From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
World on a Shoestring
What is the fate of the Jewish World Review?
A visit to the international headquarters of Jewish World Review gives you a pretty good idea why this busy Web site has survived the dot-com crash--so far. "Low overhead" describes JWR's business model and also the ceiling in its offices. Or rather, office: www.jewishworldreview.com comes from a shabby little room in an attic apartment tucked away in Brooklyn's Borough Park. But whether it can continue to do so, given low revenues and the need to pay the rent, is a pressing matter at the moment. You might say JWR's future is in God's hands, and its editor's.
If you stand on the sidewalk at 5 a.m.--relax, this is an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood--and look up at one of the row-house windows, you might see a bearded man bathed in blue light, leaving his clunky old computer to catch a few winks before padding off to the synagogue for morning prayer. Binyamin Jolkovsky, a rabbinical-school graduate and former free-lance journalist, has been living this ascetic existence since he launched his site four years ago, after having a eureka moment on the Web.
"I was doing an article on why Jews intermarry," says Mr. Jolkovsky, 33. "Instead of talking to academics, I went where Gen-X Jews could be found, on this new thing, the Internet. I posted questions in newsgroups asking Jews who had married outside the faith why they had."
Within hours, his electronic mailbox was nearly overloaded. Mr. Jolkovsky's respondents weighed in with variations on the same theme: Secularized Judaism, which in Mr. Jolkovsky's view replaces worship of the living God and study of the Scripture with Holocaust remembrance and Israeli patriotism, had no firm hold on the loyalties of young Jews.
"I thought: What if I could show all these people who use the Web, and who are on the verge of severing all ties with their heritage, that there are very good reasons why they should remain Jewish?" says Mr. Jolkovsky.
With that in mind, you expect JWR to carry religious commentary, ethical reflections, kosher recipes and cultural articles like "Jews on Jazz." And it does. You aren't surprised, either, to find pieces by Jewish commentators like Michael Medved, Mona Charen and Dr. Laura Schlessinger. But Cal Thomas, the Evangelical Christian? Rush Limbaugh's brother, David? Who let those guys into the minyan?
"I'm happy to publish someone like Cal Thomas, who understands the moral situation in this country so clearly you could put 'rabbi' in front of his name," says Mr. Jolkovsky.
This is the key to understanding Jewish World Review's ecumenical appeal to religious and social conservatives: It's not a review of the Jewish world; it's a review of the world from an Orthodox Jewish perspective. Mr. Jolkovsky treasures an e-mail from a grateful Christian reader in Alabama who said that he was the first contemporary Jew she'd ever heard of who believed in God.
"These people view Alan Dershowitz as the epitome of what the American Jew is. They don't get that there are some of us who may be more religious and observant than they are," says Mr. Jolkovsky. "And there are a lot of Christians who live Jewish values better than some Jews. I have more in common with a believing Christian than with a nonobservant Jew. We're trying to attract that kind of readership."
"There are a million Web magazines out there," says Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, "and some of them are great, but for sheer decency, nothing touches Jewish World Review." He goes on: "What Binyamin has created is a meeting place for people of goodwill--religious or otherwise. I don't know what the Internet will be like in 100 years, but I hope this is a harbinger."
Alas, Mr. Jolkovsky doesn't have the luxury to ponder the next 100 years. He's worried about surviving this one, and his wife is certainly ready for him to get a day-job. JWR has always been run on a shoestring, but thanks to the dot-bomb recession, its lifeline is a fast-fraying thread.
"I refuse to give up," he says. "There has to be a return to a God-centered existence in society. If doing my part means not eating out, or repairing my soles instead of buying new shoes, I'm willing to do it. I don't need these things. There's a higher calling."
Mr. Dreher is a senior writer at National Review.
