What the Hell Happened to Tablet Magazine?
One of my favorite publications lost itself in the Culture Wars.
There was a time not long ago when I would describe myself as a Tablet Jew. I loved their multifaceted approach to Judaism that spanned everything from Leonard Cohen to Meyer Lansky, Ben-Gurion to Hillel, to even that one time, Jeff Van Gundy. Every Friday afternoon, I’d pop over to the Tablet homepage and print out several interesting stories to read over shabbat. The articles combined reverence for a shared tradition with openness to new ways of thinking; all of it marked with intellectual curiosity, lively and well-edited writing, and a smattering of yiddishisms. I’d attended a few Tablet events, befriended some of its writers and editors, and felt, these are my people.
I’ve felt myself drifting from the publication for a while, but never quite abandoning ship. Some of my favorite writers left the site and others who joined I was less fond of, but ultimately Tablet’s flexible approach kept putting out enough material to keep me interested — frankly, it still does.
But recently, I’ve noticed that Tablet no longer sees itself the way I did. No longer a niche publication for Jewish thought — whatever that might entail — it has become increasingly concerned with the world of “cancel culture,” college campus politics, and the increasing threats facing freedom of expression. Now, this is hardly a new strain of thought from a publication where Bari Weiss was a longtime editor, but it does feel more and more like the site’s mandate.
There are stories about “left heretics” that make no mention at all of Jews or Judaism or even Israel — part of a “Campus Week” series that happened to coincide with the holiest week of the Jewish calendar. Or take this remarkable story about a small group of Jews that attempted to flee the Soviet Union via a hijacked airplane to Israel, which for some reason shoehorns in an awkward and unnecessary comparison to Jews in America today being asked to acknowledge that they may have enjoyed some of the benefits of white privilege.
Which brings me to a piece I read today, “Everything Is Broken” by Alana Newhouse, Tablet’s founding editor-in-chief. I just want to start by saying that I adore Alana. Aside from being funny and smart and a wickedly good writer, she’s done more than I anyone else I can think of to reconcile the Judaism of the past with the current moment — at least for me. Not content with bringing Tablet to the web, she reconceptualized it as an incredibly well-done (and sadly short lived) gorgeous print publication. And has spun off the Tablet brand to reinvigorate the Haggadah and compile a delightful book about Jewish foods.
So when I saw she had written a missive about the state of, well, everything, I couldn’t wait to read it. And it is brilliant. It’s deeply personal and also diagnoses major societal issues. The cause of which, she determines, is a degree of “flatness” — that idea that everything is becoming the same and that adherence to a single approved ideology is what is dooming this country. And the cure to it will be to create new work and art and thought that exists outside what is deemed socially acceptable.
It’s thoughtfully-constructed, gorgeously written, and riveting. I’m just not sure I buy it. Like so many of the pieces that bemoan “cancel culture” and the strictures of the current moment, it leans on sweeping statements rather than real data, and seems to take the rightness of its position as a fact, rather than something that needs to be argued. While it does succeed in diagnosing many of the issues our country faces, it fails to connect them to the underlying charge.
The American medical system is indeed broken — but surely that has much more to do with an industry that wrings profit out of people’s health rather than, I’m not sure what, ideological sameness in the medical community? Journalism is obviously hurting (though perhaps its death sentence is still premature), but is that because people get shunned for bad tweets or because tech companies have crowded out every inch of space from all but a few publishers?
The only environment where I am convinced that this rot of intellectual sameness may have taken place is the college campus, which, fine. I might even be a little bit concerned about it myself. But to point to that as a serious problem that needs to be dealt with and the root of so many of our other issues, when a sizable chunk of the population isn’t quite sure about the peaceful transition of power in this country, is to me its own form of willful blindness.
There are no victors in the Culture Wars, and writing about them only draws them out further. I just wish my favorite Jewish publication hadn’t been drafted to fight in them.
Here are some other pieces I’ve read and thought about lately:
ProPublica continues to make the argument for non-profit journalism. I just don’t know who else would support an effort like this, which tracked every minute of the attack on the Capitol. Please support them!
I know we’ve got a lot going on right now, but Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker just casually dropped that some leading scientists think it’s a question of “when” not “if” we’ll have definitive evidence of alien life in the near future.
Ever wonder what meals are like in the Sarah Jessica Parker-Matthew Broderick household? Neither did I…before this.
I thought the Fran Lebowitz parody content was already played out, but like a certain mitten-covered meme still making the rounds, I still appreciate the delight of a well-executed internet play.