* Tablet is a lively Jewish opinion magazine that I’ve linked to fairly frequently.
* Newhouse’s husband David Samuels wrote one of the best articles on Obama and Rev. Wright in 2008.
* The Tablet has had a lot of right of center Jews commenting. Of course, the editor’s husband isn’t exactly a far lefty himself. It publishes a wide range of opinions, but a sort of Jewish version of Teddy Roosevelt’s “muscular Christianity” might be the ideological center.
Here’s the editor’s husband’s article on UFC fighter Rampage Jackson.
Comments:
* Right, think of Leon Wieseltier’s arts section circa late 90s, early 2000s as an ideologically similar space, except not quite as ruthless. Adam Kirsch is a fairly representative Tablet contributor.
Incidentally, there’s an interesting phenomenon in which youthful Jewish writers have an encounter with NOTORIOUS ANT-SEMITE TS Eliot which turns out to be the most formative of their intellectual lives. What Kirsch describes applies equally well to a guy like Harvard Prof and New Yorker contributor Louis Menand.
* Every whitewashed article on European attacks on Jews had plenty of right-wing Jews popping on and pointing out it was the Muslims. One of the things I always noticed was how much more right-wing the comments were than the articles.
* It’s a Jewish cultural thing. Historically, Jews auctioned off the right to read scripture and offer prayers during religious services. These auctions, particularly for the high holy days, were quite active. Think of the pit at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Auctioning the right to speak served a dual purpose: it painlessly raised money for the synagogue and it reinforced the reputation and standing of wealthy Jews in the community. When a Jew came to shul, he knew who called the shots in the Jewish Community, both religiously and socially, by which layman was standing up in front of the congregation, exhorting the faithful.
Two dollar comments will do the same thing for The Tablet. Pretty smart idea, if you ask me, even without an auction. Why post poor peoples comments? If they don’t have any money it’s not like they have anything worthwhile to comment that a rich guy could not say.
* The comment sections seem pretty civil and intelligent, unlike those at Haaretz, a Jewish news site where the comments sometimes get pretty nasty. Tablet rarely covers hot-button political issues. Its coverage of NPR-style social issues gets a little annoying, but that’s as bad as it gets.
* As a rule, the commenters at Jewish papers and magazines are right of the editors. Crotchety old men with lots of time on their hands are prominent.
Rabbis are usually left of their congregants. People go to synagogue because they value tradition (to varying degrees of course), which naturally selects for conservative personalities. Rabbis (non-orthodox ones that is) go into that line of work because they want to “make the world a better place” or some such.
