This article first appeared on December 5, 2008 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

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It’s me, Craig. …If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be here now, writing this, a post to honor Jewcy on its 3rd birthday — well… I guess that would’ve made sense.

But if you’d told me 9 months ago, just a few days after Jewcy’s funding dried up and the staff liquidated, it would’ve been a little harder to swallow.

But swallow it I will, just like I always do. I always swallow. Because in the last year, Jewcy has seen the both the best of times and the worst of times, and for better or for worse, we’re still here.

When we last left you, Jewcy was engaging in a rapid shift of purpose, toward taking Jewish media, as a business, more seriously and, as part of that, helping to establish not only a brand for ourselves, but a solid identity for any of the disparate members of the new Jew tribe.

Michael Tive had been brought onto staff to fill a crucial business management role that had been, for the longest time, conspicuously absent. With him came a new direction, new momentum, and, eventually, new Jewcy tees. 

Yes, we were truly riding high. We were hosting an acclaimed monthly party in DUMBO offices, and spirits were high. I even speculate that Jewcy was at its apex the night of our February V-Day party where, by the grace of God and Hayley Kaufman’s party-planning generosity, I got to introduce the burlesque stylings of "Jo Boobs" Weldon. (Hayley got to have some fun, too, with a brief, impromptu burlesque lesson. I offered to switch.. but: nothing.)

It was the next day, February 13th (during what I like to call the "St. Valentine’s Day Massacre") that we received the bad news.

But buck up! Since that time, we’ve all come a long way! Aaron Bisman and Jacob Harris of JDub Records played the role of Fairy Godmother admirably. The week after we received the bad news, Jacob was on the phone, planning out a way that they might help.

And it took some time. The official adoption didn’t come until this October. But they’ve been right there beside Jewcy through the bad times and the good, and they’ve shown remarkable foresight, generosity, and patience throughout the whole ordeal.

The staff had been scattered, of course. Michael Weiss moved on to Tablet Magazine. He then moved on to Equities magazine, thus taking the two jobs left in media and becoming formally known as a Pod Person. Todd Sloves, fresh from volunteering on the campaign trail, moved straight into the federal government. He works in the local office of a US congressman.

Tara Rice and Hayley Kaufman have been freelancing it up for the past few months. Tara’s design work is all over, and you can read Hayley’s latest writing here. 

Faustine, my most capable partner in technology, has just returned back from mother France to take up her role leading web development for Coach, Inc. (Yes, the leather bag people!)

Old-school Jewcers Amy Odell and Izzy Grinspan are still living the high life. Amy can be found daily on NY Mag’s The Cut blog, and Izzy is (or was, last I heard…) editing the Racked blog. Joey Kurtzman, less than a year after leaving Jewcy, split the country (for the first time, I believe, not under suspicious circumstances). He’s been wandering India for a few months and hopefully will be back in the states soon, with more photos of himself in diapers. 

Lilit, who was blessed (…Blessed! As if she didn’t earn it!) with a book deal that helped her to continue curating Jewcy and producing content for it in her free time. That is- save for the help of super-intern Ashley Tedesco, who never stopped giving her all for Jewcy; which is impressive enough without considering the high caliber of work that she was churning out, all pro-gratis. 

Michael Tive has been consulting. Last I heard he was working for a website in the "women’s beauty space", which, I believe is simply code for "he’s been wearing ladies’ undergarments while browsing the net."

And I went to work for the NY state Senate for 7 months, where we launched the transparency-focused new nysenate.gov for the state government, just in time to horrified and embarrassed by the displays of two New York City senators. After that, I followed Tahl Raz, the original Jesus of Jewcy (…because no one can ever truly grasp what he’s thinking and he’s likely to end up nailed to a cross…) to the Ferrazzi Greenlight consulting company, where he still gives me noogies and wedgies day in and day out, week by week.

But — like Jewcy — throughout all the noogies and no matter how many wedgies, I’m still around. …And I am honored to be here, among the brightest and the best semites online, and with the greatest hope for modern Jews everywhere — and I remain, truly yours, Craig Leinoff.

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Even as we cheerfully say aloha to 2009, Jewcy has asked me to bid a mournful aloha to the late, great, Alfred Shaheen by, for some reason, compiling a dubiously amoral gallery of famous Hawaiian shirts over the years.

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I wanted to update you (and I mean you, specifically, VALUED USER WITH uid != 0) { print ‘USERNAME ‘ . $user->name; } else { print ‘IP ADDRESS ‘.$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’]; } ?>) about the fun changes that occurred in the second year of our magazine’s existence:

• Jewcy got visited by the set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. They bought us a ping pong table and a foosball table and used our office for a 2-minute scene in the episode "The Self-Made." None of us have seen it yet. Jewcy made me sleep in the office overnight so someone would be around to watch the crew move out all their equipment at 5:30 the next morning. Weiss came to visit me at 11:00 that night with his girlfriend. Vincent D’Onofrio noticed that we had been staring at him for upwards of 20 minutes and finally, between takes, stopped and said, "How’s it going, folks?" We collectively blinked and each gave our version of "Hi."
• Super-intern Michelle Threadgould left us for greener pastures after a chronologically impossible sixteen years of employment with the company. She was succeeded by mega-interns Ma’ayan Rosenzweig and Jessica Miller, whose individual hours each slightly surpasses the combined length of all FDR’s terms as President. My summer was made simultaneously more and less difficult by Raphael Eidus’s internship as coder extraordinaire. Now, international woman of technology, Faustine Pollet, is filling that role while I reminisce in writing about "the good old days."
• We bid adieu to office manager Maya Wainhaus, but welcomed Todd Sloves in her stead. He does everything she did except for writing a Tetris blog.
• Tara Rice celebrated her landmark five-hundredth hour of enduring Canadian jokes from Todd over lunch. As payback, she mandated that we all eat salad for lunch four days a week.
• We said goodbye to Joey Kurtzman and Helen Jupiter, costing us a valuable Western Frontier outpost and leaving the Oregon Territory at risk for "Injun Attacks" and long, crying jags about how much we miss them so, so much.
• Weiss left Jewcy. Then came back.
• Izzy left Jewcy, but didn’t come back. Her spiritual successor, Lilit Marcus, started with us a few weeks ago, however, and filled the empty void in Simpsons references caused by Izzy’s departure.
• Lilit went on a week-long vacation exactly two weeks after starting here. Chapter review questions: 1) If she keeps up that pattern, how many vacation days will Lilit have used by the 71st week? 2) How many vacation days does Lilit get per year?
• Tahl got married. To a woman. One beautiful memory from the evening: "Ms. Laub caressed her husband’s shaved head while he wrapped his still-scarred arms around her as they swayed to their own beat."
• Izzy got married too, and while the New York Times didn’t do a write-up, MAD Magazine did.
• A French guy (unrelated to Faustine!) wandered into our office and asked if he could buy a t-shirt. "We don’t really sell them from here," Todd said, but Michael Tive, Jewcy’s General Manager, wouldn’t let a business opportunity pass us by. "You give me cash, I’ll get you a t-shirt," he said. "…With nail polish." And he did.
• Michael Tive admitted that at least part of his famed wheelin’ and dealin’ came from the wild days he spent at SONY Corporation, where all employees are required to both wheel and deal on a semi-weekly basis as part of company policy.
• Michael Weiss banned commenter "Rob" for being too right-wing for even our resident conservative.

And that’s basically all the important things that happened in the past year. I got to buy a few computers for the company, but if I’d wanted to bore you with things nobody understands I’d have mentioned part-time staff writer Jake Rake and his job description.

Maybe somebody else should write these things.

‘Til next year, Craig

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Jewcy spies (in the form of Jewcy's original art director, Dave Choe) sent word — and a scanned image — that Izzy and new husband Andy took the joyous occasion of their wedding day and besmirched it by posing with a copy of MAD Magazine. I say "new husband" because Izzy goes through husbands faster than my mom goes through excuses for why she ate sixty-three bags of potato chips. Chips which she also went through quickly.

There's a number of weird things going on here. For one, this story involves two ex-Jewcy employees (of which there are only a few), and for another, it involves one of those employees reading MAD Magazine.

Here's the pic. Note the firmness of Izzy's arms. She had been working out for months prior at her mom's suggestion:

I had to send the picture to Izzy, as apparently the Jews over at MAD don't send out comps to people they make fun of in Letters section. I asked her if she had anything to say.

?(05:33:38 PM) Izzy Grinspan: i would just say that yes, andy was indeed wearing cut-offs (05:33:42 PM) Izzy Grinspan: as was the rabbi, standing behind us (05:33:51 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it was actually a jorts-themed wedding (05:33:55 PM) Craig Leinoff: haha, that's your rabbi? Not your brother? (05:34:02 PM) Craig Leinoff: hahaha (05:34:05 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it's andy's brother (05:34:08 PM) Izzy Grinspan: who is also a rabbi (05:34:08 PM) Craig Leinoff: I see (05:34:12 PM) Craig Leinoff: He looks like your brother (05:34:19 PM) Izzy Grinspan: that's because all jews are related

I enjoyed talking to Izzy so much that I contacted Amy Odell, Jewcy's old office manager, but she refused to make any statements on the record in accordance with the terms of her restraining order.

Michael Morlitz was unable to be reached for comment.

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After spending hours in debate yesterday about what would be an acceptable prank for Jewcy to pull on its woefully staid readership, the staff came to a consensus on the one joke that truly befit our boring selves: nothing. Even the brilliant "Joey gets arrested for public indecency" idea eventually came to naught.

But as everyone wrapped up work for the day, a deliciously evil thought crossed my mind. Because "Malice" is my middle name (…actually, it's "Alice," which makes me full of malice…), I wrote a quick email to Tilted Planet, Jewcy's server hosts, and set to coding.

Success came at approximately 10:00 a.m. as I was on my way to work, with a phone call from Maya, distraught at logging into the site to see this:

Of course, I was "unavailable."

What caused a bigger problem, however, was finding that bosses Tahl and Joey were in a meeting, and wholly unaware of the issue, upon my arrival.

This necessitated my feigning ignorance (as well as faking angry phone calls to Tilted) for the benefit of the understandably flustered Maya. I also was forced to share outrage with Izzy and Tara at our predicament, something which I am not usually very good at. (Talking to Izzy and Tara, that is.)

Tahl finally became aware of the incident around 1:05 p.m., and I quickly found that I had precious little time to fess up before he obliterated the Tilted Planet phone system with his ultra-sonic Israeli complaining. (I should note that Maya had already reached out to Tilted earlier, and they'd been quite good about playing dumb, but Tahl would be on a completely different level of fury.)

I sent out the "Gotchya" email I'd been composing, prematurely, and ran to Tahl's desk, where he was already dialing his phone.

"Hold on!" I yelled, "I just got an explanation email from Tilted! I forwarded it to you! Check it!"

The email was a link to this page.

We all had a good laugh when Tahl finished beating me. Except Maya, who took the brunt of my abuse, and deserves a big cake for being such a good sport. Please don't hate me, Maya.

Another successful April Fool's Day. JOB WELL DONE. As the final coup de grace, I had Izzy's cat sent to the pound. Haha. Golden.

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To answer this question, Craig experienced everything from Faith Fighter's non-denominational, one-on-one, beat 'em up appeal to Eternal Forces' Christian evangelism to the hysterically fanatical Jihadi simulator Night of Bush Capturing. Generally speaking, he was unimpressed.

"Is game development for holy rollers just too hard," he wondered, "or are they just not trying hard enough?"

Here are his reviews:

	Name: Faith Fighter Overview: A fighting game in the style of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, where representatives from all the major religions battle it out for superiority. Case for: This game includes both God and Jesus, Buddha and Budai, Ganesha, and Muhammed Comes with a censored version where Muhammed's likeness is blocked out Last boss is Xenu You can see Budai's nipples Case against: It might be a complete ripoff of the next game You can see Jesus' nipples.
I was totally excited about this game when I first saw it. "Choose your belief and kick the shit out of your enemies," the game advertises. Finally, pacifist Buddhism gets a chance to go toe-to-toe with the heavy-hitters. And with two representatives, how can they lose? I Like to Play as Buddha: Because he's blue and because I don't think it will offend anyone.Easy: in this game, no one wins. I don't mean that literally, of course—I don't doubt that any of the Jewcy staffers could sail through this on the "Normal" difficulty setting—but for a game that purports to help players consider how religious representations can be used to fuel conflict, there is little opportunity for actual reflection. No parallels are ever drawn between what's happening in the game's battles and the real world, and, in the end, even the characters' special powers have precious little to do with actual religious lore. Why does God immolate himself in a pillar of flame? Why can Mohammed turn invisible? I like the quirky, hand-drawn graphics, but aside from that, there's not much going for this game aside from shock appeal.
Jewcy's Final Word is: SUCKS.

	Name: Bible Fight Overview: This is a higher-budget version of Faith Fighter, centered solely on characters from the Old and New Testaments, paid for by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Case for: Satan makes an appearance The Virgin Mary carries around a little Baby Jesus even when fighting non-Baby Jesus Eve is naked Animation is fantastic Case against: We've seen this game before The last levels get really hard
This game looks and plays almost exactly like Faith Fighter, except it's much more polished. While I respect that, unfortunately…
Jewcy's Final Word is: STILL SUCKS.

	Name: Ethnic Cleansing Overview: A racist, anti-semitic, Doom-style 3D first-person shooter where you play a Neo-Nazi as you "run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics" until you "can blow away Jews as they scream 'Oy vey!'" Case for: Finally – a game that's actually about politics! The strongest example yet of the ineptitude of white supremacists Case against: Ass ugly Control feels sluggish, like you're wading hip-deep through the septic tank behind Ma and Pa's old house back in Arkansas
The Ammo Boxes Read "Ammo": This game sucks. Ethnic Cleansing may be the greatest thing working against the modern white nationalist movement. A small, personal project by two, let's say, independent game developers (the critically acclaimed "D. Bryan Ringer" and "Bob Hawthorne"). This game couldn't suck more if the developers were wearing bags over their heads (as opposed to sheets, I guess). In a thread on neo-Nazi organization Stormfront's website, users rank the game "1.5 out of 5", described it as "not the greatest quality in the world," and said, simply: "The game sucks." (The thread peters off a few posts in when one user admits that he'll never buy the game because he'd have to pay with credit cards and, personally, he "objects the use of credit cards and therefor [sic] don't own one." There are only a few enemy models in this game, and they mostly consist of black guys with Afros wearing basketball jerseys with the word "NIGZ" or pictures of cannabis plants on the front. There are Mexicans dressed in ponchos and sombreros, and strange, AK-47 wielding Hasidim that live in the subway. Ho-hum. The only thing remotely clever about this game is that it promises "Real Negro sounds," which wind up being the sounds of screeching monkeys. Very crafty, Bob Hawthorne.
Jewcy's Final Word is: SUCKS.

	Name: The Zoo Race Game Overview: "Animals" from "Noah's Ark" race, and every now and then, an electronically-lowered voice booms a famous passage from the bible. When it's all done, the animals return to the ark for an interactive disco. I'm not joking. Case for: The premise makes perfect sense A pig wearing a top hat drives a train Case against: Playing for extended periods of time will produce an effect roughly similar to blending up one of those books of Psalms that the Gideons hand out near schools and drinking it, straight out of the Magic Bullet.
What do you get when you cross a working knowledge of a single bible story, a handful Avoid the Obstacles: Obstacles may include explosive barrels, piranhas, and Michelangelo's artwork. of stock 3D animal graphics and a sixth-grade education? I dunno, but who gives a shit? We're playing The Zoo Race Game! I really gotta hand it to developer Cougar Interactive. They're (He is?) legitimately the most batshit crazy game makers out there. And I just finished playing a game where you must fight wave after wave of black people on city streets in order to assassinate Ariel Sharon. Like so many other purportedly "religious" games, Zoo Race simply slaps a coat of Jesus-paint on a secular-themed game (in this case, "racing") and hopes that that's enough to make the sales. It's not. Although the craftsmanship in The Zoo Race Game is noticeably higher than, say, Ethnic Cleansing, the animation remains abysmal, the execution and control are shoddy and lack finesse, and the premise is mind-bogglingly ridiculous. In order to truly appreciate The Zoo Race Game, you need to watch its promotional movie. Trust me on this and watch, okay?
Jewcy's Final Word is: MINDBOGGLINGLY SUCKY.

	Name: Night of Bush Capturing Overview: You play an Islamic insurgent, running through a desert curiously plastered with images of Bush, Tony Blair, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Hassan Nasrallah, in hopes of stumbling upon Bush so you can shoot him. Case for: Reports call this a "terrorist training simulator." If this is what terrorists are being trained with, they don't stand a chance Jihadist music in the background is pretty catchy and has a Brian Wilson-like harmony to it "Night of Bush Capturing" is a hilarious name for a game Case against: Boring Lacks a certain "realism" Bush is too short
It's a relief to get back into the realm of hate-based games, but I really don't feel that much hate here. Aside from the neat chanting that blares throughout this game, there's really very little reason to play. Every weapon at your disposal is exactly like every other weapon (except the grenade launcher, which is unique in that it doesn't do anything at all). Your avatar has a Super Mario-esque ability to jump three times his own height. The story claims you're a Mujahid traveling around a U.S. Special Forces' camp (that Bush is inexplicably hanging around in), but it seems more like you're at some bizarre Coalition-themed Disney World in Tikrit. We've seen this all before and it sucks now just as much as it sucked then. What's really disturbing is the amount of outrage that has been directed at this game since its release. It's not a threat to anybody, and it's not even that fun to play.
Jewcy's Final Word is: ??? (SUCKS).

	Name: Left Behind: Tribulation Forces Overview: Based on the Left Behind series of novels and movies, you must lead a force of evangelical Christians to defeat the antichrist so Jesus can return. The premise is that after the rapture occurred, for some reason a bunch of good people were left behind with a bunch of lousy people. The lousy people formed a "Peacekeeping Coalition" under the guidance of a new world ruler. I forget his name, but let's call him, "Lucifer AnthonyChrist McDevilton." Shooting neutral members of the population is discouraged. Case for: Being that this game is based on a popular franchise, the developers could afford to hire people with the normal number of fingers and toes The game world and mechanics is vast The premise is unique and engaging Literally every character in the game has a back story written for him or her Case against: The back stories, along with most everything else in this game, are creepy as hell Women can't do anything I kind of want to keep playing it
Taylor Malone Prays: As in real life, your Christian zealots gradually lose faith over time and must be forced to 'Pray,' lest they revert back to heathenism and have to be taken out back, Old Yeller style.I'm going to tell you straight up: this game doesn't totally suck. You don't know what a relief it is to finally say that. Unfortunately, this game is one of the most disturbingly creepy, "Praise Jesus" experiences I've ever been forced to endure. Your task is to lead the good holy people of New York in banding together, buying up all the Duane Reades and abandoned factories, and converting or murdering all the non-believers. Well, you're really only supposed to murder the guys who are hostile to you. But God understands, right? I gotta give the developers credit, though. The game has a full (albeit derivative) 3D New York City, with tons of random people in the streets. It's neat that the game lets you click on any individual character and hear about his life's history (and, if applicable, how he or she found Jesus), but some of the stories started to disturb me. One "bad guy," the game claims, used to work as a TV News Producer during the time that the Moon Landing was staged. How enlightening! In all seriousness, though, this game is really not that bad. It does what every other one of these games could've done: created an engaging storyline that is centered around religion (but not entirely beholden to it), with production values that don't distract from the gameplay. Now if only it wasn't so creepy…
Jewcy's Final Word is: DOESN'T SUCK THAT MUCH.

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Jewcy's editor-in-chief Raz called me into his office. "Leinoff!" he bellowed, ashes from his fat cigar dropping into his lap, "I need you to cover the 3rd Annual Broadway Purim Shpiel at the Hudson Theater on 44th Street!"

So I went, and I had a right good time. I met Doctor Ruth, Seth Rudetsky, an Israeli guy, and even some other people! Naturally, I had to go back for this year's performance.

Sadly, the 4th Annual Broadway Purim Shpiel was notably less fun than the 3rd Annual Broadway Purim Shpiel. I did enjoy the opening performance — wherein a woman pretended to be wealthy entrepreneur and friend of Jewcy Michael Steinhardt (later in the evening, Steinhardt had someone put a bullet in her head from 1800 yards away) — but host Jackie Hoffman was a little trying for my tastes. She came out strong, but soon her act degenerated into a series of rimshot-inducing puns on Judaism and JAPs and what-have-you. When is one time too many when it comes to "Jewish mothers cook a lot of food" jokes? Never, if you're the Broadway Purim Shpiel.

The musical numbers were the highlight of the show, but a three-piece band couldn't totally do them justice. The spoken bits were more of a chore in general. Although Iris Bahr's excerpts from her spoken off-broadway show, DAI (enough) were impressive, improv group "Don't Quit Your Night Job" failed to deliver the goods with two painful experiments in Broadway-themed comedy.

In the end, I'm glad I went. They served free dessert! (But where were the hamantaschen?) Still, the highlight of my evening shouldn't have been chasing around the same photographer who snubbed me last year, trying to snap a photo of his elusive face. But maybe that says more about me than the show.

Here's a photo gallery commemorating all the fun times we had.

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