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Jewish World Review Dec. 29, 2010 / 22 Teves, 5771 How Did This Happen? By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Last time I checked my royalty statement, the smallest monthly payment listed (none of them is large) came from a website called Jewish World Review. And yet I'd guess that fully half the out-of-state responses to my syndicated column come from those who read it on JWR. It seems to attract kibitzers without regard to race, creed, color, national origin or general disposition. For the few who still haven't heard of it, JewishWorldReview.com is a cozy little website that over the years has grown into a full, even encyclopedic, collection of conservative American opinion of every variety. The way a little pushcart, if its owner has enough gumption, and enough of a work ethic, can develop into a department store. By now JWR's exhaustive inventory of conservative columnists extends from those so far to starboard they're about to fall overboard to the kind still open to the best of -- dare I say it? -- liberal ideas. In short, or rather long, if you're looking for a handy-dandy compendium of opinionations of the dextral variety, JWR's got it -- not just on sale but compliments of the management. From A to Z. That is, from Albom, Mitch, to Zuckerman, Mort. How did all this happen? There's a two-word explanation: How he does it -- editing, advertising-and-promoting. staying in touch with readers and contributors alike, the whole schmeer -- I have no idea. Except maybe by staying at it 48 hours a day. I worry about his health. All I know is that when I get his e-mails, they inevitably seem to have been sent out in the middle of the night, like messages from the resistance. In this case, resistance to the received opinion handed down at properly leftish schools and universities. Not only didn't the indoctrination take in his case, he seems to have developed (and still displays) a severe reaction to any and all politically correct buncombe. How, I asked him, did a nice Jewish boy become such a conservative? The answer, as any true conservative would know, lies in history, in this case his own. To begin with, family. His father was from His mother was born in Setting out to become a rabbi, young Binyamin immersed himself in the intense schedule of one highly regarded yeshiva (rabbinical seminary) after another. Prayers started at 7 in the morning, study sessions would end at 10:30 at night or exhaustion, whichever came later. But he got the political bug early. What spare time he could carve out was spent reading political journals of all complexions -- from, left to right, The Nation to His religious studies, far from immunizing him from an interest in matters political, seemed only to intensify it. Talmudic commentaries from across the centuries -- a chapter from Babylon, another from It seems the ancient sages, too, were engrossed in questions of medical ethics (life vs. death) and legal principles (when and why may a long-standing precedent be overturned?). The rabbis even speculated about journeys to other planets, or at least about what religious obligations such a possibility would impose on earthlings. Our young yeshiva student's political convictions were only reinforced by the disdain with which they were met once he enrolled in a public university. He found that he had most in common politically not with his fellow Jews but Christian students, who not only tolerated his views, but encouraged him to express them. As for Jews of the secular variety, their tolerance seemed to stop at any idea that smacked of religious belief. And their political consciousness with the
Next to the proliferation of conservative think tanks over the past few decades, nothing has done more to encourage the revival of conservative thought in this country than tenured liberals' domination of the academy, the way sitting ducks might be said to dominate a lake. Who couldn't resist the temptation to take a few potshots at such inviting targets?
Here's what sealed Our Hero's determination to do something different in political journalism: He came to realize not only the desirability of having people of faith, whatever that faith, express their values in the marketplace of ideas, but the necessity of it if American opinion was to be fully representative of this ever-swirling admixture of a society. Mr. Jolkovsky made the usual stops for an up-and-coming conservative opinionator. He was at the Then one day, when the Internet was still in its infancy, before it became the way we all live now, our young visionary decided to start one of these newfangled things called a website. He hoped it would give old principles a new hearing, win friends and influence people. Which is just what it's done. It's been 13 years since
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
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