NEW YORK, June 5 (JTA) — For anyone who thinks that North American Jewish college students are apathetic, check out the proliferation of Jewish publications springing up on campuses across the continent. Through newspapers, magazines and literary journals, Jewish students are joining together to explore and express their Jewish identity through the written word. Thirty of the editors and writers behind this flourish of Jewish publications — some 40 exist around the country — gathered recently here for a conference of the Jewish Student Press Service. The students came to attend seminars with professionals working in the Jewish media and to share with one another the challenges they face running their own periodicals. The two-day conference, held May 28 and 29 at the newly opened Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University, was the most well-attended since the activist period of the 1970s, according to Mik Moore, JSPS national director. The purpose of the conference, Moore said, was “to expose students to the current issues in Jewish media, help them improve their technical skills and make them aware of the scope of the professional field.” Moore, who co-founded the Jewish journal Ra’ashan while a student at Vassar, said he hopes to inspire promising students to consider Jewish print media as a career focus. Well-known Jewish journalists, magazine editors and writers — including Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Jewish Telegraphic Agency staff writer; Leonard Fein, author and founder of Moment magazine; J.J. Goldberg, author and journalist; Blu Greenberg, feminist thinker and writer; Lisa Hostein, JTA editor; Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founder of Ms. magazine; Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the New York Jewish Week; and Susan Weidman Schneider, editor of Lilith magazine — were among the many professionals who interacted with the students to discuss relevant issues such as journalistic responsibility and what makes art or news “Jewish.” They also offered practical advice for soliciting articles, cultivating news sources and career advancement. Rebecca Phillips, the editor of Columbia University’s Jewish journal, Perspectives, and a summer intern at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, came away encouraged. “It was very encouraging to encounter people who are achieving in this profession and to hear their stories, because journalism is a hard field to break into. “Jewish journalism, in particular, is a great niche,” she said, because “you can write for a community that you know and care about, and make an important contribution.” The students displayed a sense of energy and creativity as they shared their experiences. In a roundtable discussion titled “Starting a Jewish Campus Publication,” several student editors told inspiring anecdotes of how they had revitalized their school’s waning Jewish publications, or started new ones where none existed. Renee Gindi took over as editor of New York University’s Jewish magazine, Forum, two years ago, and is proud of the magazine’s growing contribution to the school’s Jewish life. “We’ve doubled the number of annual issues and assembled a staff of editors and writers to insure that we have material and people to assemble it,” she said. “Many of the Jewish students on my campus are unaffiliated, so our audience is hard to reach. The one tenet of Forum is that we provide a space for free expression. We give Jewish students who often feel disaffected a place to exchange ideas.” In fact, many of the publications have proven to be an informal form of outreach. “Publications have a very good effect on their campuses,” said Udi Ofer, former editor-in-chief of ARI, the Jewish newspaper at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “Whole communities can develop around a good publication. In addition to the paper itself, ARI hosted events on campus which attracted a lot of students. It is really powerful to see how people with common interests can come together so quickly.” Brooke Geldner, a student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, founded Soft, an artistic/literary magazine for which she solicits submissions from Jewish students on campus almost entirely by e-mail. “I wanted to specifically target Jewish artists and writers who were not already active in Hillel to showcase the vast Jewish talent on campus, and to reveal that we are united both creatively and culturally. “Most of the artists who contacted me were not otherwise involved in Jewish activities on campus, and in the end they wanted to meet each other,” she said. “Soft was very successful in uniting that segment of the school’s Jewish population.” For Noah Dauber, editor of Harvard University’s Mosaic, the complexities of American Jewish life provide material for the journal’s intellectual discourse. Another conference attendee, Kate Kotler, edits a burgeoning Jewish newsletter at the University of Akron, Ohio, a complex task that includes identifying Jewish news and galvanizing a small Jewish community on a large campus. Ofer emphasized the importance of the JSPS in all of their work. “Like a news service,” he said, the JSPS offers “a supply of articles when a Jewish publication is running short, but more importantly they are a network for all of us throughout the year. “It is great to know that I can reach out to editors at other campuses to discuss ideas and problems.” For now, the student editors provide a vital forum for the Jewish students at their colleges to connect as a community and exchange ideas. As they look to the future, many of them said they were so motivated by the conference that they hope to continue the synthesis of Jewish community and the printed word in their professional lives. At the conference’s final session, Shira Levine, a freshman at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia said, “I came here as a journalist — the “Judaism” part of the conference was just a bonus for me. “Now, I am leaving here as a Jewish journalist.”
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Franci Levine Grater, who attended the JSPS conference, is a graduate of the University of Judaism. She is currently a freelance writer in New York City.
