Tablet (magazine)

For the London-based weekly Catholic review, see The Tablet. For the New-York-based weekly Catholic newspaper, see The Tablet (Diocese of Brooklyn).

Tablet

Editor	Alana Newhouse
Publisher	Nextbook
First issue	June 2009; 15 years ago (2009-06)
Language	English
Website	tabletmag.com
ISSN	1551-2940

Tablet is a conservative online magazine focused on Jewish news and culture.^[1][2] The magazine was founded in 2009 and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Its editor-in-chief is Alana Newhouse.

History

Tablet was founded in June 2009 by Alana Newhouse, former culture editor at The Forward, with the support of the Nextbook foundation as a redeveloped and news-focused version of the Jewish literary journal Nextbook. In the three years after its founding, New York Magazine described Tablet as a "must-read for young politically and culturally engaged Jews.^[3][4][5] Its reporting has largely focused on Jewish news and culture.^[4][6]

In February 2015, Tablet tested a monetization method in which viewers could read articles for free but were required to pay to comment on them. Commenting cost $2 per day, $18 per month, or $180 per year.^[7][8]

Notable stories

In July 2012, Tablet contributor Michael C. Moynihan broke the story on journalist Jonah Lehrer's fabrication of Bob Dylan quotes in his book Imagine.^[9][10][11] Tablet's publication of the article ultimately led to Lehrer's resignation from The New Yorker and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's recall of Imagine and his second book How We Decide.^[12][13] Moynihan's investigation into Lehrer and the circumstances surrounding the publication of the article later became subject of Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed.^[14][15]

In August 2018, while Julia Salazar was campaigning for election to the New York State Senate, Tablet published an article questioning Salazar's claims that she was Jewish and an immigrant. Jewish Currents published an interview in which Salazar responded to the Tablet piece.^[16]

After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse and all six members of the magazine's editorial staff traveled to Pittsburgh to report on the shooting and its aftermath. Newhouse told The New York Times that "large-picture stories [and] the big-picture trends on right-wing radicalization" could be "left for think pieces for later", stating that Tablet staff were "focused on pieces where we could root them in the stories of actual human beings affected by this one way or the other." The magazine's coverage included reporting on the funerals of people killed in the shooting, and a special edition of their podcast Unorthodox.^[4]

In December 2018, Tablet published an article about the Women's March in Washington, D.C., after the election of Donald Trump as president. It argued that Women's March leaders had excluded Jewish women from leadership positions and used antisemitic language since the organization began in 2016. It especially critiqued connections to Louis Farrakhan. The article came after months of growing pressure on the group, including local chapters issuing critiques and the National Organization for Women ending financial support (though still encouraging members to attend Women's March events).^[17][18][19] The organizers spoke against Farrakhan's most extreme statements, issued an apology, and made organizational changes to better include Jews in leadership. However, the leadership did not generally condemn Farrakhan, an act that led to enduring backlash.^[20][21]

In April 2021, Tablet published an article by the researchers behind a study which found that, in contrast to the general consensus that education reduces antisemitism, more highly educated people may be more antisemitic. The survey was based on the concept of a double standard, and asked questions of respondents while showing them one of two examples, where only one was related to Judaism; for example, one question asked whether public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic "posed a threat to public health and should have been prevented," and provided either Black Lives Matter protests or Orthodox Jewish funerals as examples. The researchers asserted in Tablet that respondents to the questions should have answered similarly regardless of the examples given, and that respondents' tendencies to apply principles more harshly to Jews than non-Jews was an indication of antisemitism.^[22]

Notable interviews

• Walter Abish^[23][24]
• Mike Stoller^[25][26]
• Seymour Stein^[27][28]
• Naomi Alderman^[29]
• Shimon Peres^[30][31]
• Adina Bar-Shalom^[32][33]

Podcasts

In 2015, Tablet launched Unorthodox, a podcast about Jewish life and culture, hosted by Stephanie Butnick, Liel Leibovitz, and Mark Oppenheimer who later left the show to be replaced by Joshua Malina. The podcast features a weekly roundup of the "News of the Jews," an interview with a "Jew of the Week," and an interview with a "Gentile of the Week."^[34][35] The podcast has been downloaded over six million times and produces a live show that has performed across the United States.^[36][37]

Tablet Studios has published a range of podcasts including Radioactive, about antisemitic radio priest Charles Coughlin,^[38] Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews in the Ivy League,^[39] and Take One, a daily podcast in which the host and a guest discuss a page of Talmud.^[40]

From 2014 until 2022, Tablet partnered with the podcast Israel Story on its first six seasons.^[41][42]

In December 2023, the USC Shoah Foundation announced its partnership with Tablet Studios, to launch a collection of audio and video testimonies from the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.^[43][44]

Staff

Tablet's editor-in-chief is Alana Newhouse.^[4] Her husband David Samuels is literary editor.^[45] Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large, and Lee Smith is a contributor.^[46]

Sasha Senderovich and Shaul Magid have both become critical of Tablet after initially contributing work to it. Senderovich left the magazine after a series of 2017 articles in which Liel Leibovitz defended Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, while Magid left in 2021 after feeling that his internal criticism of conservative content was ineffective.^[46]

Tablet's stable of contributors and contributing editors includes journalists Matti Friedman,^[47] Wesley Yang,^[48] and Michael C. Moynihan,^[12] fiction writers Howard Jacobson,^[49] Dara Horn,^[50] David Bezmozgis,^[51] Ayelet Tsabari,^[52] Etgar Keret,^[53] and Ben Marcus,^[54] academics Anthony Grafton,^[55] Elisa New,^[56] Bernard-Henri Lévy,^[57] Edward Luttwak,^[58] Walter Russell Mead,^[59] Norman Doidge,^[60] Jacob Soll,^[61] Michael Lind,^[62] Natalie Zemon Davis,^[63] and Maxim D. Shrayer,^[64][65] novelists Marc Weitzmann,^[66] and Kinky Friedman,^[67] the critics Marco Roth,^[68] and J. Hoberman,^[69] and cartoonist Jules Feiffer.^[70]

In 2017, Tablet hired award-winning journalist Gretchen Rachel Hammond, who was fired from her reporting duties at the Windy City Times, a Chicago LGBT newspaper, after Hammond broke the story that three Jewish women were asked to leave the Chicago Dyke March for carrying rainbow flags emblazoned with Jewish stars.^[71]

Controversies

In 2011, Tablet announced that Jeffrey Goldberg would move his blog from the website of The Atlantic to Tablet. Goldberg corroborated the announcement in June 2011. However, he never took this action and continued to publish in The Atlantic. In May 2016, after Tablet literary editor David Samuels published a profile of Obama advisor Ben Rhodes in The New York Times Magazine that described Goldberg as a "handpicked Beltway insider" who helped to "retail" the arguments of the Obama administration in support of the Iran deal, Goldberg attributed the negative characterization to a "longtime personal grudge" held by Samuels as a result of Goldberg's decision not to move to Tablet.^[45]

In 2012, Tablet published a review of Breaking Bad by author Anna Breslaw in which Breslaw criticized Holocaust survivors, including those in her family, as "villains masquerading as victims who, solely by virtue of surviving (very likely by any means necessary), felt that they had earned the right to be heroes [...] conniving, indestructible, taking and taking." Jeffrey Goldberg observed in The Atlantic that Tablet had "brought together Commentary's John Podhoretz and The Nation's Katha Pollitt [...] by publishing a vicious attack on Holocaust survivors", and called for the magazine to publish an apology to Holocaust survivors.^[72] The magazine did apologize for publishing Breslaw's piece. In In These Times, staff writer Lindsay Beyerstein described the article as "the worst thing that Tablet has ever published" and "a disgrace on every level".^[73]

In October 2017, Tablet published an article by contributor Mark Oppenheimer titled "The Specifically Jewish Perviness of Harvey Weinstein".^[74] The article argued that the sexual assaults by Harvey Weinstein were distinctly Jewish, and was shared favorably by David Duke and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. Oppenheimer issued an apology for the piece, which was described in Jewish left-leaning quarterly magazine Jewish Currents as both supporting "an antisemitic stereotype" and avoiding discussion of "the rampant misogyny that exists in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds".^[75]

On September 29, 2022, the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) "paused" a relationship with Tablet which had enabled the magazine to place advertisements through AJS. The pause came in response to complaints by AJS members about the content published by Tablet; Jewish Currents reported that the critiques centered around articles published in Tablet within the past five years. Progressive magazine Jewish Currents also noted in an email newsletter that several Tablet contributors are Trump supporters and asserted that "much of the magazine's content is focused on decrying liberal 'wokeness'", arguing that while Tablet initially "gained a reputation for publishing high-quality arts and culture content", a conservative editorial line became more pronounced during the first presidency of Donald Trump.^[46]

Awards

Tablet has received two National Magazine Awards.^[76][77] The magazine won a Rockower Award in 2013 and another in 2022.^[78][79]

Lists

In 2010, Tablet published the first of its "Greatest" lists: the "100 Greatest Jewish Songs."^[80][81] In 2011, Tablet published the "100 Greatest Jewish Films," which awarded its top spot to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.^[82][83] In 2013, Tablet published its list of "101 Great Jewish Books," including authors such as Betty Friedan, Sholem Aleichem, Karl Marx and Art Spiegelman.^[84][85]

In 2018, Tablet published the "100 Most Jewish Foods," which spawned a book^[86][87] as well as a puzzle^[88] of the same title. Also in 2018, the magazine began a line of books published with Artisan. These include The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia^[89] and a Passover Haggadah with artwork by Shai Azoulay.^[90]

References

1. Zonszein, Mairav (February 5, 2020). "What happened to The Forward?". Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia University. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
2. Cohen, Mari. "Jewish Studies Draws a Line on Tablet". Jewish Currents. Retrieved May 31, 2023.
3. Zengerle, Jason (June 1, 2012). "The Israeli Desert". NY Mag. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
4. Lyons, Kim (November 1, 2018). "Tablet Magazine's Jewish Focus Pulls Staff to Pittsburgh on a Mission". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
5. Weiss, Michael (June 9, 2009). "Introducing Tablet Magazine". The New Criterion. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
6. Carr, Austin; McCracken, Harry (April 4, 2018). ""Did We Create This Monster?" How Twitter Turned Toxic". Fast Company.
7. Plante, Chris (February 9, 2015). "A Jewish magazine is testing an unusual solution for toxic internet comments". The Verge. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
8. "After Tablet started charging for the comment section, conversation moved to Facebook". American Press Institute. June 4, 2015. Retrieved April 5, 2023.
9. Moynihan, Michael (July 30, 2012). "Jonah Lehrer's Deceptions". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
10. Kearney, Christine (August 1, 2012). "Due diligence on Dylan: writer found fraud in first chapter". Reuters. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
11. Lozada, Carlos (October 27, 2021). "In his new book, Jonah Lehrer expresses shame and regret about his old books". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
12. Bosman, Julie (July 30, 2012). "Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Dylan Quotes for His Book". The New York Times. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
13. Moynihan, Michael (March 1, 2013). "Publisher Pulls Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide" From Stores". The Daily Beast. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
14. Poole, Steven (March 5, 2015). "So You've Been Publicly Shamed review – Jon Ronson on rants and tweets". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
15. "So You've Been Publicly Shamed". Penguin Random House Higher Education. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
16. Plitman, Jacob (August 27, 2018). "Julia Salazar In Her Own Words". Jewish Currents. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
17. Shire, Emily (January 17, 2020). "Opinion: How the Women's March made itself irrelevant". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved August 12, 2022.
18. Dolsten, Josefin (January 17, 2019). "A timeline of the Women's March anti-Semitism controversies". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved August 12, 2022.
19. McSweeney, Leah; Siegel, Jacob (December 10, 2018). "Is the Women's March Melting Down?". Tablet Magazine.
20. Shugerman, Emily (January 11, 2020). "The Women's March Tries to Repair the Damage. Is It Too Late?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved August 12, 2022.
21. Goldberg, Michelle (January 18, 2019). "Opinion | The Heartbreak of the 2019 Women's March". The New York Times. Retrieved August 12, 2022.
22. "Educated people may actually be more antisemitic, Tablet Mag claims". The Jerusalem Post. April 2, 2021. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
23. "A Is for Abish".
24. Cowell, Alan (May 31, 2022). "Walter Abish, Daring Writer Who Pondered Germany, Dies at 90". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
25. "Rhythm and Jews". Tablet.
26. Trzcinski, Matthew (February 8, 2021). "Why Elvis Presley's Songwriters Wrote 'Jailhouse Rock'". Showbiz Cheat Sheet. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
27. "Seymour Stein, Record Company Man Who Signed the Ramones and Madonna".
28. Friedman, Gabe (April 3, 2023). "Seymour Stein, Jewish music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones, dies at 80". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
29. Horn, Dara (August 29, 2013). "Articles of Faith". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
30. Samuels, David (September 29, 2016). "One Last Interview". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
31. "Writer Martin Amis calls Brits "a little antiSemitic", alleges double standards on Israel". World Jewish Congress. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
32. Miller, Elhanan (February 10, 2016). "How Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's Daughter, Adina Bar Shalom, Became Israel's Leading Ultra-Orthodox Iconoclast". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
33. "Adina Bar Shalom: Shas isn't my father's party anymore". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. February 14, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
34. Racioppi, Frank (May 23, 2023). "Actor Joshua Malina Becomes New Co-Host Of Unorthodox Podcast". Medium. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
35. Lobell, Kylie Ora (June 22, 2023). "Joshua Malina to Replace Co-host Mark Oppenheimer on"Unorthodox" Podcast". Jewish Journal. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
36. "Unorthodox podcast to record live in Tidewater". www.jewishnewsva.org. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
37. Pine, Dan (September 16, 2019). "N.Y. Times' Bari Weiss takes on anti-Semitism in first book". JWeekly. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
38. Lapin, Andrew (October 1, 2021). "Why I made a podcast about Father Coughlin". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
39. Rosenberg, Yair (September 22, 2022). "How Anti-Semitism Shaped the Ivy League as We Know It". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
40. "The Midterms Look Very Different if You're Not a Democrat or a Republican". The New York Times. October 19, 2022. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
41. Kamin, Debra (August 15, 2014). "If That NPR Guy Moved to Israel and Knew Hebrew ..." New York Times. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
42. "Times of Israel announces partnership with podcast Israel Story". The Times of Israel. December 19, 2022. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
43. "Tablet Studios and The USC Shoah Foundation Join Forces to Launch Multimedia Collection of Testimonies from the October 7 Terrorist Attacks in Israel". MarketWatch. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
44. Fax, Julie Gruenbaum (December 5, 2023). "Urgent Campaign Records Eyewitness Accounts of Terror Attacks in Israel". Jewish Journal. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
45. Nathan-Kazis, Josh (May 9, 2016). "Jeffrey Goldberg on Why His Tablet Magazine Column Never Panned Out". The Forward. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
46. Cohen, Mari (October 6, 2022). "Jewish Studies Draws a Line on Tablet". Jewish Currents. Retrieved October 6, 2022.
47. Friedman, Matti (November 30, 2014). "What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
48. MacDougald, Park (November 13, 2018). "Wesley Yang on Asian-Americans and the Struggle for Recognition". New York Magazine. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
49. Oksman, Tahneer (July 19, 2013). "Interview: Howard Jacobson on "The Swag Man" | Jewish Book Council". www.jewishbookcouncil.org. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
50. "Dara Horn | Center for Jewish Studies". jewishstudies.duke.edu. November 29, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
51. "The afterlife : Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky led a successful prisoner revolt at the Sobibor death camp". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
52. "Ayelet Tsabari's Profile". muckrack.com. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
53. Osborne, Monica (May 4, 2017). "Etgar Keret's voice carries beyond Israel's borders". Jewish Journal. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
54. Samuels, David (March 20, 2012). "Keeper of the Flame". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
55. "Jewish news and culture website, Tablet, launches new bi-monthly print magazine". Retrieved June 8, 2023.
56. "Publications | Elisa New". scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
57. "Bernard-Henri Lévy: "A Free Kurdistan Would Be a Potent Force for Stability and Peace"". The Tower. July 13, 2017. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
58. "Transatlantic democracies in rift over strategy to counter Iran's 'malign activities'". Democracy Digest. January 17, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
59. Brooks, David (May 11, 2023). "Opinion | The Second Phase of the Biden Presidency". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
60. "Evangeline Lilly Appeals to Justin Trudeau To "Hear From the People Sitting Out in the Cold at Your Door"". Vanity Fair. February 21, 2022. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
61. "Playbook". POLITICO. February 5, 2017. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
62. "Michael Lind". english.alarabiya.net. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
63. "Publications | Elisa New". scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
64. "Maxim D. Shrayer". www.tabletmag.com. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
65. "CV Maxim D. Shrayer" (PDF). www.bc.edu. December 7, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
66. "Marc Weitzmann | Jewish Book Council". www.jewishbookcouncil.org. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
67. "Jewish news and culture website, Tablet, launches new bi-monthly print magazine". Retrieved June 11, 2023.
68. Roth, Marco (April 18, 2012). "Roland Barthes: Myths We Don't Outgrow". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
69. Holocaust, Museum of Jewish Heritage-A. Living Memorial to the (March 1, 2022). "Museum Extends Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try Exhibition Through November 2022". Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
70. Tisserand, Michael (January 19, 2020). "Cartoonist Jules Feiffer Skewered Nixon and Now Trump". The Daily Beast. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
71. "Tablet hires reporter who broke story of Jewish women booted from Chicago Dyke March". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. August 9, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
72. Goldberg, Jeffrey (July 19, 2012). "Tablet Magazine's Ghastly Attack on Holocaust Survivors". The Atlantic. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
73. Beyerstein, Lindsay (July 23, 2012). "Anna Breslaw, the Holocaust, and "Breaking Bad"". In These Times. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
74. Oppenheimer, Mark (October 9, 2017). "The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
75. Cannon, Benjy (October 11, 2017). "Weinstein's Assaults: Misogyny, Not Judaism". Jewish Currents. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
76. Matherne, Rachelle (March 22, 2010). "2010 National Magazine Awards for Digital Media". SixEstate. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
77. "NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARDS FOR DIGITAL MEDIA WINNERS ANNOUNCED". www.asme.media. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
78. "AJPA - 2013 Competition". www.ajpa.org. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
79. "AJPA - 2022 Competition". www.ajpa.org. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
80. "The Guide to the List". Tablet. December 21, 2010. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
81. "What are the 100 greatest Jewish songs? 'My Mammy'? 'If I Were a Rich Man'?". Los Angeles Times. December 23, 2010. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
82. Rosen, Jody (December 9, 2011). "No. 1: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial". Tablet. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
83. Fulford, Robert (December 13, 2011). "Can E.T. be the greatest Jewish film ever made?". National Post. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
84. "101 Great Jewish Books: Works That Shape the Jewish Mind in America Today". Tablet. September 16, 2013. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
85. Farrell, John. "Which Of Tablet's 101 Great Jewish Books Have You Read?". Forbes. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
86. Moskin, Julia (April 16, 2019). "Is Seltzer Jewish? And 99 Other Argument-Starters". New York Times. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
87. Wall, Alix (April 9, 2019). "From brisket to huevos haminados, 'The 100 Most Jewish Foods'". JWeekly. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
88. "The 100 Most Jewish Foods: 500-Piece Circular Puzzle". Barnes and Noble. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
89. Oringel, Amy (December 9, 2019). "The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia: From Abraham to Zabar's and Everything in Between | Jewish Book Council". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
90. Lipman, Steve (April 1, 2020). "Modern Plague, Ancient Story Retold". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved October 24, 2023.

External links

• Official website
• The Testimonies Archive