(Eli Valley, detail from Metamorphosis, a comic about “hip” Jewish projects {I’m posting this image with generous permission from the artist} {You can see the whole strip here})

Having recently joined Facebook, I see how many of my friends and colleagues inside and outside academe actually “like” Tablet Magazine, an online rag promoting new Jewish politics and culture. Myself, I’m not sure what’s to like about this Nextbook production, and figured that someone might want to say something about it. Part of it has to do with how beneath the slick, flip, lavishly financed new electronic Jewish tribalism at Tablet lurk the old parochial anxieties about the Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel. Looking past the youthful cool so intentionally cultivated, I am more and more convinced that anxiety is the hallmark of the new Jewish conservatism, both in the culture at large and at Tablet.  But most…