I received a subscription offer and a copy of the first edition of the Jewish Review of Books.
The publishers probably bought my name from two other Jewish publications I subscribe to: Commentary and Azure.
I carefully read the entire first edition to see if it appealed to me or offended me. The list of editorial board members is largely academic, with several distinguished intellectuals.
What I was most looking for was new and fresh thinking, without that I was looking to see if the magazine opened new doors not covered by the two magazines I currently get on the subject.
The Jewish Review of Books failed on both counts. It didn't offend me but there were two irritating items. In one article by Shlomo Avineri he was critical of the neocons democracy efforts in Iraq and said the effort failed. What has he missed about the myriad elections in Iraq and the fairly stable government? Should I value his Lefty blinders? Or should I consider him a moral degenerate for lacking appropriate gratitude to George W.Bush, the greatest friend of Israel in human history?
Another article by Lance Sussman, a reform rabbi, was a review of a book on the state of American Jewry. Sussman never mentions the core problem that faces Jewry. The same problem that destroyed mainstream Christian denominations in America over the past 50 years: turning liberal religion into Lefty Fundamentalist dogma and driving away most of their members. Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians are almost non-existent.
Nearly all of Reform Judaism and most of Conservative Judaism have done the same thing and turned their backs on the core vitality of the Jewish world: Israel. For 2,000 years of Jewish exile Jews have said: "Next year, may we be in Jerusalem". Now that we are there, the Lefty Jews have changed that phrase into "Next year, may we be in the French countryside reading the Herald Tribune."
This magazine fills a niche. It should be an insert in the Sunday New York Times.