VISION: A Puget Sound where Jewish life is vibrant, connected, informed, and accessible to all.
MISSION: To enliven, engage, and educate the Jewish community in the Puget Sound region through independent journalism.
WHY
Virtually every city in the U.S. with a significant Jewish population has a general-interest Jewish paper/news/blog – except Seattle. Omaha, Nebraska, with 7,000 Jews has one. Seattle, with an estimated 75,000 Jews, does not.
Previously, the region had the Jewish Transcript/JT News from 1924 to 2015, a subsequent lifestyle magazine that folded in 2020, and currently has a newsletter run by a former editor of both shuttered publications that releases a single article every week or so. The Jewish community in the Puget Sound wants and needs Jewish news, a robust calendar, cultural updates, simchas, and more. Our survey indicates our Jewish community hungers for connection. We want to know what’s going on in each other’s lives. We want advance notice of interesting speakers and community events. And we want to celebrate and mourn together.
A new Jewish publication will give our community one place to: go for information about Jewish events and lifecycle moments, meet and get to know interesting Jews, and discuss the issues of the day.
How is the Seattle Jewish community different from other Jewish communities (other than not having a full-service Jewish publication)? Let us count the ways:
- It is estimated that only a third of Puget Sound Jewish families are affiliated with a synagogue, compared to the average affiliation rate of 50% in other cities.
- The Puget Sound is home to the third largest Sephardic community in America.
- With such a high cost of living, younger Jewish families in particular have been pushed further out to suburban cities with much smaller Jewish populations, which has created a feeling of isolation.
- The lakes and seas that make the region so beautiful and a popular place to live also serve as dividing lines that create access barriers (both real and perceived) to various Jewish community events.
WHAT
A grassroots group is bringing a Jewish publication back to the Puget Sound to bring our people closer together. The Jewish Sound will serve as the Puget Sound region’s digital Jewish hub to create connections both online and in person. While our primary method of interaction will be through different online channels, we will also print three issues a year in conjunction with the Jewish holidays, and in the coming years we will also bring back the popular Guide to Jewish Washington.
People are telling us they want:
- A comprehensive community calendar.
- News about what Jewish organizations are doing.
- Cultural listings and stories.
- Notices for lifecycle announcements.
- Features about people and organizations.
- A safe space to discuss issues important to our communities.
- A place where all Jews can gather and find their way into the community.
- And Joy. Many stories of how we are going from Oy to Joy.
The Jewish Sound will be an independent nonprofit 501(c)(3) that works with all the local Jewish organizations but will not be part of, or under, any one of them. It will have news of Israel only when it has some local connection but it will not duplicate news of Israel that can be found in other media.
HOW
We are gathering information in several ways: through one-on-one conversations with community members, through a survey with over 600 responses, and by talking to Jewish media folks in other cities to see how they are building and maintaining community publications in a variety of formats and approaches.
WHO
Who is this for? Members of Jewish communities in the five counties around Puget Sound: King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston; Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi; affiliated with a synagogue and unaffiliated; Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox, and everyone in between; all ages and backgrounds, Jews of color, Israelis, interfaith families, Jewish adjacent. Everyone.
Who is involved? The working group includes people of all ages (32 to 85!) from across the community, the last three editors of Washington’s former Jewish publications (the Transcript, JT News, and Jewish in Seattle) and other staff and board members of those publications. In addition, volunteer leaders and staff of several Jewish community organizations are either on the working committee or have been consulted.
HOW MUCH
We don’t know yet and are working on proposed start-up and sustaining budgets, but we do know that
our Jewish values and guiding principles will influence this. We will pay more than a living wage and offer
our employees (about six to start) benefits. We do not want to cut corners, and the only volunteers will be
board members and an advisory board. The initial $600,000 we aim to raise is intended to cover the costs
of our editorial and organizational leadership and staff, building our digital footprint, legal and
administrative costs of starting a nonprofit, and planting the seeds to make The Jewish Sound sustainable
for years to come. The money to sustain this project will come from philanthropy, events, membership,
and advertising. The Jewish Sound will be free to everyone in the Jewish communities in our region. As
we wait (impatiently) for our letter from the IRS designating us as a 501(c)(3), people and synagogues in
our Jewish community are gladly making pledges that will be due once we receive our nonprofit status.
WHEN
We hope to launch by the end of 2026/beginning of 2027. We know that is ambitious for such an enormous endeavor, but many people have told us they are ready and willing to help this project succeed and are eager to get it launched.
To learn more? Contact the convener, Karen Kalish, at karenkalish@gmail.com