By Lisa Schiffman
With a controversial title that has aroused both anger and admiration within the Jewish community, editor Jennifer Bleyer is hoping to attract a young and hip audience for her fledgling magazine, “Heeb: The New Jew Review.”
The idea for the magazine came to Bleyer soon after she began an internship at Harpers Magazine, after her graduation from Columbia University in 1998. “I was walking on the street when I got the idea for a Jewish interest magazine,” Bleyer said. She applied for, and was awarded, a $60,000 grant by the Joshua Ventura foundation, an organization that helps young Jewish entrepreneurs.
After meeting in an East Village basement for the past year, Bleyer and a staff of 20 like-minded individuals put together the first 65-page issue, its debut cover featuring a round matzo set on a turntable.
“It integrates the traditional and the secular, from what I’ve read,” said Chaim Colen, a Queens doctor. “It looks very vibrant as for its cultural aspects. It covers a gamut of activities — I think it looks terrific. I think it would sell in Queens, which has a vibrant Jewish community. I’m sure even my mom would read it.”
Reaction to the magazine was mixed, however. Rifka Libman, a student at Queens College, was a bit put off.
“The title seems somewhat condescending,” she said. “I haven’t read it, but I doubt I would pick it up. I usually read the Jewish Press very week.” She said that her circle is mostly Orthodox, and offhand does not think that they would like it either.
But more liberal Jews took the talmudic approach, seeking to understand first before judging.
“As a graphic designer, the design is gorgeous and very provocative,” said Iris Karp. “From the titles I would like to spend more time to find out whether I’d like it or not. I want to sit down with this. The images are fantastic and it is very readable. Very provocative and fun. I don’t know yet about ‘Heeb,’ but I would like to find out what it is.”
Exuding hippie chic, Bleyer arrived at the Union Square coffee shop for her interview in a thick wool sweater and long skirt, her abundant dark hair held in check by a scrunchie. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the negative publicity generated by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League. The magazine and its content are clearly not for everyone, she said, but for the most part people view Heeb in a positive light.
“Some people think the name is offensive, but our readers love it. We have basically sold out every issue. It is flying off the shelves,” she said. The term “heeb,” a deliberate misspelling of the Anti-Semitic slur “hebe,” is not intended to offend, Bleyer explained, but to bring together young Jews of the hip hop generation. Bleyer came up with up the title, she said, after hearing young Jews use the term as an endearment among themselves.
“Most of our readers get what the magazine is about right away from the title,” she said. It does not alienate, but conveys a sense of pride about one’s Jewishness, Bleyer said. “Most of the Jewish community seems excited that there is a magazine to express and galvanize their Jewishness,” she added.
Nearly all of the first 18,000 copies have sold out, Bleyer said. “I heard we sold out in surprising places where we didn’t expect to find a huge audience. ‘Oh I just picked it up in North Carolina,’” one person told her. “These people are more excited. There are not too many options for those young Jews,” she said.
“Our readers are who we are, people in their 20s and 30s who are educated and media savvy,” Bleyer says. “Heeb’s readers are Jews who have unanswered questions about their Jewish identity after growing up in suburbia and attaining a religious education that typically ends at age 12 or 13 with a Bat or Bar Mitzvah,” she said.
The introduction on Heeb’s Web site attempts to answer the question of what Heeb is all about: “It is the roiling product of so many drunken post-Miller nights on the mean streets of the Lower East Side. It is an ambitious antitrust investigation into the monopoly on God. It is a sweaty prizefight between hip-hop and sushi in one corner and klezmer and kugel on the other.”
“That says it all,” confirms Bleyer, “a generation totally assimilated into high culture but which has one foot in tradition and our forbears. That is the expression of any immigrant group.” Bleyer herself straddled between mainstream culture and the counterculture, producing underground publications such as “Mazel Tov Cocktail.”
Bleyer’s staff members, who work on a shoestring budget and have outside jobs, are mostly young freelance writers and photographers trying to do something innovative. “These are Jews not going to law school, medical school, and moving on to the suburbs. We’re committed urban dwellers, urban literati who are engaged with our Judaism and question what that means,” said Bleyer, who herself freelances for publications such as Spin and Salon.
The ultimate goal of Heeb, Bleyer says, is to provoke thought in her readers: “Being Jewish, we’re instructed in Judaism and the Torah to question God and everything. Judaism is constantly questioning and what we’re doing is very Jewish and spiritual activity – to poke and prod and get meaning.”
The magazine’s irreverent tone is spiced with irony. Kitsch and offbeat subjects are interspersed with serious articles on activism and social injustice. For example, the winter issue includes a profile and centerfold of Neil Diamond, a photo spread exploring frizzy “Jewfros,” and an interview with “Peaches,” a former schoolteacher turned pornographic rapper, juxtaposed alongside an interview with filmmaker Sandi Dubowski on his recent film on homosexuality within the Orthodox community and Bleyer’s expose on injustices in the American private prison system.
“Issues of activism and social justice are interesting to me. How Jews are working for justice. That is probably one of our main themes,” Bleyer said. “Jews have always been interested in this country for social change and Heeb wants to continue that tradition,” she added.
After spending nearly all of the grant in publishing the first issue, Bleyer admits that she is trying now to find more financial backing and stay afloat: “We got enough money to print the first issue. We’re flat broke now. We’re trying to raise money and stay in business.”
Optimistic and upbeat, Bleyer is confident that Heeb fills a unique niche in the Jewish community, and will survive. “There is no other magazine doing what we’re doing,” she said. “As long as no other knockoff comes along we’re okay. We’re a small niche magazine — we’re not trying to get on supermarket magazine racks.”
Before Heeb came out “either you were traditional or you’re nothing,” Bleyer said. An earlier attempt six years ago to start another “edgy” magazine like Heeb failed, she said. “Our magazine has made the splash. We have to keep it going. We are not proselytizing but provoking thought, making people laugh and think and that will last for a few years.”
