News service helps Jewish students connect

NEW YORK, May 27 (JTA) – When David Twersky arrived at college in September 1968, he found himself in “a schizophrenic position.” He considered himself left wing, but after the 1967 Six-Day War the student anti-war movement had added anti-Israel activism to its agenda, creating an “incredibly hostile” atmosphere for left-leaning Zionists like Twersky, he says. The desire to connect with like-minded students led Twersky — who now is editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News — and counterparts at other colleges to start dozens of Jewish student newspapers. Within a few years, they had formed the Jewish Student Press Service as a wire service and professional network for the student papers. Today´s Jewish students face an increasingly well-organized, pro-Palestinian public relations campaign that produces highly visible anti-Israel activities on college campuses across North America. More than three decades after its founding, the JSPS is still there for them, this time with a magazine called New Voices. Now is in its 10th year of publication, New Voices is the only Jewish magazine written for and by Jewish college students across North America. Besides helping Jewish students connect with their peers on other campuses, New Voices has helped breathe new life into JSPS. By the mid-1980s, as anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity on campuses died down — and as the Reagan “revolution” drew many students away from campus activism — Jewish student papers seemed to be dying out. The JSPS gamely limped along until 1991, when its director, Sandy Edry, decided use it as a vehicle to produce a national Jewish magazine. The students producing New Voices are “the same as the student movement back then,” says J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Forward newspaper and another of JSPS´ founders. The magazine “shows in a very effective way that you don´t have to be either/or” — that is, either blindly pro- or anti-Israel, he says. “You can think for yourself, you can draw your own conclusions and you can still be a proud Jew.” “Students hear anti-Israel voices” all the time, says Daniela Gerson, a recent Brown University graduate who currently is New Voices´ associate editor and who will become editor next month. “They want answers to these questions that are coming up.” Articles such as “A Lonely Struggle,” “Combating Anti-Zionism” and “Coloring in the Conflict” explore how Jewish students are dealing with anti-Israel sentiment on campus. The magazine is read by students across the political spectrum, but probably is most needed by those on the left. Students who consider themselves “liberal in their political views are suddenly caught in this place where they realize that Israel plays a stronger part in their identity, and they want to figure out a way to understand how this puzzle fits together,” Gerson says. But the editors also note that the magazine carries a wide range of viewpoints. “Even though our politics lean toward the left, we try to be as pluralistic and diverse as possible,” Gerson says. New Voices is run by two full-time, straight-out-of-college editors, and has a team of volunteer student editors and writers from across the country, some of whom serve as foreign corespondents while studying abroad. Its annual budget of slightly more than $100,000 comes from a mix of Jewish organizations, private philanthropies and individual donations. Since the JSPS is not under the control of any Jewish organization, New Voices has “the freedom to write with a more nuanced voice,” provide a voice for the “pro-Zionist left,” and print “the types of articles “that ordinarily wouldn´t be heard,” says Daniel Treiman, a 1999 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and New Voices´ outgoing editor. “When Israel needs to be criticized, we´re critical,” he says. “It makes us a more credible pro-Israel voice.” In fact, it was the magazine´s independence that first attracted Treiman as a reader. At the Berkeley Hillel, Treiman noticed a cover story that criticized the “March of the Living,” a popular Holocaust-education program for Jewish high school students. “I really didn´t know what to make of it, because here was this Jewish publication criticizing a Jewish program aimed at Jewish youth,” Treiman says. “I wasn´t used to the idea of students creating Jewish life for themselves that was independent of other Jewish organizations.” Treiman later went on to contribute his own critical article condemning Birthright Israel for accepting a donation from Marc Rich, the financier who fled the United States to avoid charges of tax evasion and racketeering and was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Other students are drawn in by the magazine´s unconventional nature. New Voices first caught Gerson´s eye when it ran “The Sex Issue.” “A lot of our readers are students who are interested in something that´s Jewish, but also something that they feel is cool,” she says. “They want something that´s hip, that´s edgy, that speaks to their generation.” Recent topics have included Jews in hip-hop, the intersection between Jewish and Chinese cultures, Reggae Judaism, Kabbalah on campus and eco-Zionism. For other students, the magazine´s attraction is simply that it is Jewish. For students at schools with small Jewish populations, New Voices can be one of the few ways to connect with other Jews. “One student in a school outside of Middlebury, Vt., wrote to us that there´s no other Jewish outlet for him,” Gerson says. “What New Voices does so well is that it reaches a lot of different types of students,” she adds. “Because it´s a publication that is written by students, students can take what they want from it.” The magazine distributes between 8,000 and 10,000 copies free to students on some 350 campuses across North America, six times a year. Students can pick up the paper at distribution points or sign up for free subscriptions. Gerson and Treiman hope to expand readership through their revamped Web site and a program that allows synagogues to buy subscriptions for their student members. Some 3,500 students currently have the paper mailed directly to them, with the synagogue program accounting for 1,500 of these subscriptions. “When I was in school, my synagogue sent me sweets and holiday packages,” Gerson says. “This is something that is much more meaningful.” As editor, Gerson hopes to expand international coverage, do more articles “responding to the question of how to be both Zionist and left” and raise the magazine´s profile. She also recently began working with the World Union of Jewish Students to make New Voices articles available to Jewish student publications around the globe. But Gerson´s primary goal is to make the magazine more financially stable. “I´d like to find a way for the young people who run New Voices not to have to worry about finding funds.” she says. “Most of the editors have had to choose between paying themselves or getting out the issue on time.”