Menachem Butler has an excellent post on the current non-existence of Hamevaser. Having been involved with Hamevaser during a significant transitional period, I’d like to add a personal perspective as to the how’s and why’s Hamevaser is no more.
If I’m recalling the years correctly, I first joined up with Hamevaser in my second year at YU, which would be around the academic year 97-98. The paper at the time mostly resembled an academic journal. For the most part, the articles read like well written term papers. The editors at that time were among YU’s and Stern’s active intellectuals including Benjamin Balint as an Executive Editor and frequent (relatively speaking) contributor.
I initially wanted to be a content editor, but since I had experience with Pagemaker from my HS yearbook, I would up doing layout. To be generous, the job was less than ideal and we burned through several assistant layout people. Still, this “in” with Hamevaser was crucially important.
Towards the end of the year we started realizing that just about the entire staff was graduating. This left a huge void in not only leadership, but of serious contributors. The only two people on staff who were returning were myself and Aton Holzer, and just like that we became co-editors-in-chief.
Here’s where things started to get interesting. During its history, Hamevaser underwent several stylistic changes. For example, at one point it was more of a religious newspaper than a journal. Aton had a vision to turn it from a journal into a magazine, something more akin to the OU’s Jewish Action. Personally I was content to maintain the status-quo in terms of content but primarily in terms of quality of publication. Aton wanted to move from black and white paper to glossy laminates and a color cover.
To his immense credit, Aton actually pulled it off and produced the most aesthetically pleasing issue ever. Granted, it came at the psychological expense of our layout editor, but no one could deny it looked really professional.
Personally, after that one issue I was burnt out. The late nights, ad soliciting, and general stresses were taking their toll and I resigned after that issue. We got Fresh Samantha as a replacement, and they managed to keep up the quality with a second solid issue.
Ah, but what to do for an encore…
One of my recurring disagreements with Aton’s new format was that I didn’t feel it could be sustained. The amount of effort and energy needed to collect the ads to cover the significantly increased cost would scare away most talent. And once the bar was set as high as it was, it would be difficult for future editors to scale back the production. As it turned out, producing future issues proved to be a challenge. While I don’t recall exactly what happened in subsequent years, but I think they came out with maybe one regular issue and one Purim edition.
The other problems with Hamevaser stemmed from the personnel vacuum which I mentioned earlier. Aton and I had to put together a complete staff from scratch, which meant we couldn’t exactly select people based on competency or desire. Most of the people who did show up to help simply wanted to hock about various ideas rather than focus on producing a publication. We had several long and pointless discussions on the “direction” of the paper, but when it came time for people to actually submit articles, we had numerous retractions.
A paper can only succeed when there is a staff committed to its success. When Hamevaser lost its staff after my first year, it also lost the continuity of professionalism and the organizational and conceptual stability which kept it functioning. Yes, there were a few people who kept it going, but for the most part you had a team of 3-4 people doing the work of 10. Understandably, this was not a situation which was sustainable for the long-term.
So while there are numerous socio-religious factors among the ever changing YU which would impact the publication of Hamevaser, at the end of the day you still need a staff of people committed to the paper and willing to put in the needed effort. Yes, there were some who tried to pick up the slack, but putting together any publication – especially one with as high a production value that we did – requires more work than what could be expected of most sane people.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone pops up in the near/far future and tries to revive it. If someone gets that enterprising bug early enough he (or she) could make Hameverser their own and have the motivation of personal investment. If so, I’d be more than happy to offer some advice.
For me it was a “psychological expense” but for you it was a “burn out?”
Thanks.
Hamevaser in all of its intellectual glory went out the window hte last few years (rather, got flushed down the toilet) along with all of the various other academic journals which used to be staples of the yeshiva undergraduates.
Wasn’t meant as a slight against you, but more of a remark of how hard you were worked and the toll it took.
Remember that time the zip drive didn’t work and you lost 15 hours of work?
What does a Purim edition of an academic journal look like?
I wasn’t offended.
I honestly don’t rember that particular occurance but I do not doubt that it happened.
Somehow, I might not ever be able to forget this though
http://yuweb.addr.com/purim5759/features/hamevaser.shtml
My particular contribution to the purim issue of The Commentator — see the PDF http://www.textimony.com/commie/commie.PURIM.pdf — was my “A PREVIEW OF THE TORAH U-MADDA JOURNAL, VOL. 13 (2005),” as well as our sitting in The Commentator office for many hours lounging around thinking of things to write for the purim issue… Enjoy the PDF: http://www.textimony.com/commie/commie.PURIM.pdf
Purim commentators and pur hamevasers
are two extraordinarily different entities.
(just as purim commentators and observers were)
I Remeber when Edah was just starting up and ther was a hamevaser purim edition with an ad for “Ervah.”
The last Purim Edition of Hamevaser that was ever done to date, contained the famous backpage artowrk by (i dunno if he wants me to say his name) which has been sdistributed in poster format every year since then was the parody of the famous kids’ asher yatzar poster tailor made in the same presentation for the bracha of “sheasani kirtzono”
it never gets old.
The Purim editions were a completely differnt beast entirely. Actually for my first year on Hamevaser the Editors decided not to do the Purim edition, much to the dismay of many. Similarly cursed by their prediscesors success – nothing *ever* came close to Beis Grinky’s “Hamoshiach” – and the consensus was, correctly, that we just weren’t that funny. Ironically we did make a mention of it in The Ordinary Potato where I used Hamevaser’s computer to make the back-page ad for “Hamemissing.”
Subsequent years did have Purim issues, but for the most part they just recycled the same old jokes about Briskers, Rav Schachter, and Post-Modernism. That and the general lameness of Hamevaser were factors when Ben and I gave Masechet Bava Commie to The Commentator (and the obvious subject matter of course). About the only thing original which came out of the later Purim Hamevasers was Schick’s brilliant “She’asini Kirtzono” poster.
And yes, I did link to the Dennis Leary tribute in the post. Never would forget that one. I even performed it on a Purim in Ben’s apartment once, and I highly doubt that there will ever be a repeat.
Town Crier beat me to posting the song link.
Just saying that y’all still have a fan base.
Josh has some very good points. I first joined Hamevaser in 94-95. The mid-1990s at YC and Revel was a very active period for a eclectic, quirky, brilliant and highly opinionated intellectual clique who succeeded in attracting considerable popular attention to Hamevaser for several years. This was likely a combination of well-chosen topics and the occasional publication of highly controversial/borderline heretical opinion pieces and absurd graphics. These generated plenty of consternation among the Roshei Yeshiva but sold lots of papers.
This group was succeeded by a group of genuine intellectuals (Yossi Ziffer, Rachel Leiser, Benjy Balint, et al.) who reduced the paper’s size to magazine format and kept the tone very tame and non-controversial. Hamevaser was perhaps more academically solid than it had ever been but was certainly less read, and interest had begun to dwindle to the point that Yehudit Robinson, Josh and myself were all who remained from the 1997-8 group to carry the journal forward.
I don’t think my push for glossy format destroyed Hamevaser. I was looking for a way to restore interest in Hamevaser which was already in decline, and I was (and remain) too ‘farchinyucked’ to solicit outright Apikorsus, so I thought I could get people interested by 1. improving its external appearance so that students would feel pride in publishing with us, and 2. going back to the “Beis Grinki” strategy of selecting hot topics that would draw readers.
Ephraim Shapiro did an incredible job with the layout, and Hamevaser was more noticed and talked about. We managed to get some high-profile interviews (Rabbi Lau, Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Lamm) with interesting questions and responses, some formulated with help from YU faculty. Financing was a problem in 1998-1999 and we burned through several managing editors but we managed to pull together enough funds to keep ourselves publishing, and we could have afforded to publish four glossy issues that year (which had been our original plan) had submissions proven sufficient. We were forced to keep pushing deadlines ahead to muster enough quality student contributions for two issues (on relating to non-religious Jews and Women in Judaism), enlisted some of the old Beis Grinki veterans and random friends to help with a non-glossy Purim issue (Hamolech — Josh, with all due respect, most to whom I have shown it still think it to be hilarious) and ultimately pushed off publication of our third issue (Text and Textualism) to late 2000, even after that year’s Purim issue (thus named Hamemissing). There were at least two subsequent issues by later editorial boards.
I think the issue behind Hamevaser’s decline was not having set the bar too high for funding — I offered Hamevaser a blank check as SOY president in 1999-2000 — or layout — Ephraim was still around YC and eager to help. Rather, it seemed to me that while the Beis Yitzchak/solid Beis Midrash crowd continued to go strong, interest in intellectual pursuit of academic Jewish studies/old 5th floor crowd had waned, replaced with the “brain drain” to pre-med on the one hand and the arts/creative endeavors (“Mima’amakim”) or Bible (Nachalah) or Derrida/”Beis HaPshat” on the other. Those stalwarts who remained with an interest in Jewish philosophy or Jewish history could not write well, or did not produce much that was publishable, at least at that time.
Why the loss of interest? I can think of four reasons:
1. Loss of inquisitive minds to pursuit of professional careers
2. Decreased philosophic debate/polemic in the Yeshiva after R. Parnes and R. Bronspigel’s departure to Lander College, R. Lamm’s stepping down from the presidency
3. General decline in intellectual discourse in society
4. The intellectuals who succeeded Beis Grinki “hocked” more and wrote less