Wherefor Art Thou, Hipster Jew Mag?

Jennifer Bleyer, the founding editor of Heeb magazine, has an essay in Nextbook where she relates how she came to leave her hipster-mag. It's refreshingly honest, if not rife with name-dropping. Interesting that sometimes the product of creative output can be the alienating factor itself. Here's a quote:

But as more people got into Heeb, the more disconnected I felt. After a while, it was like I was putting out a magazine for people with brown hair. Sure, I have brown hair. I like having brown hair. But I can talk about it only so much until it feels irrelevant, not to mention self-indulgent. Being the poster girl for hipster secular Judaism wasn't really me. And although I was glad for Heeb's success and worked very hard for it, the popular message was, roughly speaking, that being Jewish is cool.

Being Jewish, cool? Um, dork factor: ten.

It's not cool now, it never has been, and it never will be. But, this was the message taken by many people, and I was its mortified messenger.

I preferred the definition of Jews as ultimate outsiders. That I bore this ridiculous message of coolness made me want to crawl under a rock. I finally felt true Jewish guilt, having created and unleashed a monster against my core beliefs. I didn't want to be a "cool Jew." If anything, I wanted to be a holy schlepper.

So after four issues and almost three years, with an easy exhale, I left.