Joel Schalit

Inoculated City

I couldn’t think of a better expression of Italy’s anxiety about its increasingly multicultural character than this bus advert for designer jeans. Shot in front of our apartment building in Milan last week, it’s also featured as the main photo on Zeek‘s landing page today. I wanted an image that would speak to Wednesday’s feature, Mya Guarnieri’s  We’re Not White Trash. We’re Jews.

The same logic applies to this picture, which we ran on Monday. Published in conjunction with Bruce Wilson’s Their Religion is Hatred, I was hoping the photo would help capture, however indirectly, the stress felt by Arab migrants, like this woman, standing in front of Lega Nord campaign posters, already condemned by an elections campaign monitor. (See “Manifesto Abusivo.”)

Though this photo has already expired (replaced today by the bus advert photo), its caption read “War in the ghetto,” since the shot was taken on Via Padova, the symbolic heart of Milan’s immigrant community. The bus picture, similarly, bears the caption “Dreaming of Multiculturalism,” as a means of explaining what it reflects, rather than what it intends to express. Everything is documentary.

Theory of Labor

If it were up to me, I’d write in the morning, edit in the afternoon, and make music after dinner. In reality, I’m lucky if I get to do anything besides edit. Still in the throes of recovering from a simultaneous magazine and book launch last October, (followed by a US book tour in November), I’m anxious to get creative again.

Since I returned to Milan, I’ve been consumed with editing Zeek, and troubleshooting the inevitable problems one encounters with a brand new site. Starting out each morning writing short posts for the magazine’s Facebook group and Tweeting related copy, I publish an article each weekday, while Jo Ellen handles the columnists.

It’s a decidedly different experience than when I worked as the editor at Allvoices, writing and editing between five and six pieces a day. But, once I found the stories that needed covering, I had no problem losing myself in my flow of responsibilities. Today, I can expend just as much time doing half that, without blinking an eye.

I have three partially completed book outlines to finish, which I began last year, that I plan on returning to. I’ve also started working on several audio projects, including a set of remixes of American belly dance recordings from the 1950s, together with an essay about the records I’m using, that I am anxious to complete.

First things first, though. As soon as I’ve resumed writing my weekly column, in all likelihood, I’ll feel like I’m on top of everything else.

Lists Make Perfect

Imagine being able to think about history the way we want it to be imagined. That is, interpreted, reacted to, summed up in ways that make it all better. Compiling lists of favorite books, music and literature at the end of every year is one way to do this. Hence my eleventh annual editor’s top ten.

Rock the Space Bar

The Elders of Zion have been quiet for the last three years. I’ve been the culprit, as I’ve had to focus on writing Israel vs. Utopia. With the exception of Basra Memorial Orchestra,  our contribution to the fourth edition of Fifteen Sounds of the War on the Poor (2009), we haven’t issued anything new since our Twilight War EP in December 2006.

On Friday, however, the Elders published their first DJ mix in Zeek. Longtime fans of Turkish psychedelia, we pieced together a forty minute jam, featuring our favorite tracks by artists such as Erkin Koray, Mogollar, and 3 Hürel. The audio is hosted by Soundcloud. You can listen to the mix on this page, or download an MP3 directly.

Where’s the Love?

The new Zeek OS is now live. We released it last night, warts and all. This is the lead story: My analysis of the present crisis of Israeli-American relations.

Under Reconstruction

After what seems like an eternity, Zeek‘s relaunch is imminent. We’re hard at work porting content and proofing every conceivable part of the new site. Check our new url, zeek.forward.com, beginning November 1. I’d wager there will be something alive and healthy to view then. Though there won’t be a version immediately optimized for mobile, I spent a good part of a recent Sunday checking it out on our handsets. Jennifer is the iPhone user. I’m the one with the Android.

In the interim, the first copies of the Fall print edition were distributed at San Francisco’s Litquake festival last Saturday, as well as mailed out to contributors. If you happen to live here in Europe or the Middle East, and want a promotional copy, drop me a line. I’ll be receiving a box any day now, and will have enough stock on hand to share. Contents will remain exclusive to this specific edition. Israelology will otherwise be exclusively available for order through the new Zeek site.

Let’s Get Physical

Two and a half years is a long time. That’s how long it had been since I’d edited my last print periodical, the January/February 2007 edition of Tikkun. But, immediately after reviewing the final copy edits to Israel vs. Utopia at the end of June, I went to work as the guest editor of Zeek‘s Fall print edition. Hired to assemble the magazine’s first Israel-themed issue, I gave it the title Israelology.

To be released later this month, the issue will be given out for free to registrants of the forthcoming J Street conference, taking place October 25th to 28th in Washington, DC. Israelology will also be distributed to the venues I will be reading at on my US tour in November. The near-simultaneous publication of this edition, in conjunction with my new book, is a welcome accident.

Work In Progress, Part II

Last Monday, the visual design of the new Zeek website was completed. Now in the hands of developers, it will be a couple of weeks before we can begin usability testing, and start migrating Zeek‘s archives. The handiwork of Richard Winchell, its an elegant and simple platform that will prove easy to build on. This snapshot, though tiny, ought to give you a reasonable sense of what it will look like.

We already have a new editorial schedule in place to follow the site’s relaunch. Regular readers of the periodical will find the content familiar, but all the same, the new site design will help enhance the magazine’s traditional literary strengths. I am particularly anxious to use this opportunity to demonstrate the difference in our cultural sensibilities, in ways that we presently cannot show.

The completion of the site also allows me to return to writing projects I had to push to the side these last three months, as I’ve helped prepare this and the print edition, in addition to editing the old site. A fractured wrist notwithstanding (I fell off my skateboard in late June), I’ve only just gotten full use of my left hand back. I finished my first article in two months, a 2400 word essay, last week.

Fans of Israel

We didn’t have all the artwork we needed. Rifling through my files this afternoon looking for backup images, I happened upon this photograph, of Israeli flag-branded fans. Taken at the Ace Hardware at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel last May, I’d gone to the store to look for electrical fixtures for my parents’ new home. Imagine what a hoot it was to find something packaged in such a purposeful way. “Hah hah, very funny,” responded my father, as I pointed out the box to him with a big grin. “It’s always about the double entendre,” he laughed.

Whether we end up using the photo for the issue, I can’t tell you. Its still too early. Still, its one of hundreds I stumbled across that I took over the last year, precisely for such reasons. The day after turning in the fall print edition of Zeek, I’m surprised I even had the energy to spot it. The first time I’ve edited the venerable quarterly, its going to be a good issue, I think. It was nice, and somewhat challenging, going back to print, however briefly. The issue leads off with a fascinating interview of philosopher Judith Butler, by Mark LeVine.

Their conversation is just the tip of the iceberg. The theme of the issue is of course Israel. The rest of the edition’s articles, featuring pieces by Shai Ginsburg, Etgar Keret, Keith Kahn-Harris, and the late Benjamin Tammuz, hopefully will prove to be as interesting to others as it has been to me. Granted, the last thing I want to do is read it again. Nevertheless, it was a joy to work on, and we’ll be releasing it in time for my book tour in November. My publisher has been gracious enough to ask bookstores to stock it at my readings.

Work in Progress

In a matter of weeks, Zeek will cease publishing at Jewcy. As many of you already know, the periodical is moving to a brand new home, hosted by The Forward, America’s oldest Jewish newspaper. In the final stages of a redesign, we’ll be debuting a brand new site too, put together by Jennifer (who created the wireframes) and Richard Winchell, a terrific visual designer. It’s going to be a wonderful publishing platform, if only because of the people who pieced it together. Hopefully we’ll provide it with content of equal quality.

I’ve been working as Zeek’s online editor for the last three months, though I’ve been supplying the same amount of content since February. Following the completion of the book, I’ve had the opportunity to step up my day-to-day work at the mag. So far, its been extremely gratifying, and a nice change of pace. I’ve often worked as an editor in order to give myself a break from writing. Even though I’m supposed to be writing a column (and will be doing more of that) its nice to worry about other folks grammar for a change.

Despite the fact that we had not planned on returning to the US this summer, it turned out, obviously, to be an ideal time. I could not imagine doing this level of editorial work and planning at such a distance. This way, when we return in the Fall, everything will be built, and we can get to work, wherever we are. I’m enjoying the idea of editing Zeek in Milano. The Italian tie-in seems so distant from what English-language Jewish publishing is about here, with its division of coverage always split between the US and Israel.