Know Your Jewish Community: Jewish Youth Culture Publications

Gawker seems to want to know where Not Chosen works. In the interests of helping them, I'm going to give a run-down of a few of the major Jewish publications.

Heeb: hipster, counter-culture, and generally quite entertaining, focuses a lot on pop-culture.

According to their website: "Armed with poisoned pens and some duct tape, Heeb Magazine was brewed in Brooklyn in 2001 as a take-no-prisoners zine for the plugged-in and preached-out. Still wreaking havoc with unflinching coverage of arts, culture and politics, Heeb has evolved into a critically-acclaimed lifestyle magazine and the self-anointed voice of young Jews today. Now a multi-armed media monster, Heeb reaches hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide who look to it as the unholy gospel of the smart, funny and absurd."

Also, DK writes for them.
For more click here.


Zeek: A bit more highbrow, if with lamer release parties, Zeek is a "literary journal." This means that not only are their contributors unpaid (I think), but also that the content is supposed to be arty. The contributors are not limited to the younger generation, either for good, or for bad, and they, like Heeb have a theme each issue. Founded in 2002, it is, according to its website:"an independent Jewish journal of thought and culture, which features innovative writers, artists, and critics whose work speaks to questions of Jewish culture, society, and spirit." For more click here.

Guilt and Pleasure: a product of Project Reboot, an attempt to attract young Jews to Judaism with culture. Or to solve the problem of (lack of) affiliation. Or to create Jewish culture. Or something. Anyway, aside from the reasons for its conception, Guilt and Pleasure is terrific. Highbrow, beautifully written and designed, fantastic art, and always has interesting pieces. Its goal, as per the website is to "make Jews talk more." Not so sure that that was really an issue with Jews as a people, but it certainly serves as the basis for many conversations, like "did you know that there was an official IDF magician?" or "why aren't there so many Jewish boxers anymore?" Long story short? I love G&P.
For more click here.

Jewcy: Tahl Raz's new project (did I mention that he is super-cutie?) it is supposed to be a sort of Slate-like, open source content, online magazine. The content is fairly uneven, but there are some terrific pieces, like the wikified Amidah, any content by Laurel Snyder or Joey Kurtzman, and of course their t-shirts. The tagline: "what matters now" seems a bit pretentious, but considering that the paid staff of Jewcy aren't claiming that they are the arbiters of what matters, I'm willing to let it go. I intitially agreed with Steven I. Weiss' view of Jewcy, but it's been growing on me.
For more click here.

Nextbook: I am not sure that this counts, but it should. A Jewish "Arts and Letters" Nextbook is just fabulous. They have online content, podcasts, a newsletter, and some programs that I wish that I could go to including a program called "one book, one congregation" where an entire synagogue can be a book club with books written specifically for the purpose. The topics include biographies of Maimonides, Emma Lazarus, Barney Ross, and others. For more click here.

For the record, I don't think that Not Chosen works at any of these magazines.