It could have been a scene from New York’s beatnik past: A group of young hipsters gathered at a Greenwich village apartment for an artistic venture they hoped would change history — or at least rock the establishment.
But these beats call themselves Heebs, and their universe is the alternative Jewish world.
“Heeb is a special subset of the genus Jew,” explains Joshua Neuman, 31, the new editor-in-chief and only paid staffer of Heeb magazine, a hipper-than-thou take on modern Jewish identity.
In Neuman’s apartment — which is furnished with the 1970s trappings of his childhood rec room and doubles as Heeb’s editorial headquarters — volunteers lounge on green and yellow furniture and try to define Heebdom.
“It’s something larger than the sum of its parts,” says Michael Schiller, the magazine’s senior editor.
And just being Jewish doesn’t make one a Heeb — a point underscored in the current issue, which carries paper cut- out dolls of a pasty, puny Joe Lieberman in underpants.
Lieberman is “totally un-self-conscious,” says Neuman, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School who teaches Jewish philosophy at New York University.
One thing about Heeb is clear: With its gritty irony, the nearly two-year-old magazine has both spawned and cashed in on a thriving alternative Jewish culture.
For many drawn to its glossy, saucy pages, Heeb provides a long-sought Jewish community.
Cynthia Katz, 21, an NYU student interning at Heeb, says she finally found Jewish community at the magazine. Katz, who rarely attends synagogue and says most of her friends aren’t Jewish, says NYU’s Hillel was “just not my scene.”
Indeed, Heeb taps into a young Jewish generation that thirsts for Judaism but rejects its standard trappings.
Schiller says Heeb is about “feeling connected to your cultural heritage,” without having to conform to a particular denomination.
According to Neuman, today’s young Jews crave the Jewish identity captured by the Philip Roths of their parents’ era, simultaneously embracing and mocking Jewish culture.
Epitomizing the trend is the movie “The Hebrew Hammer,” which opens in New York on Dec. 19, the first night of Chanukah.
In the spoof comedy, a Jewish superhero played by Adam Goldberg fights an evil Santa who tries to wipe out Chanukah by dousing Jewish children with the equivalent of Christian kryptonite — free copies of the mushy Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Shooting up a neo-Nazi bar after downing shots of Manischewitz, arousing his Jewish girlfriend with “dirty talk” about their future children’s educational aspirations and milking conspiracy theories about Jewish media control, the Hebrew Hammer is Blaxploitation for Jews.
The film’s Web site says director Jonathan Kesselman hoped to create “a new hero for a new generation.”
Another part of the “Jew cool” trend is the emergence of Jewish apparel — though not traditional garb.
Take Jewcy, a clothing line that also sponsors entertainment events and gives the proceeds to Jewish non-profit organizations.
“Being Jewcy is a lifestyle. It’s pro-Manischewitz, pro-Jewfro, pro-Barney’s Warehouse Sale. It’s knishes with a knasty attitude! To be Jewcy is to be bold and visible, vocal and proud,” states the clothing line’s Web site, www.jewcy.com.
The trend recently was the cover story of New York’s bible of cool: Time Out magazine featured Goldberg under the banner “The New SuperJews.”
London’s Guardian newspaper followed up last weekend with a story on the emerging trend.
“This generation has thrown off the old stereotypes of Jewish America, with its concentration on the family and the synagogue,” the Guardian wrote. “Out go bagels, Woody Allen-style neuroses and Yiddish. In come clubbing, dance music, radical Jewish magazines and new Jewish fiction.”
“I think we just tapped into the Zeitgeist of what was going on with young people,” Jewcy’s co-founder, Jon Steingart, said in an interview with the Guardian. “We just applied Jewishness to having a young, hip style, and it took off.”
Jewcy’s best-selling T-shirt, he said, is a phrase echoed by the Hebrew Hammer: ” ‘Shalom motherfucker.’ It’s flying off the shelves,” Steingart said.
Heeb hopes not just to ride the trend but to drive it.
“We’re trying to create an empire,” Neuman says, admitting that he has “megalomaniacal dreams” for the publication.
In the meantime, the magazine is extending its reach. Its newly interactive Web site boasts a calendar with coast-to- coast event listings like Heeb Chanukah parties, and a “kvetching board” for online chatter.
Since the summer, Heeb has hosted Jewish storytelling events packed with 20-somethings jockeying for floor space.
Heeb’s editors also say they have a book deal in the works — a “tongue-in-cheek take on Western civilization,” Neuman says. Asked if it’s a Jewish take, he says: “It’s a Heeb take.”
With Chanukah approaching, the magazine is getting about 30 new subscription orders a day, Neuman says.
But not everyone is sold on the Heeb’s message. The magazine’s debut prompted concern at the Anti-Defamation League, and the groups says it’s still concerned.
Adopting a “title for a publication that is offensive to many Jews is unnecessary and in my view counterproductive,” said Ken Jacobson, ADL’s associate national director.
“One could argue this is a sign that Jews have really made it, that people can poke fun and really satirize.” However, “we’re also living in a world where anti-Semitism is flourishing,” he said. “The usual sensitivity should continue and not assume that things are so secure.”
Others say the magazine fills a critical niche.
Rejecting Heeb is like saying “the Beatles were bad for today’s youth when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show,” said Roger Bennett, vice president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, whose network of young philanthropists, Natan, gave Heeb a $20,000 grant last month. “We’ll look back at those voices with the same kind of perspective.”
As a parallel, Bennett cited the ability of Christian rock to engage Christian youth.
“Heeb is still finding its voice,” Bennett said, but there’s “no doubt that it has had an incredible reception” with its target audience. “We ignore its ability to develop connectivity at our peril.”
The UJA-Federation of New York renewed a $60,000 grant to Heeb this spring. The sum constitutes about 40 percent of the magazine’s revenue, according to Neuman.
The money went toward developing a business plan to assure the magazine’s “long-term health and viability,” said Deborah Joselow, managing director of the UJA-Federation’s commission on Jewish identity and renewal.
Joselow said Heeb represents a particular mode of Jewish outreach.
“The UJA-Federation tries to fund multiple strategies of multiple engagement,” Joselow said. “Our long-term vision is people who are knowledgeable, experienced and committed to Jewish life and living. Everybody is going to choose a different gateway, and we have to make sure those doors are wide and welcoming.”
Heeb, which publishes twice a year, has maintained a circulation of roughly 20,000, but Neuman estimates that its readership has reached 90,000.
A quarter of the magazine’s subscribers are in New York, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle.
Neuman, who has brought in a business team and tripled advertising in the magazine, says he hopes to turn Heeb into a profitable venture.
Though the magazine is crammed with kitsch, it also tackles issues of substance. In the current issue, for example, editorial director Mike Edison goes undercover in Jews for Jesus as a would-be convert. Describing with humor the tactics of the Christian missionaries, Edison adds a jolt of Jewish pride.
“I’m a New York Jew. I can kvetch and haggle with the best of them,” he writes. “Salvation, however, is the one thing I will not buy wholesale.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
