The shirt that started it all: Plus, a really terrifying navel tattoo! Jewcy’s seen a lot of changes in the past six months: Michael Weiss left, the homepage turned into a blog, we opened an art store that sold $1250 worth of paintings its first day, loveable office grandma Maya Wainhaus left us to become the Internet’s leading Tetris blogger, short-term consultant Emily Gould left us to fade quietly into a life of anonymity and yoga, Michael Weiss came back.

But you know, the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down, and now it’s my turn to say goodbye to this ferkakte operation (I know we have a strict anti-Yiddish rule, but come on, it’s my LAST DAY). Like so many of my Hebraic forebearers, I’m trading religion for capitalism: Starting July 7 I’ll be blogging at Racked, a website about retail news in New York. Before that, though, I’m getting married, which means next time you see me in print I’ll be Mrs. Izzy Grinspan.

I’m going to miss the whole lot of you, even though I’m a little relieved to stop thinking about Obama’s relationship with Israel 23 hours out of the day. The Jewcy office is made up of total lunatics, of course, but they're all smart, skilled, wildly capable lunatics, and it's bittersweet to know they'll be here playing Guitar Hero long after I'm gone.

I've also been really lucky to work with a ton of talented writers. Thanks for putting up with my passive-aggressive edits (“This piece on your grandma’s matzoh balls is really, really, really good, but maybe not counterintuitive enough, so would you mind making a tiny change by switching all the verbs with their opposites?”) and for being a continuing source of great ideas.

Enough sentimentality? NEVER. To end this post on an appropriately emotional note, I would like you all to look at more pictures of cats being Bat and Bar Mitzvah’d:

At least she's not a perpetual teenager: Carrie Bradshaw“We still live vicariously through Carrie,” says one woman in this New York Times video about the movie’s premiere.

“Well, that used to be us in our twenties,” says her friend.

And therein lies the hands-down weirdest thing about the Sex and the City madness. Carrie isn’t in her twenties. Carrie is in her thirties. By the era of the movie, she’s 40. It feels almost rude to point this out, as if I’m suggesting that Carrie is old and therefore unsexy, or uninteresting, or unhip. I don’t think any of those things – I just know, objectively, chronologically even, that 40 is not the same age as 20.

Sex in the City is very much about age -- about how to be an adult woman when for most of the history of civilization female adulthood meant becoming a mother and a wife. The women of SATC variously chase, embrace, and reject those roles. Mostly, they agonize about them. But alongside the painful awareness that they’re still living ostensibly youthful lives comes delight in the fact that they’re old enough, and therefore rich and established enough, to live glamorously. When the ladies go to parties, they know everyone there. Carrie may have spent all her savings on shoes, but she can certainly afford dinner; Miranda’s been out of law school so long she’s a partner in her firm. All four women have paid their New York dues, presumably during the previous decade, and now their lifestyles are all about access.

The show believes firmly that it’s better to be 35 than 25. When twentysomething female characters do appear—even in the form of the heroines in flashbacks—they’re always depicted as irritatingly clueless children. The show doesn’t treat twentysomething men much better, though it does occasionally promote them from brats to boy-toys. (Samantha’s so well-established that she can establish a relationship with Smith Jerrod’s cock, which I think is the only character in the story who’s the same age I am.)

So why do twentysomething women embrace the SATC women as their—our—peers? Why does sex columnist Julia Allison, at 28, think she’s Carrie? Pop culture usually glamorizes youth, so in a way it’s nice to see the fetish run in the opposite direction. It's just that, as with so many other things, the show's mythology doesn't fully connect with objective reality in the lives of its fans.

BUILDING a better Baltimore: KeeneIn the story of Exodus, Nachshon was the first Israelite to wade into the Red Sea, confident that it would part like Moses promised. Jewish Funds for Justice is taking this metaphor and running with it: Their Nachshon Challenge gives grants to leaders who are boldly going, to mix Jewish metaphors, where no one has gone before.

A couple weeks ago, Jewcy’s editor-in-chief Tahl wondered what would justify Judaism’s continuing existence in the 21st century. Not being a prophet or religious genius, I won’t pretend I have an answer, but I do think programs like the Nachshon Challenge are an excellent step towards continued relevance for one shockingly basic reason: Some of the people funded by the program aren’t Jewish. One, in fact, is a minister of a Baptist church. And their projects generally aim to do good not just within the Jewish world, but within the world at large.

Look at the description of the project run by the Baptist minister, Reverend Calvin Keene:

Rev. Keene left a career as a successful businessman to become the pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in the Oliver neighborhood in East Baltimore, where he grew up. Working with BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development), Pastor Keene has been a driving force in the renewal of the economically depressed Oliver neighborhood, which gained notoriety through the HBO series The Wire. Along with other members of the community, Memorial Baptist acquired adjacent houses and parcels of land to create a foundation for the area’s redevelopment. JFSJ is working in close partnership with Rev. Keene, BUILD, The Reinvestment Fund, THE ASSOCIATED: The Jewish Federation of Greater Baltimore, and other members of the Baltimore Jewish community, to revitalize the area and develop hundreds of lots for new homes and businesses.

Is social justice the soul of Judaism, as a Jewcy dialog once asked? Not necessarily. But is social justice in the Baltimore ghetto a Jewish issue? Of course, because Jewish organizations are making it a Jewish issue. And not even youngish leftish organizations like the JFSJ, but the Jewish Federation of Greater Baltimore, which is not exactly a "Shalom Motherfucker" kind of place. A Judaism that can help a Baptist minister fund a totally non-Jewy project simply because it's a good cause—that’s the kind of pluralistic Judaism that has a chance of meaning something in the 21st century.

You can read about other leaders and donate to the Nachshon Challenge here.

You guys might remember Rachel Papo from her stint as a Jewcy artist, during which her photos of women in the IDF generated more comments than nearly any other art we've ever featured. Now, Powerhouse Books is publishing a collection of Rachel's work. You can buy it here or visit her website for more photos.

Here's Rachel on her soldier series:

Rather than portraying the soldier as heroic, confident, or proud, my images disclose a complexity of emotions. The soldier is often caught in a transient moment of self-reflection, uncertainty, a break from her daily reality, as if questioning her own identity and state of contradiction. She is a soldier in uniform but at the same time she is a teenage girl who is trying to negotiate between these two extreme dimensions. She is in an army base surrounded by hundreds like her, but underneath the uniform there is an individual that wishes to be noticed.

And here's one of my favorites, a picture that reminds me of nothing so much as Jewish overnight camp:

In the 1980s, audiences thrilled to the foibles of Kimberley Featherbeak, Pamela Ann Windchime, Devon St. Palestine, and a host of other tempestuous beauties who starred in the prime time soap "Wasp Cove." Now, if you’re lucky enough to be in New York, you can see the lost episodes live at Comix (and starring Jewcy contributer Rachel Shukert alongside This American Life's David Rakoff). Even if you can’t go witness the passion and the pain in person, you can still watch the credit sequence below: