Jewish Progressives Embrace Small NY Mag; Asking Questions With No Answers

Jewish Progressives Embrace Small NY Mag; Asking Questions With No Answers

By:  Serach Nissim

Arielle Angel and her fellow editors at Jewish Currents are making waves in the progressive Jewish scene.

Jewish Currents, the secular Jewish quarterly magazine and news site, reflects the politics of the Jewish left with independent journalism, and political analysis with a “countercultural” approach to Jewish arts and literature.  Based in Valley Stream, NY, the magazine was first founded in 1946.  It is “committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left”, as per the website.

The fact that the small magazine has survived for 76 years, and is now growing, is no small feat.  First founded by communists, the publication no longer identifies with any specific party, and is being led by Ms. Angel, a millennial and activist.  As reported by the NY Times, Ms. Angel, 38, was raised in North Miami Beach, in a neighborhood where most of the people she knew were Jews.  Her grandmother, a Greek Jew, was a Holocaust survivor who would tell her bedtime stories about the concentration camps.  This left Ms. Angel with nightmares, and possibly a lingering subconscious fear of being Jewish.

She is the typical audience that the magazine hopes to engage– young Jews who feel left out and skeptical, but who are hungry for some sort of mysticism or at least some debate.  Ms. Angel had previously spent seven years writing a novel that never ended up getting published.  In 2017, she wrote a piece for the arts magazine Guernica, describing the time she spent writing her novel, and her experiences with drugs. “Uncovering the parallels between religious and creative practice — the necessity of returning to it, relying on it, even without faith — drew me through,” she wrote in Guernica.

The essay caught the attention of Jacob Plitman, who had at the time recently taken the reins as publisher of Jewish Currents.  He was looking to remake the magazine and felt she would be a good addition.  “Anybody writing 12,000 words on psychedelia, messianism, loss of faith, writing a novel and dreaming of a Judaism that reflects our values is of interest to Jewish Currents,” said Mr. Plitman, who stepped down as publisher this year.   “I felt like I was for once in the right place at the right time,”  Ms. Angel said about joining Jewish Currents in its quest to expand.

Ms. Angel led the publication’s relaunch in 2018, driven with a thirst for debate for its own sake and question that open the door for more questions.  Recent headlines in the magazine have included: “How not to fight Anti-Semitism”, “The sanitizing of Conservative Judaism”, “The unbearable ignorance of the ADL”, “For the Biden Administration, there are no Red Lines on Israel” and “De-normalizing Israeli Normalization at the World Cup”. The Editor now boasts 5,200 print subscribers, over one million online readers annually, 12 full-time staff members and a budget of $1.6 million which stems mostly from individual donors, foundations and a $1 million endowment, the incoming publisher Daniel May told the NY Times.

The small-circulation intellectual journal, has seen its influence grow with the young Jewish progressives that are making up a larger share in today’s society.  “We’re doing a really crazy thing, which is taking on the power structure in the Jewish community, which is extremely entrenched and extremely well funded,” Ms. Angel said. “We’re serving a communal need.”