Dear Jewish Currents Readers —
I'm very excited to announce that we've hired Rokhl Kafrissen, our Rootless Cosmopolitan columnist, as a part-time website editor and New York City organizer for Jewish Currents magazine. Rokhl, who is 33, has actually left her job as a corporate lawyer to take this plunge — and a huge plunge it is, on the economic ladder! — in order to feel her oats as a writer and help our magazine bridge the generation gap. Already she has expanded our presence on the Internet with an exciting new blog, an archive of reprints from our 62 years of publishing, YouTube clips and more — accessible through our website, www.jewishcurrents.org.
As a baby-boomer of 56, I've long been aware of the gap between my generation and the founding generation of Jewish Currents — between the radical 1960s and '70s and the radical 1930s and '40s. Indeed, Currents was one of the few places, apart from dining room tables, where the two have met in dialogue. Recently, you may have noticed, the magazine has been focusing a lot more on the baby-boomer culture, with articles on Bob Dylan, the 1968 Chicago Convention, environmentalism, and more, in order to cultivate in my own generation the understanding that we're reading not only our parents' magazine but our own magazine when we pick up Currents.
There is, however, another generation gap, equally profound, between my generation and Rokhl's — a gap centered on technology.
It's like this: People in their twenties and thirties are accustomed to getting nearly all of their information from the Internet, not from their mailbox. They expect to get it for free (paid for by advertising), and with a lot of bells and whistles. This represents a tremendous challenge for a print magazine with limited resources like ours.
Bringing Rokhl onto our staff is an important step towards meeting that challenge. She is deeply involved in the New York community of young Yiddishists, writers and musicians. She comprehends the depth of our magazine's history (I first met Rokhl when she introduced herself at the memorial meeting for Morris U. Schappes, our long-time editor, in 2004). She speaks Yiddish! And she is fluent in the language of the Internet.
We're not depending on Rokhl only, of course. We have volunteer help from Ira Karlick, our website resources meyvn, and from Nicholas Jahr, a young writer and former Nation intern who's been writing for us and consulting with us. Olga Levy, the website technician at the Workmen's Circle, is also critical to our plans — and a growing network of young writers is showing our magazine new directions.
Now we need your help, too. I won't embarrass Rokhl by disclosing the salary she's working for. Suffice it to say that it might be considered a human rights violation. Hiring her was made possible, however, only by the recent retirement of our office manager, Esther Surovell, whose duties have been transferred to Workmen's Circle staff and whose salary formed the backbone of Rokhl's salary. With the help of the Workmen's Circle, we have enough to hire Rokhl — for one year.
That means we now have to do some serious money organizing — and this letter is the key component of that, our main plea for your support for 2008. Its success will determine our ability to maintain this generational bridge that our staff expansion is building.
We are entering a period of hope in America ("The more poverty," said Sholem Aleichem, "the more hope"), thanks to the imminent end of this horrifying administration in Washington. As you know, our magazine has held high the banner of opposition throughout the Bush years, while going through a wonderful renewal that positions us to be a unique voice for peace, political sanity, and progressive Jewish values. The task is to bring more ears within the sound of that voice, and to get people listening, and dialoguing, across the generations.
Please make that possible by digging down deep to support Jewish Currents.
Warm regards — Lawrence Bush, Editor
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