A Lifestyle Mag for Jewish Women

Pass a magazine stand these days and you're likely to see Martha Stewart Living, Oprah at Home, Southern Accents, Country Living, Cottage Living.

Make room for Jewish Living, a lifestyle magazine aimed at well-educated Jewish women, ages 25 to 54, with children at home and a household income conservatively pegged at $125,000, says publishing director Daniel Zimerman.

"Like a Martha or Oprah magazine for the Jewish community," he says, this bimonthly follows the formula of "personalities, recipes and homemaking. While they do Christmas and Easter, we do Hanukkah and Passover: the blessings, the traditions." Potential readers range from the nonobservant who consider themselves culturally Jewish to straight and gay interfaith couples "all the way to modern Orthodox" Jews.

The magazine (sold at Barnes & Noble, Hudson News and http://www.jewishlivingmag.com) fills a niche similar to the way Essence and Ebony do for African Americans and Latina does for Hispanic women, Zimerman says.

And yes, other religions also have their own periodicals. Faith & Family, a self-described "magazine of Catholic living," gives readers regular features about home, food, finance and keeping the romance in marriage. LDS Living, a publication for Mormons, covers much of the same ground.

The timing is right because "there is a real sense of a renaissance in the Jewish community," says Zimerman, a Canadian who moved to New Jersey with his wife to launch the magazine. "There is a distance from the immigrant community. We are more mainstream. My father-in-law in Toronto still puts his mezuzah on the inside of his house so his neighbors won't see it."

The November-December debut issue has a story called "Mezuzah 101," tracing the history of putting an ancient Hebrew prayer inside a protective case and affixing it to a doorjamb. Easy instructions encourage the practice.

The first issue is also long on Hanukkah: eco-friendly and charitable gift giving, detailed party-planning tips and gourmet latke recipes.

But don't look for articles on the Palestinian conflict or whether interfaith marriage threatens the future of Judaism. Other Jewish magazines (Tikkun, Moment) tackle such controversies quite well, Zimerman says.

And he doesn't foresee stories on Jewish furniture makers or designers, although there will be a focus on holiday decorating. "Clearly for Passover, for Hanukkah, there will be ways to decorate the mantel, dining room table, the entranceway. There are also traditional Jewish religious items that become part of the home decor," he says.

But he rules nothing out.

"Just like Hanukkah is the festival of light, there may be an opportunity on how to bring more light into the home. For Tu B'Shevat, the new year for the Earth and trees, conceptually we could do something on gardening or potting plants in the home."