or be left irretrievably behind. We've gone from what color is your parachute to how creative is your adaptation.

Well? 

Rebecca Walker, author of One Big Happy Family, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

A long time ago, in a decade called the 90's, there was a brave and brilliant little website known as Suck.com, which featured daily essays --

presented in a charming

but sometimes hard to read

"snaking" format like this --

about politics, culture, technology and everything in between. Today it'd be written up in a New York Times trend piece about "snark" because that was that general tone of the site, although Suck wasn't mean for the sake of mean; it was mordant and smart. David Denby may have even assailed it in his misfire of a book, but I wouldn't know because I haven't read it, being just the sort of emblem of aloof disdain -- calling it a "misfire" without having read it -- Denby doesn't like very much.  Anyway, among the contributors to Suck who have gone on to reach the dizzying middles of media celebrity is one Nick Gillespie, now editor and web TV wizard of the libertarian magazine Reason. (He and another former Suckster Tim Cavanaugh once participated in a Jewcy feature called Movable Snipe, wherein they read and made fun of preselected blogs.)

Nick's slightly mocking tone doesn't always come across in blog posts or learned essays about the Modern Language Association, but he's found himself in ReasonTV. Check out the following episode of on-the-street interviews with Obama supporters on Jan. 19. They all somehow feel they're the change they've been waiting for, yet can't quite explain what they'd have done differently if John McCain had been elected president.

I still remember when the Beastie Boys were by far the coolest people on earth. I would wait for the next Grand Royal magazine to come out and read each page like it was a survival kit.  In one issue they asked Vincent Gallo if he would like to be interviewed. 

Vincent Gallo is the man who did Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny. He stars, directs and scores all his films.  Just like that he replied. I'll be interviewed, but only if I could interview myself.  It was just so classic.  He always said whatever came to his mind too, no PC filter like every rap star somehow has no...well, not Kanye after Katrina, but every other MTV rapper. 

He answered his own questions and bashed DJ Spooky for copying Basquiat and Duchamp and bashed journalists for only caring about niche artists.  This was 7 years ago, but I'm pretty sure his words were, if I were Jewish or Gay, maybe one of them would write about me.  If you know Vincent, like I don't, you have no clue if it's all being said with a smirk.  I;m not even sure how this ties into what I am trying to do here, but I am trying to draw a correlation between Vincent interviewing himself and promoting himself and my use of this first post to promote this video I have been workin on with DeScribe, Y-Love and superstar director Lenny Bass.  It's for the perfectly amazing pop song, "Change" and it's brilliant.

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."

W. Edwards Deming, who you’ve likely never heard of, said that. He was a statistician and an engineer, and after World War II he proceeded to turn the Japanese auto industry into the titan it is today. If you're an isolationist American royally annoyed at the utter subjugation of Detroit by Toyota & Friends, feel free to blame this son of Iowa, if only for the irony.

(As an aside, look this guy up. He died a decade and a half ago, but not before setting up an entire system of profound knowledge. He called it the "Deming System of Profound Knowledge," within which he included his Fourteen Points — a sort of Ten Commandments-plus for business — and his own variation on the Seven Deadly Sins.)

The subject of change is all the rage these days, and I'm a fan. I voted for change, for Barack Obama and his lofty rhetoric, but when asked one day recently how quickly I expected our new leader to change things, I found myself answering in a most unexpected fashion:

"As a Jew..."

What came next was surprising, even to me. It's not as if I rarely think "as a Jew," but I'd sustained an entire electoral calendar without once linking my Jewish brain with the buzzword of the season. I don't know why, but it wasn't until after the election, after I picked up a book that has sat unread on my shelf for a couple of years now, that I began to link concepts into the daisy chain that poured out of my mouth in response to an innocuous question.

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Marty's favorite definition of leadership is that leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb. One of Obama's most attractive traits is that he has the capacity to stand back and see what is happening while he is in the midst of the action. He appears to reflect in real time, unlike many people in public life who are so caught up in their public personae that they find it difficult to reflect at all, never mind while the action is still going on. So he understands and has acknowledged that he will not, cannot, meet the multiple and grandiose expectations that we have placed on him. Obama's cautionary notes also remind us of our own responsibility. At this possible turning point, what is our share of the work?

In our work with Jewish organizations, we often see the disappointment that results from the hyperbolic expectations people have about CEOs. How these critical moments are managed is a real test of leadership.

These moments also test us, in terms of our own civic engagement - in this country and in the Jewish community. We wrote a how-to book, Leveling the Playing Field, because we believe that gender equity is vital to the health of Jewish organizations, and that everyone can exercise leadership on this issue. If you're sitting in the corner office, or just getting started in your career, or even reading this blog at home as a curious onlooker, you can make a difference.

In the Jewish community, gender equity has been the problem that many people would prefer would take care of itself. Gender equity is often removed from the agenda of priorities, under the excuse of external crisis or urgent agency business. So, this kind of deep-rooted organizational change may take a long time. Meanwhile, you need to grab opportunities and take risks even if you're not completely ready or the climate is not exactly right. Plot a course between the ideal and the realistic, between what is desirable and what is achievable.

Everyone asks us what the "promised land" will look like. We want to know what you think. Frame the big vision, as well as the "small wins" along the way, and let us know how you imagine a Jewish world in which women and men share leadership.

Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky, co-authors of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. This is their parting post. Want more? Buy their book!

Some everyday voices from a Jewish community near you:

Quote #1: "Officially, I have Fridays off. I get paid for four days though I still work five. At least I'm not working six days."

Quote #2: "You're doing a great job. But I'm still uncomfortable with you leaving so early."

Quote #3: "Sheila and David want to share the Planning Director job. They figured out how to divide the work. But do I want to set a precedent?"

Sound familiar?

Speaker #1 runs a department in a family service agency. Her supervisor lets her take Fridays off to care for her aging father.  But to manage her workload, she's still working that fifth day, unpaid.

What about Speaker #2? The exec of an influential organization, he's agreed that his high-potential program director can leave at 4:00 p.m. to pick up her children. He's torn between being an enlightened leader and an old-fashioned boss.

Speaker #3 is the human resources director of a federation. Sheila wants to finish her doctoral dissertation. David has a new baby. Our HR director knows Sheila and David can make it work, but this might open the floodgates. What if everybody wants a job share?

The Jewish community holds high its values of family, community, education and spirituality. So why can't the leadership devote more effort to supporting employees who are dedicated to their professions and equally passionate about fulfilling their personal commitments?

This especially affects women. Women still shoulder two-thirds of all household and caregiving responsibilities.  Inside and outside the Jewish community, many professional women will need flexible work arrangements, or even a hiatus, at some point in their careers. But, contrary to popular opinion, most will return to work and the career track. But they find that even a temporary leave permanently affects their pay scales and their career aspirations.

The more pernicious effect is that managers may decide, from day of hire, that many young women will eventually leave. Is it any surprise that women do not benefit from the career investments enjoyed by their male colleagues?

Let's be honest about the struggles that everyone faces in balancing life and work. When we dismantle the notion that 24/6 (or 24/7) equals excellence, we will create organizations where Jewish professionals work smarter, not harder.

Which brings us to our fourth and final quote.

"You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste. It's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid." -Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff for President-elect Barack Obama, was referring, of course, to the domestic recession. What opportunity does this crisis represent for the Jewish community, also facing hard choices, as contributions recede and budgets shrink?

Maybe this recession will force Jewish organizations to examine the way that work gets done and to shift the measure of value - from face-time to results. Instead of using a hatchet to eliminate jobs, senior executives can wield a scalpel to carve flexible schedules and job shares. This crisis gives the Jewish community an opportunity to translate moral values into intelligent policies that keep more people employed and allow women to stay viable in the leadership pipeline

Shifra Bronznick and Didi Goldenhar co-authors of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, are guest blogging on Jewcy this week with their co-author Marty Linsky. Stay tuned.

Bush is in Israel, the one country that actually likes him. The President is in the region to carry forward the momentum of the Annapolis peace summit. Traffic stops, and speeches begin.

And what of the speeches? Sycophantic praises and hollow pledges.

If I have to hear one more time about how Israel and the US have an unshakable and eternal bond, I am going to toss my cookies.

Seriously though, when people in a relationship keep on publicly stressing how great and wonderful their bond is, you do not have to be Freud to know something is amiss. Who are they trying to convince? Just imagine if your significant other began obsessively reiterating how in love they are with you — cause for concern indeed.

People have opined that Bush's visit to the region is "historic" (another vomit word). He is after all, only the fourth American president to have visited the holy land (Richard Nixon in 1974, Jimmy Carter in 1979 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were his predecessors). But I believe that Bush’s visit is historic for another reason all together: Bush will be the last American president to support the Jewish state in such a lopsided manner.

I know, it seems quite far fetched—naïve even. But the writing is on the wall, and not just on the one dividing up Palestine. In the last few years it has become possible and even fashionable for all kinds of folks—politicians, intellectuals, academics, journalists, and students—to call into question the benefits of America’s relationship with Israel.

As a result, the climate of public opinion has begun to turn against the status quo. The current buzzword in the US presidential race is “change”, and if you think that Israel is not part of that equation then in the immortal words of Rob Halford, “You got another thing coming.”

But before you reach for that kleenex, ask yourself: What fruits has this relationship really produced? Would we not all be better off with an "honest broker" that was actually honest? Could Israel and Palestine not benefit from some Dr. Phil-like love?

The winds of change are blowing for American-Israeli relations. I, for one, am ready for a change.