In recent years, Seattle has imported a few of the hallmarks of New York City life.
There are the New York-style condos, a euphemism for any apartment under 500 square feet. There are New York-style nightclubs, meaning any venue that charges a high entry fee and employs a doorman to vet the fashion of customers trying to get in. And, of course, there are New Yorkers themselves, who have arrived in waves, and wearing Prada.
Now Wendy Marcus is preparing to bring to Seattle one more New York institution, though likely with few of the groans that usually follow their arrival: the literary review.
`I`ve noticed in the last year or so that there are all these really wonderful Jewish literary magazines and they are all east of the Rockies,` said Marcus. `There is nothing in the West. Nothing.`
New York has produced several Jewish publications with a literary bent including Zeek, a traditional review, Commentary, and the new Guilt and Pleasure, which has a more magazine-style format but has published essays by Jewish writers such as Philip Roth.
Jewish literary journals have begun creeping west. Ann Arbor is home to Bridges, a Jewish feminist literary review. Yet the Pacific Northwest has no Jewish literary publication of its own.
`It seemed to me that someone needed to step up and say, okay, as scary and as financially terrifying as this project may be, if someone really loves the written word and really loves the Jewish community there has got to be a literary address for Jews who lives in the West, or in this case the Northwest,` Marcus told JTNews.
Marcus, who works as music director for Temple Beth Am, first began to kick around the idea of a Jewish review with a few collaborators last year. The first discussions were about what such a publication might look like and how to finance it. Then, in June, Marcus applied for a grant from the Alfred and Tillie Shemanski Testamentary Trust. In August, the trust provided $1,200 in seed money.
Drash, as the new publication will be known, was born.