Category — Heeb

If only someone had sent them there

But Jewdar inadvertantly demonstrated that I would have been wrong.

Jewdar lambasted the Forward’s article on Heeb. Heeb’s writers are such greenhorns to Yiddish, they make up words and declare them “Yiddish.” Being Heeb, their readership is utterly clueless when this happens. Obviously, Heeb’s writers do have a lot of knowledge about compelling “side-glance” Jewish topics, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has changed since the 90s, the careers of (the siblings of) pop stars, and how to determine the sex of a guinea pig. And such contributions may prove no less valuable than Heeb’s contributions to the Yiddish language itself, even if it is not the hardest thing to contribute something at least equal in value to gornisht.

And yet…despite Heeb’s continued contributions to American Jewish literacy, there is something sad and not a small bit unsavory in seeing Heeb’s outrage over what is admittedly not the finest Forward attempt at strategizing a revival of Yiddish (it’s so happening!), even among a long string of most dubious declarations of such a resurgence.

If anything, Heeb may be proving the Forward has a point. If you don’t teach your kid all those annoying Yiddish sayings, or even more likely, if you don’t teach them anything at all, they could–rachmana litzlan–grow up to be Heeb readers, or worse (nebach), Heeb writers.

Heeb decided to consider the future. Our future. The Jewish future.

Israel’s future.

Heeb’s Jewdar eventually reported on Israel’s haredi health minister renaming the Swine Flu the Mexican Flu. As many of you may be aware, this same health minister also refuses to employ the term “vagina,” so I thought that I would help out with some new haredi-acceptable names for that part of a woman’s body as well, since we all know that contact with the aforementioned can lead to a terrible spiritual sickness far worse than the “Mexican” flu. But being, well, Heeb, and perhaps not having as Jewishly educated a readership as other Jewish sites (like say, ALL other Jewish sites), I fear that my suggestions may have gone a bit over Heeb readers’ heads.

Then again, maybe I’m just not funny.

You decide, and feel free to suggest your own.

In order to satisfy Israel’s devout new health minister, these are my suggestions for addressing the female sex organ formerly known as a vagina.

1. Where the Rebbe uses the bed
2. The Bais Yaakov graduate center
3. The Bush of Knowledge
4. The Inverted Black Hat
5. The Streimelet
6. Lilith’s Trap
7. The after-hours Kollel
8. The Layl Shabbos Double Feature
9. The Second Sheitel
10. Weapon of the Daughters of Mideon

Just call it “the sandwich formerly known as ‘The Heeb.’”

No one likes it when in front of those of a fairer class, a friend denies knowing you because he is embarrassed by you. And that is exactly what happened on the Martha Stewart Show when Josh Tupper, the proprietor of Russ and Daughters, was asked about their Heebster sandwich (formerly known as the Heeb sandwich, as recently as…last month, and was named after the magazine of the same name), and bent himself into a pretzel to deny any connection.

Martha Stewart: What’s a Heebster?
Josh Tupper: It’s kind of a combination of old and new. We have whitefish salad, which is the traditional thing we’ve served forever and we have wasabi roe…
Martha Stewart: (interrupting) But what does Heebster mean?
Josh Tupper: Heebster means nothing. Just kind of hipster. Sort of old school and hipster. We made it up.

Oh, you just “made it up,” did you?

Heeb is feeling quite wounded, and publisher Josh Neuman lashed out at Tupper, noting,

Changing a name to fit in with the WASPs is an embarrassing chapter in our cultural history—even if it was just the name you gave to your whitefish, baked salmon salad and cream cheese sandwich.

That even for perhaps the greatest Yiddisheh sturgeon shop in the world, there is such a thing as “too Jewish” a public face is, for most of us, just plain…weird, and Tupper is racking up the hate in the comments section.

NY Magazine has called this “scandal” a “shmear on Russ’s record.”

Jewssip adds,

Despite the gaffe, Josh made it to last night’s Heeb Magazine’s Music Issue Release Party, but apparently his memory was still on the fritz for when he went to the bar to buy me a beer (after “confessing” all about the Martha incident immediately after meeting) he never returned.[…]At the end of this fishy tale, I just have one question – where’s my beer?

But do normal periodicals allow their editor/judge to award their own writing for “Honorable Mention,” or is, by chance, Heeb the only one that allows such “inclusive” rules for a contest?

Anyway, please congratulate Jewdar on having received an “honorable mention” from, well, Jewdar, on his FAKE Holocaust Memoir submission.

Heeb must be destroyed. At least, according to a low-ranking Young Leadership dilettante.

Now to be fair, Heeb has had its fair share of bitter detractors. Jews for Jesus, Skinheads. A Muslim fundamentalist who crashed their old site three times (but generously replaced a graphic on their homepage of a young fundie pissing on both an American and Israeli flag), and in earlier days, the ADL (not nearly as bitter towards Heeb as the others), whose job is to be offended.

So Heeb’s not for everyone.

Like say, Melissa Groisman. But unlike most people who read something they don’t like, Groisman is not content to just NOT READ IT.

Instead, Groisman has gone on a rather intense campaign to destroy Heeb.

“Why?” You might ask. Well, because Groisman was OFFENDED! Why? Because Heeb is making fun of FAKE Holocaust Memoirs.

Young secular Jews should be reading this, not Heeb

Groisman writes (to everyone she could find),

I am truly SHOCKED and APPALLED by this expression of self-hating Judaism and their complete disrespect for the tragedy of the Holocaust.

You silly dilettante. Heeb’s FAKE Holocaust memoir contest isn’t making fun of the Holocaust. How much of Chabad’s vodka have you been drinking?

Do you understand the difference between real and fake, Miss Groisman? No, shut up with your sensitivity lecture/diatribe and answer the question. Do you understand the difference between real and fake? It’s a yes or no question, Groisman. So yes or no?

Heeb’s Jewdar, who is Orthodox but has his lucid moments, notes,
[Read more →]

The NY Post’s Page Six reports,

Actual Holocaust survivors are prohibited from entering, and erotic fiction is also off-limits. “I don’t want to read anything about Kirk and Spock ending up in a brothel in Auschwitz,” said David Deutsch, an editor at Heeb.

Of course not. Because as we all know, Heeb is a family magazine.

Things seem to be heating up for the Jews again…can you write a story that will capture the hearts and minds and teach tolerance?

The contest was just announced on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, entries must be received by April 1st, and the winner will be revealed on Yom HaShoah. See here for more information.

For some of you, this probably seems redundant. Isn’t pretty much every night “Jew Night” in NY? How is this night different than all other nights? The answer is, tonight is both Christmas AND Chanukah. But there are important differences, the most obvious being that you would be hard pressed to find an eight year old who still believes in Santa Claus, but you will find many, many, Jews well into their twenties who still believe in the miracle oil.

Anyway, in honor of both holidays, I submit to you for your approval, a Chanukah Bush!

Doesn’t it just warm your heart looking at it?

Oh, for those of you outside NY, Heeb is throwing parties in a few other cities as well…but probably not yours.

And check out these happy ladies from Heeb’s new “Wasted” issue.

dreidel hustler, a Heeb columnist, is taking some heat in his futile efforts to legitimize the phrase Tushy-Shtup, which as Jewdar noted, “isn’t even Yinglish, it’s just your own dorky private language used between you and your imaginary friends.”

In the late 60’s, Cynthia Ozick mocked young male Jewish writers who displayed their extensive linguistic knowledge of the various Yiddish words for “penis.” Today our youth don’t even know that. So they just make words up, declare them Yiddish, and publish them in Heeb with great fanfare.