I spoke with Lilit Marcus on the phone about her role as editor of Jewcy. She talked about Jewcy’s recent acquisition by JDub, a non-profit record company, and how Jewcy manages to stay Jewish and relevant, open and edited. The site’s structure is built of writers and bloggers from around the world. Like the Huffington Post, Jewcy is a hub that makes it easy to read the opinions of your favorite Rabbis, journalists, and artists. Readers are encouraged to participate by creating accounts and commenting, forming a unique forum for Jewish dialogue. Topics range the gamut from dispatches from new Israelis to reminiscences of an Orthodox childhood to book reviews to a photo essay on the Jewish community in Tijuana plus a scad of heated debates. When reading Jewcy, it’s important to read the comments.
StB: Who started Jewcy and how did the collaboration between JDub and Jewcy come about?
LM: It started in 2006. Tahl Raz wanted to create a cool Jewish online community and he found backers.
In February of 2009, the funders pulled out. We lost all our jobs and about a month ago JDub Records bought Jewcy and now we’re one big happy family. When they approached me, they said we’re thinking of expanding, I thought our audiences were really similar: young interesting Jewish people who want to change the Jewish community and want to stay connected through art. We were doing different components of the same thing. Jewcy brings in content.
StB: As a Jewish media source for and by young people, is it hard to settle on a tone? For example, Jewcy differs in some ways from Heeb.
LM: Sure, we can be irreverent and sarcastic but everything that’s on the site comes out of a love and respect. We are not here to make fun of everything, but we acknowledge that there are funny things and we can point them out.
If you read a lot of Jewish media, everyone jumps on one trend. How is Jewcy going to cover this differently or what else can we offer to read instead?
For example, the J Street Conference. J Street is a lobbyist group to push for peace in the middle east via a two state solution. Everybody was covering the J street conference so rather than just posting about conference, we were writing more what it was like to be there.
We also set up a bank of computers in the main lobby and encouraged people to sign up for an account on Jewcy and blog on the site about the conference. We had flip cams and quickly interviewed people. So instead of writing about each event, we were asking for reactions and getting on-the-ground citizen journalism. It’s the same story but we’re getting a different part of it.
StB: What other Jewish media do you read?
LM: The big media sources: Jewlicious, Forward, Tablet, Jewish Week, Jew and the Carrot, Haaretz.
I follow Jews on Twitter, people’s immediate responses to stuff, which stories do people repost and tweet about and which things they do not. That tells you, as an editor, what people are responding to.
StB: How many people write on Jewcy?
LM: It’s almost impossible to keep track of everyone at the same time. A few hundred. There are 25 people who focus and post a lot.
We’ve made a big effort to get people not just in New York and Israel, but to get a bunch of people from all different kinds of cities and communities.
StB: What are some of the best perks you’ve received from working on Jewcy?
Patrick Aleph is so dead on and really funny. People use “new jews” in a weird way. He just is that and doesn’t have to talk about it. Last week he wrote a post on changing your Jewish last name, because of preference given to people with Ashkenazi backgrounds. We exclude people who don’t have Jewish names. In another piece he suggested that we should count a minyan if there are enough people on facebook or twitter.
StB: What is the “New Jew”?
What worries me about “New Jew” is that it’s so hard to classify a large group of people. If I look at trends that keep coming up though, one is, people want to identify as Jewish but not be religious. For them being Jewish is about food, traditions, family. People want to be accepted (many are from multi-faith families) especially because people talk constantly about intermarriage. Rather than force Jews to marry other Jews, New Jews tend to welcome everyone to Judaism. They are also finding ways to include Judaism in things they already like: cool music, punk rock shows, and it’s a bonus when there’s a Jewish component. There are so many creative ways to incorporate Judaism.
Posted by Sam 
