"Now we're covering stories like a surfing Orthodox rabbi named Nachum Shifren
who can seriously tear up waves. But he's also a gun-toting, West
Bank-defending rabbi who's an authority on California counterculture."
This issue, the second, has a half-naked woman wrapped in an Israeli flag with
a magazine of bullets strapped over her chest. To view content, readers must
register a username and password.
"We're not Heeb Magazine -- the New York City publication about Jews backed by
Steven Spielberg. That's because we're doing what they can't -- we show the
more adult-oriented, not-suited-for-children stories," Mr. Andrews says. "But
I'm not trying to be an Al Goldstein [creator of Screw magazine]. We're not
aiming to be a porno mag."
He also boasts articles on the surprising Hebrew connection to tattooing and
why being Jewish is punk rock. The magazine also promotes events from film
screenings to live music around North America. The site posts anti-Jewish
cartoons, has a section titled Israeli Army Hotties, and also features
digitally manipulated pictures of Yasser Arafat. The photos are part of the
site's mission to provide tongue-in-cheek critical analysis of any facet of the
world of Jewish politics.
Mr. Andrews's interest in preserving Jewish culture -- albeit in an unorthodox
way -- says he derives from his experiences living in Israel and growing up
around St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street, and King Street and Spadina
Avenue.
"Living as a Jew downtown rather than the cushy suburbs made me a little
tougher. . . . I was constantly reminded that I was a Jew. Sometimes I'd even
wear a kippa to provoke the high-school bullies.
"With my experiences of hatred, ignorance and discrimination, I realized I
belonged to a people, and that the religion was worth investigating. These
thoughts really led me on the path to Israel."
When Mr. Andrews visited there at 17 in the early 1990s for a few months, he
quickly fell in love with the country. He returned 3˝years later, becoming an
Israeli citizen and volunteering for the Israel Defense Forces, but was injured
in the last days of his training.
"I learned how to draw tattoos and was contracted by promoters to design murals
for rave parties," he says of his six years in Israel. When his father was
diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2001, he returned to Toronto, where he
continued to work for the owners of Israeli tattoo parlours, creating tattooing
guidebooks and developing clients in Toronto for Web-design services.
That's when Mr. Andrews realized there were no Canadian public outlets for
Jewish people involved in underground art movements or other fringe scenes. So
along with three friends he created an online forum to promote them and Jewish
events in 2004.
Mr. Andrews says that a month after they launched the online forum the site was
under attack from people targeting Jewish websites. A year later, with full
control of the site, he redesigned it to look like a print publication, rather
than a traditional website.
Upcoming issues will focus on the Jewish connection within the marijuana and
hashish-trade circuits as well as Jews in the sex-trade industry. He'll also
soon feature Kinky Friedman, a Jewish country-western singer and author running
for governor of Texas next year.
Mr. Andrews says the cost makes it prohibitive to take the magazine into the
print world for now. He's happy spreading the buzz by word of mouth, peeking
into Jewish chat rooms such as jdate.com, schmoozing at parties and promoting
his work through massive websites like myspace.com and hi5.com that serve as
meeting sites for people to connect. He says the site received 219,130 hits in
May, and he's aiming for more than 250,000 this month.
"The main point is that in a black-slanted magazine you have to be black to be
in. Same for a Latino magazine. All you have to be in with us is Jewish. You
can be black, Spanish, whatever. You just have to be Jewish."
Joshua Andrews looks like the epitome of wholesome. He's clean-cut and
bright-eyed and his tattered jeans and distressed shirt make him blend in with
the rest of the thirtysomething downtown crowd sans ubiquitous exposed tattoos
and piercings.
