A twentieth-century Eastern European writer who survived a variety of wars, movements, and renamings once said that he'd lived in five countries without ever leaving his house. During the fifteen months that I've been the editor of Jewcy, I've lived in several countries while always remaining in the same house. When I first started as the Editor of Jewcy, it was a for-profit enterprise with six other employees and a beautiful loft office in DUMBO. The following February, the company's initial investors pulled out of the venture, and my coworkers and I lost our jobs. In either the bravest or stupidest move I've ever made, I spent the next six months running the site myself out of my apartment, with no salary. Fortunately, JDub Records came along and adopted Jewcy - suddenly, I became part of the JDub staff. I can honestly say that, despite the fact that I am nowhere near cool enough to work at a record label, the JDub team always made me feel at home.

As much as it's been weird to have the country of Jewcy changing around me, there's one reason that I kept doing this job: because I believe in it. More specifically, I believe in Jewish journalism and the power it has to help people struggling to find a place within their faith and culture, as well as to encourage debate, discussion, and dissent from those already within it. I can't urge you enough to stay involved with Jewcy and keep reading, as it's only going to grow. I'm not at liberty to reveal all of the secrets, but I can tell you there is a beautiful, easy-to-use redesign in the works that will leave all the other Jewish blogs crying (sorry, other Jewish blogs). I plan to come back and blog whenever possible, because I believe in the unique, diverse, and open-minded Jewish community that Jewcy fosters. Jewcy's traffic has gone up 12% since it was adopted by JDub in October, and I hope that you guys continue to hang out here and contribute to the ongoing conversation. 

I spent most of my life growing up in a place where I thought I was beyond the reach of Jewish traditions and history, believing that someone from my background could never find a place within the Jewish establishment. But somebody gave this patrilineal-descent, non-Hebrew-speaking, non-bat-mitzvahed, still-figuring-it-out Jew from North Carolina a job editing a Jewish website, and for that I will always be grateful. I hope that I've been able to foster an environment where any person who identifies as Jewish can feel welcomed and encouraged. Whether I was writing about soap operas, The Kotel, Scientology, or my ex-boyfriends, I've always been proud of the fact that I was writing for Jewcy.

Though I've enjoyed the chance to get to know all of the writers and commenters here, there are a couple of people who deserve particular recognition. Craig Leinoff, who had been with Jewcy since the beginning and built almost all of this website with his own bare hands (it's true, he welds with code), was always available to field my middle-of-the-night questions about wonky html and spam filters. Ashley Tedesco (who despite being a college undergraduate is already well on the way to being a fine journalist) stayed on as an unpaid intern after Jewcy's doors were closed, somehow squeezing post-editing and Twitter-updating into her already crammed class schedule. Aaron Bisman and Jacob Harris of JDub believed in the Jewcy/JDub proposition from the very beginning, and their commitment to both the brand and to me has been boundless.

Like any adventure, this one too had to end. I've been offered a job as the editor of a new women's lifestyle and entertainment site. It doesn't actually have a name yet, but I swear it totally exists. I accepted the position knowing that Jewcy is in good hands and trusting that it will continue to grow and thrive without me.

Anyway, my login is about to expire, so I should start wrapping this up.

As a famous philosopher once said, it's been real.

Dear The Internets,

It's me, Craig. ...If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be here now, writing this, a post to honor Jewcy on its 3rd birthday -- well... I guess that would've made sense.

But if you'd told me 9 months ago, just a few days after Jewcy's funding dried up and the staff liquidated, it would've been a little harder to swallow.

But swallow it I will, just like I always do. I always swallow. Because in the last year, Jewcy has seen the both the best of times and the worst of times, and for better or for worse, we're still here.

When we last left you, Jewcy was engaging in a rapid shift of purpose, toward taking Jewish media, as a business, more seriously and, as part of that, helping to establish not only a brand for ourselves, but a solid identity for any of the disparate members of the new Jew tribe.

Michael Tive had been brought onto staff to fill a crucial business management role that had been, for the longest time, conspicuously absent. With him came a new direction, new momentum, and, eventually, new Jewcy tees. 

Yes, we were truly riding high. We were hosting an acclaimed monthly party in DUMBO offices, and spirits were high. I even speculate that Jewcy was at its apex the night of our February V-Day party where, by the grace of God and Hayley Kaufman's party-planning generosity, I got to introduce the burlesque stylings of "Jo Boobs" Weldon. (Hayley got to have some fun, too, with a brief, impromptu burlesque lesson. I offered to switch.. but: nothing.)

It was the next day, February 13th (during what I like to call the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre") that we received the bad news.

But buck up! Since that time, we've all come a long way! Aaron Bisman and Jacob Harris of JDub Records played the role of Fairy Godmother admirably. The week after we received the bad news, Jacob was on the phone, planning out a way that they might help.

And it took some time. The official adoption didn't come until this October. But they've been right there beside Jewcy through the bad times and the good, and they've shown remarkable foresight, generosity, and patience throughout the whole ordeal.

The staff had been scattered, of course. Michael Weiss moved on to Tablet Magazine. He then moved on to Equities magazine, thus taking the two jobs left in media and becoming formally known as a Pod Person. Todd Sloves, fresh from volunteering on the campaign trail, moved straight into the federal government. He works in the local office of a US congressman.

Tara Rice and Hayley Kaufman have been freelancing it up for the past few months. Tara's design work is all over, and you can read Hayley's latest writing here. 

Faustine, my most capable partner in technology, has just returned back from mother France to take up her role leading web development for Coach, Inc. (Yes, the leather bag people!)

Old-school Jewcers Amy Odell and Izzy Grinspan are still living the high life. Amy can be found daily on NY Mag's The Cut blog, and Izzy is (or was, last I heard...) editing the Racked blog. Joey Kurtzman, less than a year after leaving Jewcy, split the country (for the first time, I believe, not under suspicious circumstances). He's been wandering India for a few months and hopefully will be back in the states soon, with more photos of himself in diapers. 

Lilit, who was blessed (...Blessed! As if she didn't earn it!) with a book deal that helped her to continue curating Jewcy and producing content for it in her free time. That is- save for the help of super-intern Ashley Tedesco, who never stopped giving her all for Jewcy; which is impressive enough without considering the high caliber of work that she was churning out, all pro-gratis. 

Michael Tive has been consulting. Last I heard he was working for a website in the "women's beauty space", which, I believe is simply code for "he's been wearing ladies' undergarments while browsing the net."

And I went to work for the NY state Senate for 7 months, where we launched the transparency-focused new nysenate.gov for the state government, just in time to horrified and embarrassed by the displays of two New York City senators. After that, I followed Tahl Raz, the original Jesus of Jewcy (...because no one can ever truly grasp what he's thinking and he's likely to end up nailed to a cross...) to the Ferrazzi Greenlight consulting company, where he still gives me noogies and wedgies day in and day out, week by week.

But -- like Jewcy -- throughout all the noogies and no matter how many wedgies, I'm still around. ...And I am honored to be here, among the brightest and the best semites online, and with the greatest hope for modern Jews everywhere -- and I remain, truly yours, Craig Leinoff.

If you put a bunch of Jews in a room with a bunch of free alcohol, what do you get? Drunk.

Well, that, and some potential new pairings to start the year off right. Considering my second career as a shadchan, I'm happy to report a couple of hookups that resulted from the Very Jewcy Holiday Party, with (some) names changed to protect the guilty. It's in bullet-point format because it helps me indulge my fantasy of being the Jewish Cindy Adams.

• Jewcy blogger Mia Rut, who is doing pretty well in the Jewish dating department despite some initial uncertainties, met her now-boyfriend at our holiday party. He's a Jewcy commenter, but we'll just call him Bike Boy.
• The roommate of a Jewcy staffer made a love connection with a guy who randomly showed up to the Jewcy party without having any idea what it was. He's not Jewish, but we're OK with that. And, more importantly, so is the roommate.
• Another Jewcy blogger, the ubiquitous Max Gross, was offered at least two phone numbers by comely young lasses in attendance.
• My boyfriend's friend "S" and my friend "E" were not looking to meet anyone at the Jewcy party, but three dates and several racy text message conversations later, I think it's safe to call them a couple.
• Jewcy contributor Patrice "The Assimilated Negro" Evans may or may not have been successfully set up with someone I may or may not have forced to come to the party just to meet him.

...and these are only the unions we know about. If you a) met someone at the Jewcy party and want to tell your story, b) have already broken up with the person you met at the Jewcy party and want to make sure the whole internet knows about it, or c) want to come to the next party (which is on January 22nd, for all you kids who were cool enough to make it to the end of this post) and figure you should start laying the groundwork for your potential hookup now, you can post about it in the comments.

So you might have heard that Jewcy hosted a holiday party in our office last night. What you may not have heard is that a bunch of stuff was left in our newly-created lost and found. So, if one of the things on this list belongs to you and you want to claim it, or if you picked up someone else's coat and want to let the anonymous stranger know about it via Jewcy, leave your note in the comments.

We found:

• A pinkish-purplish scarf
• A black knit cap
• A tote bag from the Strand
• Two black umbrellas
• A couple of wadded-up tissues with some goo on them that none of us wanted to pick up
• A Santa hat
• 11 10 9 cases of He'Brew Beer
• Max Gross' phone number

Oh, and there are some pictures from said party on the internet, if you're into that sort of thing.

If you want to claim something, you're going to have to provide identifying details. And come to our office, because we're way too lazy to mail stuff.

Last week I kvetched whether or not my decision to be Jewish included an exclusivity clause in which required me forthwith to only date Jews. Among the varied comments on the post was one pro-Jew dating response from a nice Jewish boy who bolstered his argument with an invitation for drinks. More than a little curious and after some off-line discussions I agreed to meet him out for drinks, a little take-out and trivia night at a local bar. This was how it went:

7:28 – I’m sitting in a cute neighborhood coffee-shop/bar full of 20-somethings tapping away on their laptops waiting for Hebrewzzi to arrive. The music is good and I’m sipping on a $3 draft beer. Not so bad, the place has a very comfortable feel. The front door is open because it is a freakish rainy 60 degrees in New York City in December. Only two days ago is was bitterly cold with the occasional spastic cough of snow swirling down from the sky. I guess anything is possible.

7:34 – My stomach growls. Lunch was inadequate and too long ago. I hope he gets here soon so we can order food.

7:49 – Hebrewzzi arrives, but doesn't know what I look like. He calls my cell and waits to find the girl at the laptop who picks up her phone. We engage in the usual conversation, inquiring how one’s trip was and if the directions were helpful. I sense a slight bit of unease. Either one of us could be totally weird or crazy or both. After all he doesn't really know anything about me beyond what is on the blogs. This is really the blindest of dates.

7:53 – He’s read me on the Jew and the Carrot so he knows my love of food so in lieu of flowers, he has brought me a loaf of banana pumpkin cranberry chocolate-chip bread he baked himself. The bread is good, moist, a little dense. The flavors are very Fall-like although the enthusiasm of the cranberries overpower the pumpkin flavors. I think it is thoughtful of him and take a few bites to satiate my growling stomach.

8:01 – He grabs the menus from behind the bar so we can peruse our dining options – from the looks of things our best choices appear to be sushi, Thai or burritos.  But he tells me he doesn’t eat seafood or meat or tofu. A knot forms in my stomach as I’m immediately reminded of a guy I recently broke up with that was a dreadfully picky eater.

8:04 – Thankfully without too much fuss we settle on Thai – lots of vegetable options.

8:07 – Trivia night starts. It’s loud. I decide we will play on the same team. I call us Team Jewcy. The bar is pushing Mike’s Hard Lemonades for only a dollar.  He says they would have to pay him to drink those.  Hum.

8:10 – In between the trivia questions he tries to start a conversation. He asks me what I do for a living.  Yawn.

8:17 – The trivia questions start. The moderator comes over our table frequently to look at our sheet and I’m pretty sure to also look down my shirt.

8:23 – Hebrewzzi has an obscene amount of knowledge of pop culture – which is good because I’m completely useless with these types of trivia questions (I also suck at Boggle, Scrabble and Wii tennis). Although, neither of us could name five out of the last six American Idol winners.

8:27 – Our food arrives. The moderator comments to the crowd how trivia night and dinner at the bar makes the perfect first date. He has no idea.

8:38 – I’m on my second beer. I had ordered the Tom Yum Goong, which is great but very spicy. I’m drinking my beer way to fast.

8:55 – End of trivia Round 1. Hebrewzzi doesn’t know the national origin of cars as well as he thought he did (I didn’t have a clue). We are in 3rd place. He’s not terribly competitive, which is nice since neither am I. The food is good, the setting is nice – but its a shame I’m not actually getting to talk to him.

9:28 – Trivia Round 2. Okay, trivia night is officially a bad idea when trying to get to know someone. The moderator has clearly taken a liking to me (or my breasts) and keeps checking our answers, offering clues and obvious hints. Because of the game there really is no real good chance to interact with each other. Neither of us are any good at ‘naming that tune’ and listing a movie is was played in. However, I did know Mark Felt was Deep Throat.

9:51 – We’ve tied for last place. A ‘rock, paper, scissors’ game later with the other last place team and Hebrewzzi gains us the prestige of being the official last place team.  We win a bag of pork rinds (how appropriate!) and two Blow-Pops. We also won an extra“funny answer” prize and the moderator tosses my breasts a package of Hostess cupcakes. We rock. But to be fare we did very well on the actual trivia questions – it was the score skewing questions like “for ten points list 10 American wars in order of most America casualties” that killed us. Really? Who knows this stuff? (apparently the Columbia doctoral students seated next to us)

9:59 – Hebrewzzi is settling our bill. The moderator pulls me aside and says I should come back on more Wednesdays. He asks me to sign up for their email list. I dodge his sign-up list and furtive glances and we make it out the door into the unseasonably warm soggy weather. We are off to find another bar, one that is quiet and where we can actually talk.

10:07 – Another coffee shop/bar but this one only has two couples in it. A young lesbian couple and a woman and man in the midst of a break up. I hear her rip his heart out but then resort to tired clichés – “I want to stay friends” “ I want you to be happy” “I just don’t feel what you said you feel for me” Kinda sucks. I want to move tables, but there isn’t really anywhere else to go. The lesbians leave so it is just us four and the bartender.

10:17 – We tuck into some hot cocoa and conversation. I’m ignoring the fighting couple and the sound of the guy’s heart breaking so near to us.

10:19 – We have an easy back and forth. Hebrewzzi sounds like a nice, decent guy. Appears to be honest, sweet, thoughtful. It’s sometimes hard to tell about these things, but he doesn’t seem the type to pursue you and then not call after you’ve slept together.

10:34 – Hebrewzzi asks the “Why Judaism” question. It is a long answer – in fact I’m writing a book about it. He clearly has strong opinions about his Judaism, about his Jewish identity. But as promised, he isn’t religious and is not comfortable with it. I can understand that. I’m not all that comfortable in church services any more, but I do appear to have more of a regular Jewish practice than he does. And then there is the issue of geography. We are not geographically compatible. I’m a Manhattan girl and he is Queens boy. I realize there are trains that connect the two, but that is something to think about.

11:14 – We close the bar. At some point the defunct couple had left. The bartender cleans up around us seemingly undisturbed by our being there. Around us chairs are placed on top of tables, the floor is swept, and the coffee machine is washed. It is time for us to make our exit.

11:26 – We are standing next to the train stop ready to part ways. I think he is waiting for me to say something like, “so, how about we do this again sometime?” but he’s not saying it either so maybe he is on the fence? I’m not a big fan of rejection so I prattle on with some inane story about something totally irrelevant.

11:34 – Okay, I’m getting tired although he has a much longer trip home than I do. We say good night (again) and I turn away at the moment I think he is timidly leaning in for a kiss? Oh, I hate this awkward first date ritual – the uncertain first kiss game. For me, even the best first dates shouldn’t be obliged to end with a kiss. I tend to feel this action is far too formulaic and artificial at best. And as much fun as this date was with the evening of trivia and all, I didn’t really get much of an opportunity to get to know him. If I’m going to kiss him, I’d like to get to know him better rather than kissing him out of some ritualistic requirement.

I know there is some stupid “wait a couple of days to call” rule to first dates. However, I would have to assume Hebrewzzi is going read this post anyway. So I'll say it, he was a really nice guy. I know, I know that is totally a turn-off for some people, but he really was nice, polite, courteous. He offered to pay for dinner and our $3 beers (although I bought the cocoa) which I appreciated (I'm not old-fashioned - just broke). Sure there were moments of awkwardness one might expect when you've meet that person randomly online but I’d go out with him again - without trivia or computers.

But to be honest, the evening didn't convince me one way or another if I should only date Jews. Sure, it might have offered the suggestion that perhaps someday I should only date that yid. And ready as I am to do my final dunk in the mikvah, I'm not ready to completely swear off the goy.

It seems like only a year ago that I was sitting here, in this same room, at this same desk (rotated 90 degrees from how it is now), photoshopping funny pictures of a cartoon turtle holding a balloon in celebration of our first birthday. Of course it was longer than that. It was a year and a day.

I wanted to update you (and I mean you, specifically, VALUED USER WITH IP ADDRESS 38.107.191.101) about the fun changes that occurred in the second year of our magazine's existence:

• Jewcy got visited by the set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. They bought us a ping pong table and a foosball table and used our office for a 2-minute scene in the episode "The Self-Made." None of us have seen it yet. Jewcy made me sleep in the office overnight so someone would be around to watch the crew move out all their equipment at 5:30 the next morning. Weiss came to visit me at 11:00 that night with his girlfriend. Vincent D'Onofrio noticed that we had been staring at him for upwards of 20 minutes and finally, between takes, stopped and said, "How's it going, folks?" We collectively blinked and each gave our version of "Hi."
• Super-intern Michelle Threadgould left us for greener pastures after a chronologically impossible sixteen years of employment with the company. She was succeeded by mega-interns Ma'ayan Rosenzweig and Jessica Miller, whose individual hours each slightly surpasses the combined length of all FDR's terms as President. My summer was made simultaneously more and less difficult by Raphael Eidus's internship as coder extraordinaire. Now, international woman of technology, Faustine Pollet, is filling that role while I reminisce in writing about "the good old days."
• We bid adieu to office manager Maya Wainhaus, but welcomed Todd Sloves in her stead. He does everything she did except for writing a Tetris blog.
• Tara Rice celebrated her landmark five-hundredth hour of enduring Canadian jokes from Todd over lunch. As payback, she mandated that we all eat salad for lunch four days a week.
• We said goodbye to Joey Kurtzman and Helen Jupiter, costing us a valuable Western Frontier outpost and leaving the Oregon Territory at risk for "Injun Attacks" and long, crying jags about how much we miss them so, so much.
• Weiss left Jewcy. Then came back.
• Izzy left Jewcy, but didn't come back. Her spiritual successor, Lilit Marcus, started with us a few weeks ago, however, and filled the empty void in Simpsons references caused by Izzy's departure.
• Lilit went on a week-long vacation exactly two weeks after starting here. Chapter review questions: 1) If she keeps up that pattern, how many vacation days will Lilit have used by the 71st week? 2) How many vacation days does Lilit get per year?
• Tahl got married. To a woman. One beautiful memory from the evening: "Ms. Laub caressed her husband's shaved head while he wrapped his still-scarred arms around her as they swayed to their own beat."
  
• Izzy got married too, and while the New York Times didn't do a write-up, MAD Magazine did.
• A French guy (unrelated to Faustine!) wandered into our office and asked if he could buy a t-shirt. "We don't really sell them from here," Todd said, but Michael Tive, Jewcy's General Manager, wouldn't let a business opportunity pass us by. "You give me cash, I'll get you a t-shirt," he said. "...With nail polish." And he did.
• Michael Tive admitted that at least part of his famed wheelin' and dealin' came from the wild days he spent at SONY Corporation, where all employees are required to both wheel and deal on a semi-weekly basis as part of company policy.
• Michael Weiss banned commenter "Rob" for being too right-wing for even our resident conservative.

And that's basically all the important things that happened in the past year. I got to buy a few computers for the company, but if I'd wanted to bore you with things nobody understands I'd have mentioned part-time staff writer Jake Rake and his job description.

Maybe somebody else should write these things.

'Til next year,
Craig

Izzy Grinspan, previously in charge of Jewcy's editorial operations, has surfaced in another Yiddishly-inflected publication, recently.

Jewcy spies (in the form of Jewcy's original art director, Dave Choe) sent word -- and a scanned image -- that Izzy and new husband Andy took the joyous occasion of their wedding day and besmirched it by posing with a copy of MAD Magazine. I say "new husband" because Izzy goes through husbands faster than my mom goes through excuses for why she ate sixty-three bags of potato chips. Chips which she also went through quickly.

There's a number of weird things going on here. For one, this story involves two ex-Jewcy employees (of which there are only a few), and for another, it involves one of those employees reading MAD Magazine.

Here's the pic. Note the firmness of Izzy's arms. She had been working out for months prior at her mom's suggestion:

Izzy Gets Married: Kaputnik missed the wedding due to doctor's appointment.

I had to send the picture to Izzy, as apparently the Jews over at MAD don't send out comps to people they make fun of in Letters section. I asked her if she had anything to say.

(05:33:38 PM) Izzy Grinspan: i would just say that yes, andy was indeed wearing cut-offs
(05:33:42 PM) Izzy Grinspan: as was the rabbi, standing behind us
(05:33:51 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it was actually a jorts-themed wedding
(05:33:55 PM) Craig Leinoff: haha, that's your rabbi? Not your brother?
(05:34:02 PM) Craig Leinoff: hahaha
(05:34:05 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it's andy's brother
(05:34:08 PM) Izzy Grinspan: who is also a rabbi
(05:34:08 PM) Craig Leinoff: I see
(05:34:12 PM) Craig Leinoff: He looks like your brother
(05:34:19 PM) Izzy Grinspan: that's because all jews are related

I enjoyed talking to Izzy so much that I contacted Amy Odell, Jewcy's old office manager, but she refused to make any statements on the record in accordance with the terms of her restraining order.

Michael Morlitz was unable to be reached for comment.

While Jewcy visitors may not have noticed anything out of the ordinary on the Jewcy site today, April Foolery was, indeed, afoot.

After spending hours in debate yesterday about what would be an acceptable prank for Jewcy to pull on its woefully staid readership, the staff came to a consensus on the one joke that truly befit our boring selves: nothing. Even the brilliant "Joey gets arrested for public indecency" idea eventually came to naught.

But as everyone wrapped up work for the day, a deliciously evil thought crossed my mind. Because "Malice" is my middle name (...actually, it's "Alice," which makes me full of malice...), I wrote a quick email to Tilted Planet, Jewcy's server hosts, and set to coding.

Success came at approximately 10:00 a.m. as I was on my way to work, with a phone call from Maya, distraught at logging into the site to see this:

Of course, I was "unavailable."

What caused a bigger problem, however, was finding that bosses Tahl and Joey were in a meeting, and wholly unaware of the issue, upon my arrival.

This necessitated my feigning ignorance (as well as faking angry phone calls to Tilted) for the benefit of the understandably flustered Maya. I also was forced to share outrage with Izzy and Tara at our predicament, something which I am not usually very good at. (Talking to Izzy and Tara, that is.)

Tahl finally became aware of the incident around 1:05 p.m., and I quickly found that I had precious little time to fess up before he obliterated the Tilted Planet phone system with his ultra-sonic Israeli complaining. (I should note that Maya had already reached out to Tilted earlier, and they'd been quite good about playing dumb, but Tahl would be on a completely different level of fury.)

I sent out the "Gotchya" email I'd been composing, prematurely, and ran to Tahl's desk, where he was already dialing his phone.

"Hold on!" I yelled, "I just got an explanation email from Tilted! I forwarded it to you! Check it!"

The email was a link to this page.

We all had a good laugh when Tahl finished beating me. Except Maya, who took the brunt of my abuse, and deserves a big cake for being such a good sport. Please don't hate me, Maya.

Another successful April Fool's Day. JOB WELL DONE. As the final coup de grace, I had Izzy's cat sent to the pound. Haha. Golden.

Leave a comment telling us about bugs, problems, or what you WE TYPING WI TH OUR TOES TOO!: Jewcy web development and design team in action!think should be different, better, or just less miserably sucky about the Jewcy site design.

If it's a bug you're reporting, please tell us what operating system and browser you are using.

Typing with my toes,

Joey

Izzy, with Menorah: The childlike tape job was done by Craig.'Twas the first night of Hanukkah
And on each Jewcy table
Not a Menorah was present
Or so goes this Fable

All the workers worked quietly
Til one passer-by called us out
"You call yourselves Jewish?"
He said with a shout

We fretted and frowned
At the words of this man
But then Izzy stood up
And said "I've got a plan!"

She remembered an email
That Tara had sent
A small paper menorah!
The day was not spent!

Dogs: Here's a picture of some dogs to even out the empty space in this article. Izzy and Craig
With scissors in hand
Set to work cutting
No regard to the plan

When it all was done
And the candles affixed
It looked only half-great
...The feelings were mixed

And so to her iMac
Izzy did run
And took a picture for you
And for holiday fun

We wish you the best
On this Festival of Lights
We wish you a menorah
Cause ours kind of bites

Continue reading...

Yesterday, some Jewcy readers observed that Brendan O'Neill, editor of the online magazine Spiked and recent contributor here, began his journalistic career at a magazine named Living Marxism. Living Marxism was the organ of Britain's Revolutionary Communist Party, which held positions with which most Jewcers would not agree. Our would-be comrade commissars proclaim that O'Neill must be exiled from Jewcy.

Michael Kinsley says that the digital age is a propitious time to be a cranky libertarian, but it's also springtime for leftist factionalism. On the web, every clique can sanctify its own luminoso blogrollo, forever excommunicating deviationists for doctrinal unorthodoxies, past affiliations, refusals to pronounce some shibboleth of our corner of the internet.

Not here. Take the stultifying provincialism of left politics, amplify it with the Circle Jerk culture of the blogosphere, and you have something of a Jewcy nightmare: a hothouse of unchallenged ideology and lazy self-congratulation that looks like everything Jewcy was born to combat. Neither the Jewish community nor the left need help making themselves sclerotic, conformist, or irrelevant. The promise of the internet, for us, is its capacity to smash those tendencies, rather than reinforce them.

This isn't just about this specific issue: about Brendan O'Neill, the RCP, Living Marxist, or the Oxford Union debate. It's about what breadth of views can be accommodated in Jewcy, and who gets to contribute. We agree that there are borders to the pale, and some people are beyond those borders. But we're also aware of all the barriers that stand in the way of productive communication between people with well-entrenched and opposing positions: a reluctance or flat-out unwillingness to process evidence contradictory to one’s own point of view, an application of nearly impossible standards of evidence for opposing points but a knee-jerk acceptance of supporting points, a presumption of one's own intellectual bravery and integrity and an assumption that the opposition is weak or foolish or venal or lazy, et cetera. These, too, are things we want to overcome, rather than reinforce.

So defining Jewcy's boundaries will be an ongoing process. We'll discuss them. But we won't define them by pronouncing takfir on anyone who joined an organization with which Jewcy itself would not wish to partner.

Meanwhile, Kvetcher, nee David Kelsey, has taken Jewcy to task for our handling of the Oxford Union kerfuffle.

Jewcy chose a symbol of November 9th Society to represent the debate, even though the November 9th Society is a hardline neo-Nazi party that is quite critical of the British National Party for being mere "conservatives on steroids." That Jewcy chose their logo (replete with swastika, of course) to represent Nick Griffin is as risible as it is shrill.

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Being an online media professional is very much like being a sociologist or a psychiatrist. None of us really have any clue how anything in our field works or how it ought to work, so we spend much of our time making shit up and hoping that it sounds awesome. This is what we call "theory." And for every Lacanian psychoanalyst or critical theorist, there is some digital swami blathering about "increased layers of meaning" or "intertwingled longtails" or some such ginned-up piffle.

The paradigm-smashing theoretical framework of the moment is "Web 3.0." Theorists of Web 3.0 manage to use the language and tone of Viktor Frankl while describing what is, so far as I can tell, a plan to steal shit from other websites while keeping your ass covered legally.

My question: instead of "scraping" from other websites—"scraping" being trade talk for taking their stuff while ensuring they get nothing out of it—why can't we just revert to the old method of "transcluding" their content. Transcluding means that everyone on Jewcy gets to read their stuff, but they still get their pageviews and advertising revenue.

Transcluding seems to have gone of out fashion sometime in internet pre-history (the 90s? Is that possible?), but it seems like a more effective, less labor-intensive, and vastly fairer way to poach proprietary content.

You can't transclude a New York Times page, because they have some sort of fancy technical barrier set up. So in the spirit of ethnic fraternity I'll just sample the content of someone closer to home.

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A message from Craig Leinoff, Jewcy's Tech Guy...

Dear Jewcy Readers,

At approximately 6:30 p.m. on November 15, 2006, Jewcy magazine staffers gathered together to watch ceremoniously as the "Send" button was pushed, triggering a thousands-strong email notification announcing Jewcy Magazine was online and public.

A lot has happened since then. Mike Weiss bought a dog. Izzy adopted a cat. I got a haircut. Joey had bowel obstruction.

But the memories aren't all good. A 3-month standoff with Comcast ended badly in early Spring when Mike Morlitz screamed, "Give peace a chance," and an ATF sniper got hot under the collar and accidentally plugged him between the eyes. Tahl bought us a new graphic designer the next week, but while we like Tara, she just didn't have Morlitz's afro.

When we had to say goodbye to Amy a month or so back (her name didn't have the requisite four-letters that everyone else's did) and Maya came on board, we realized things were gonna be different. We were gonna have to get our Weekly To-Do's in on time. These are the sacrifices we make, however.

Anyway, because the rest of the staff doesn't speak to me except to offer abuse and insults, I don't really know all the accolades and exploits of Jewcy's past year. I don't know anything about The Surge; I don't know anything about the egg on Abe Foxman's face; and I sure don't know anything about Jewcy becoming the world's biggest Jewish media website (after JPost and Haaretz in Israel).

What I do know is because I'm the only one with the tech savvy to change things on the site, I basically have an open forum to the masses. And I choose to use that forum to wreak havoc and destruction on all my enemies.

But it's late, and I want to go home soon, so I've decided, instead, to post a picture of a turtle with a balloon that I doodled in my notebook during a particularly boring, Michael Weiss-dominated office meeting.

I don't know what prompted this masterful creation, or why it says "45 MAIN, DUMBO - ALL YOU, BUDDY" (our office address, plus, apparently, a self-congratulatory annotation), and I don't get the mis-perspective'd catapult launching a baseball into what appears to be a soggy paper bag. Hell, I don't even understand the bulleted notes I made. But I do recognize genius when I see it.

Check out our original launch video here. And if you're lucky, I might just put up another video showcasing the exciting life and times of the Jewcy staff.

Until next year...
Craig

The Jewcy Offices: Editor Raz delivers a keynote address to the adoring throngs.It's that magical time of the year again, getting near the end of Summer but still nowhere near Fall (I call it: "Sumall". Something I came up with one day during Calculus.) when I realize that one man cannot handle the entire development and technological needs of a company on his own. And if one man cannot do it, then I most certainly cannot either.

Which is why I've reached into the deep recesses of my heart, through its tar-like membranes, past the hardened cholesterol, and beyond all the repressed memories that have caused me to awaken to the sound of my own screams so, so many nights, and come up with this little nugget of charity for the aspiring geeks on our site.

The Jewcy syndicate is expanding.

If you think you would like to work as an almost-unpaid web and technology intern in the futuristic fantasy-world that is Jewcy, we would love to have you.

I submit to you now the official Craigslist advertisement I wrote for this position, in its full, unedited glory. I say unedited because, in light of recent legislation regarding Family Values and Decency statutes, Amy has wisely advised me to reconsider certain aspects of the application. But you guys? I know you guys hate decency as much as I do.

Also, if you're looking for a job, but don't want to work in computers, Amy actually has a job opening in the "Office Manager/Executive Assistant" category that you might enjoy if you're fresh out of college, interested in a career in journalism, and don't mind babysitting adults.

Anyway, the full ad is after the jump.

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Yesterday, Michael kindly leapt to my defense against those who assert that I'm unentitled to speak on Jewish issues, what with my being not only a "neo-Nazi shemale prick," but, less forgivably, a non-Jewish neo-Nazi shemale prick.

Michael volunteered that I'm "100% halachically Hebrew," and he’s probably right about that. Still, my great-grandmother—the halakhically relevant one—was named Mary and was illiterate in Yiddish. I assume Mary was Jewish, but there seems cause to wonder, and I really can’t be bothered to find out. For anyone who places importance on such things as matrilineal succession, I encourage you to operate from the assumption that my mother is Margaret Thatcher.

And isn't that the point? We am ha-ares are so incurious about this stuff, so cavalier about life's BIG questions such as the Jewishness of one’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. It's really not much of a surprise if, as one commenter said, some ultra-Orthodox will no longer drink wine prepared by secular Jews. How can they be sure?

Michael also says "For the record, Joey's reference to "mongrel" or "FrankenJews" in his dialogue with Jack Wertheimer applied to only a few of us at Jewcy who were born of virgin Gentile mothers (myself included)." Actually, I did not intend terms such as Frankenjew to apply only to those whose mothers are not Jewish, or to children of intermarriage generally. I regret that I seem to have left myself open to that interpretation.

As I said to Jack Wertheimer in my second e-mail, “I don’t believe intermarriage is the cause of all this turmoil, but rather a consequence…your enemy is not intermarriage, but the pluralistic, endlessly permeable culture of the modern American city.” As an example of my own Frankenjew “patrimony,” I mentioned my high school experiences at a Korean Baptist Bible study, rather than anything about the diversity of my family. That’s because my point was that it’s our “polyglot, postmodern American creole culture,” rather than our ancestry, that makes for “Jewish-American mongrels” or “Frankenjews.” It’s a culture we share with people from an endless array of backgrounds, and in which our worldview is shaped by all sorts of non-Jewish influences, even as we also retain Jewish influences and connections.

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Today, Jewcy decided to launch this Development Blog to chronicle all the inside events that happen behind the scenes in the office.

We hope to make interested users aware of both the future development initiatives Jewcy intends to implement and the steps that we take along the way to their creation.

Right now, Designer Michael Morlitz and I are going through a serious redesign of the site, actually. The intention is to revamp all the fonts, some of the homepage elements, change how featured artists are promoted (e.g., not at the bottom of the site where no one looks), and much more.

Should be exciting if you get off on Jewcy updates. Which I do. 

CNN Says You Should Have Bought It Three Years Ago: Dave Choe's "City Girl"CNNMoney discusses the scary-fast rise of Jewcy's founding art director David Choe.

Barely three years ago, you could have bought the San Jose street artist's paintings for a few hundred bucks apiece. Now a Choe portrait will set you back as much as $50,000.

They also show one of Dave's pieces, "City Girl."

Boy, we’re shameless. For weeks on end Jewcy had Dave working frantically in the back office pumping out brilliant original pieces like he was chained to a worktable in Shenzhen and being paid by the dozen. We’re talking one good spark away from the Jewcy Shirtwaist fire. Why did he do it? As I said before, it’s because Dave’s a militant Jewcer: he believes in the cause. Kudos to Dave for the CNN coverage.

A Beautiful Mess: Dave Choe's AmericaBut here's something that makes me mad: the influential arts and culture magazine Juxtapoz recently featured Dave on the cover of an issue titled “David Choe: Fast & Dirty.” In the first sentence of the intro to Matthew Newton’s interview with Dave, Newton summarizes Dave’s work this way:

“For the better part of a decade, David Choe has perpetuated a fast and dirty style of art that captures in feverish and frantic detail the ills of a crumbling and decadent America.”

I can forgive Newton for doing “adjective-conjunction-adjective” three times in one sentence. But I can’t forgive him for spreading the outrageous slander that Dave’s art is about “a crumbling and decadent America.”

Dave’s art is a feckin’ lovesong to America. I saw him in L.A. a couple weeks ago and we talked about his mixed media painting "My American Dream". Everything you need to know about how Dave feels about America is there. Yes, America (like the flag) is twisted and misshapen, sloppy, compromised, and not true to its self-image or the image it presents to others. And yet in all that messiness he sees a culture roiling with hybrid vigor, a sloppy unconstrained mongrel mess that Dave loves, and to which he’s the ultimate native."The Ills of a Crumbling, Decadent America": The Juxtapoz Dave Choe covers

All this is evident in his art, but I also know it’s true because I’ve known him since I was just a little tot and his grandmother swore at me in Korean for eating all the dried seaweed, which I did do, but in fairness I had never eaten seaweed before so I was understandably intrigued. The point being that I know Dave’s art better than anyone, so if you think my understanding is faulty, Occam’s razor tells us this is because you’re wrong.

So Juxtapoz, keep that tired “We’re artists, so we think America sucks, society sucks, cuz artists are like that” shtick for yourself, don't try to push it off on Dave.

[Note: In an ongoing effort to have everyone in the office save perhaps the janitor's chihuahua writing content for us, we proudly present this new feature -- FrontLein -- wherein tech developer Craig Leinoff shares some intra-Jewcy trivia with you, the patient reader. Craig's lunches do indeed stink up the joint something awful. -- MW]

Before I go ahead and make up a series of elaborate and tangential lies in an attempt to exculpate myself after accidentally and single-handedly demolishing the site yesterday, I'd like to offer our best wishes to Jewcy's Editor and President, Tahl Raz.

Tahl recently was in a very bad car accident this weekend near Poughkeepsie. He was driving on the Taconic Parkway during heavy rain (a deathtrap, at best) when his car slid off the road and flipped three times. A normal editor would have settled for merely overturning his vehicle, but Tahl Raz is no normal editor.

Anyway, his car was basically destroyed and, although he unbelievably suffered no broke bones, he apparently punched both hands through the car's sunroof (presumably in some final display of defiant, Israeli machismo). Long story short, Tahl is in the hospital now (on morphine and doing very well) and Senior Editor Joey Kurtzman is flying out to New York to fill in temporarily.

Now on to other office news.

Every day, I bark orders at the rest of the staff to fulfill my every whim. I have a very tenuous relationship with the rest of the crew in which I make idle threats about deleting the site unless my demands are met (coffee, donuts and the like), they ignore me, and I subsequently do nothing.

Well yesterday all that changed. I was eating my double cheddar burger and onion rings from Lucky's (ignore the woefully inaccurate reviews; the place is a Godsend) when Weiss starts freaking out. "God, what is that SMELL?" he says, "What are you EATING?"

I tried to explain to Mike the basic principle of onion rings but he just wasn't buying it. Now bear in mind, this comes at the end of a long string of my-food-related-quarrels -- apparently the smell of my Pesto Tortellini Salad wasn't up to Epicurus Weiss's standards (Izzy didn't seem to mind) -- and I had had enough.

A few deft strokes later and half the site's images were gone. "That'll teach them," I thought. It wasn't long, though, before I realized that the responsibility to fix this sinister act would undoubtedly fall squarely on my shoulders, and I decided to rethink my decision.

A few short hours later (with everyone's help), and the site was back in full. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Looking to the future, Jewcy is proud to have a funny little short video in the works. You'll see it on the main page when it's done, so keep your eyes like a raw carrot: peeled.

Jewcy is pleased to introduce Michael Morlitz, our new art designer. He comes to us from the city of brotherly love with a singular passion for graphic design.

I first talked to Michael a week or two before the holidays. Meeting him was like getting an early Christmas present; he was covered in wrapping paper, had a bow on top of his head, and I smiled as if I liked him, while fully intending to return him on December 26 with a gift receipt.

I was mistaken, however. Michael was not the aging holiday fruitcake that I had hoped would tidily complete my metaphor. Instead, he was an artist. And not in the conventional sense, either - a good one.

We asked Michael what information he could give us about himself and he sent us what appeared to be his MySpace user profile. In between shout-outs to his "peeps" (LOL!), we learned that his extensive resume included work for the Gotham ad agency, Doremus, New York & Company, and Odyssey/Iliad. He plays the bass, enjoys rock and roll (citing specifically The Beatles, Cream, The Byrds, Led Zeppelin, Mogwai, and Radiohead) and movies such as Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, Mission: Impossible (1 and 3, only, apparently), The Big Lebowski, T-2: Judgment Day, and Risky Business, as well as the Harry Potter books. His favorite artist, he says, is Barnett Newman, and he speculates that he may have OCD.

While I can't personally agree with all of his musical tastes (Led Zeppelin music makes my brain hemorrhage, but who can argue with The Beatles?) his movies are dead-on. So far, his obsessive compulsive disorder hasn't really been an issue, although I do worry that his incessant light switch-licking are going to make the faceplates rust. We'll have to keep an eye on that.

Since his arrival, Michael's changed the office in innumerable ways. Innumerable mostly because we've put him in the back office where no one has to interact with him or enumerate the ways in which the office has changed. His design work, however, remains top-notch, and we're more than happy to welcome him to the Jewcy staff.

Enjoy some photos.

Introduction: Somebody call for an art designer? Michael leaps into action.
Relaxing: Michael takes a well deserved breather and Amy admires his fine penmanship.
The Office Challenge: He wouldn't stop bragging about how he can walk around with his eyes closed. I told him to prove it. Disaster struck.
Getting together: Weiss forces Izzy and Michael into a nice, family-style portrait. "She's going to sue you," I speculate.

So part of Jewcy’s ethos is to be participatory, interactive, generally open source-y. We’d like our site users to help make Jewcy what it is, and for our editorial processes to be more-or-less transparent. So in that spirit, I’m submitting a current Jewcy staff dilemma to the floor.

On Friday our lead story will be the first of several dispatches from a young Iraqi-American Jew who is traveling in the Persian Gulf. His mother is a Baghdadi Jew, and our correspondent speaks fluent Iraqi Arabic. He identifies strongly with both Arab and Jewish culture.

The staff can’t decide on the headline for the article. One group thinks we should get the term “Arab Jew” in the headline, because most Ashkenazi Jews likely don’t suppose that such a thing exists, and indeed most Jews whose ancestry is in the Arab countries reject the term, too. But not our correspondent. So one possible headline is “An Arab Jew Travels Home.”

The alternative is “Adventures in Arabia," somewhat catchier and more concise.

Basically the disagreement revolves around whether the term “Arab Jew” is intrinsically interesting. If any Jewcy users care to express a preference between (1) “An Arab Jew Travels Home” or (2) “Adventures in Arabia” as headline for the story I’ve described, we’re all ears.

The Times' new painfully named blog The Lede has very few comments. Don't know what's stopping the paper of record's readership from assiduously talking back at Tom Zeller, Jr. He's trying so hard, too:

Favorite Altman film?

Nashville.

Still lonely?