Here’s the audio of the JTA-sponsored discussion I moderated tonight at the 92nd St. Y about the Jewish Interwebs. Participating are J Street campaigns director Isaac Luria, Chabad.org media relations officer Motti Seligson, and the Jewish Wedding Network’s Sara Schwimmer Marcus.

Check out the play-by-play with @Talk2JTA, @92Y and our good friend @Daroff, who chimed in with a question via Twitter.

The discussion began after I challenged some strong remarks Daroff had made condemning J Street’s position on the diplomatic engagement of Iran. What ensued was an immensely revealing dialogue that exposes the chutzpah of our so-called national Jewish leadership, who operate as self-appointed arbiters and representatives of Jewish public opinion.

Daroff: @isaacluria And @JStreetdotorg stands with the Mullahs and the hard left at NIAC opposed to sanctioning Iran. UR to left of Obama & everyone

Mobius1ski: @Daroff The organized Jewish community and the actual Jewish community are two completely different animals.

Mobius1ski: As a former Republican Jewish Coalition operative, you’re to the hard right of at least 60% of American Jewry.

Daroff: @mobius1ski I represent most consensus-driven org of North American Jewish community; the consenus is w/sanctions; J Street is outside.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff Sanctions worked great in Iraq! Only 500,000 innocent children died according to UNICEF!

Mobius1ski: @Daroff UJC doesn’t rep me, nor my peers, in any way, shape or form. Until we have a vote @theJCPA, you’re just a good ol’ boys club to us.

Daroff: @mobius1ski Who is “we”? 140 orgs have a vote at @TheJCPA – including @TheRAC & the Reconstructionists.

Daroff: @mobius1ski UJC does rep you – we care for your grandparents when they are sick, we brought them from the old country via @HIASadvocacy

Daroff: @mobius1ski UJC funds Jewish Family Service Agencies and Jewish Vocaitional Services that help millions of displaced Americans

Daroff: @mobius1ski UJC represents u by raising billions to support the social service infrastructure of #Israel & for Jews around world

Daroff: @mobius1ski UJC represents you by funding Jewish Community Centers & Jewish camps that help to ensure Jewish continuity

Daroff: @mobius1ski Lastly, UJC & the Jewish Federations of North America will represent you, even if you don’t appreciate it or recognize it

Daroff: Iran sanctions are targeted at energy sector RT @mobius1ski: Sanctions worked great in Iraq! Only 500,000 children died.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff Actually, the JBFCS just denied my elderly grandmother w/ Alzheimer’s support.

Daroff: Send me a note & I’ll see if I can help. RT @mobius1ski: @Actually, the JBFCS just denied my elderly grandmother w/ Alzheimer’s support. [When I read this, I immediately thought of Senator Tom Coburn's response to the crying woman at his town hall meeting in Oklahoma City. --Mobius]

Mobius1ski: @Daroff I appreciate that. I’m not anti-UJC, I just don’t think raising & disbursing funds entitles you to speak on behalf of all Jews.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff As Abe Foxman told a Jewschool blogger once, “I don’t represent the Jewish people. I represent my donors.” Same goes for UJC.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff “We,” by the way, are young American Jews who do not affiliate in traditional ways, such as through denominations & institutions.

Daroff: @mobius1ski Jewish agencies supported by UJC/Jewish federations help millions of people – regardless of affiliation or donation

Mobius1ski: @Daroff Yes, they help, undeniably. But that doesn’t mean they speak for those they help. If I give to UJAFedNY, do I speak for you?

Mobius1ski: @Daroff I’m not debating whether the UJC does good work, but whether its positions on Iran are actually in-step w/ most American Jews’.

Daroff: @mobius1ski Does Obama represent you? Did Bush? You might not agree w/everything we say or do – but we do represent you.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff Comparing UJC to elected officials is beyond hubris.

Mobius1ski: @Daroff My U.S. citizenship is a social contract w/ the gov’t. My Jewishness is not a social contract w/ UJC.

Daroff: @mobius1ski Didn’t mean to be hubrisy; simply stated: organized Jewish community endeavors to represent Jewish communal interests.

To reiterate, I do sincerely believe that the UJC is a well-intentioned organization and that Jewish federations do immense good for the Jewish population. I also think Daroff is generally a stand-up guy — a good and decent fellow — despite his willingness to misrepresent hard-right positions as reflective of the broader American Jewish community’s feelings.

My bone of contention is that the UJC and local federations — as non-democratic entities beholden only to the whims of their donors — cannot justifiably claim to represent the totality of American Jews politically. This is chiefly because wealthier Jews who take interest in Jewish issues tend to skew to the right, and when their money buys them influence, that skews Jewish policy to the right. Therefore, when UJC speaks on behalf of American Jews, it does so without a mandate from the people, narrowly representing the interests of its benefactors alone.

The JCPA is somewhat a different story, but even its member organizations operate non-democratically and represent only their constituencies — a model increasingly irrelevant to my generation of post-institutional Jews. Which isn’t to say that they’re bad organizations — some of them are great organizations. It’s just that my peers aren’t members or aren’t otherwise represented.

Until the UJC considers, in its policy discussions, the feelings of every Jew — especially those who can’t afford to donate to their local federations, let alone donate tens of thousands of dollars or more — it cannot and should not claim to speak on behalf of American Jewry.

Together with Ezra Klein and a few other progressive Jewish bloggers and columnists, these gentlemen compose a clique pejoratively deemed “the Juicebox Mafia” by the likes of The New Republic and Commentary magazine. In the following clip, Spencer Ackerman reflects on the origins of the term:

To celebrate these men and their honorable work, Isaac Luria, J Street’s Campaigns Director, ironically bestowed upon them some very large juiceboxes (because he couldn’t find any Ssips). Photos follow.

Isaac Luria

Spencer Ackerman

The back of Matthew Yglesias

Matt Duss

Ackerman and Yglesias proudly display their juice

The event also drew a visit from Daily Kos founder and Netroots Nation father Markos Moulitsas, shown here with J Street’s Luria and Amy Spitalnick:

And the biggest surprise of all? Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor railroaded by Karl Rove and Bush’s Justice Dept., shown here with yours truly:

More photos from the conference here.

On another note, a caucus was held earlier in the day for Jewish participants of Netroots Nation that was attended by Luria and Spitalnick, as well as NJDC’s Aaron Keyak, and journalist Max Blumenthal. More on that to come.

Today’s my last day at JTA.

After two years of making my mark and proving my worth to “the establishment,” I’m moving on to a new position with Repair the World, a recently launched Jewish service initiative that aims to make doing community service as ubiquitous as having a bar or bat mitzvah.

Though I’m very excited to begin my new job, I am also very grateful to both JTA’s board of directors and its executive director, Mark Joffe, for taking a risk with this punchy blogger and giving me an opportunity to make a truly valuable contribution to both the field of Jewish journalism and the American Jewish community itself.

And while, of course, none of these were solo efforts — I couldn’t have accomplished any of this without a great team, great content, and a great web design & development firm — here’s just a smattering of what I’ve achieved during my tenure:

• Moved from the god-awful, custom content management solution (CMS) considered all but entirely useless by the editorial staff to a state-of-the-art, quasi-custom Expression Engine installation now considered a massive time saver.
• Moved from a fugly table-based HTML layout to a sexy, standards-compliant XHTML/CSS layout with accessibility features.
• Created The Telegraph, Fundermentalist and Capital J (formerly Election Central) blogs, including concepts and brand identities.
• Conceptualized and integrated various user generated content (UGC) features including the Jewish Digg-clone Kavod, the JBlogs aggregator, and Readers Report channel.
• Added working RSS feeds for all sections.
• Employed extensive search engine optimization, which increased JTA’s profile on Google News ten-fold.
• Developed a multimedia content strategy, including podcasts and web video. Commissioned and edited the first 3 dozen JTA news videos.
• Developed and deployed an extensive social media strategy including presences on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, beating every Jewish newspaper on the planet to the punch.
• Improved overall traffic/statistics tracking.
• Improved JTA’s custom products, including a complete redesign of its newsletter generation software and the creation of a custom news ticker generator.
• Integrated a constituent relations management (CRM) suite for newsletter distribution and donor management, whereas there had been none previously.
• Increased advertising revenue with greater real estate, better advertisers, and a more effective sales team.
• Developed a plan for the integration of JTA’s 92 years worth of archival data, including advanced interactive features, coming in 2010.
• Developed an advanced asset management system for the distribution and archiving of syndicated content, replacing an outdated system of manual distribution and archiving employed for over a decade.
• Most importantly: Developed the digital media strategy that will define JTA’s role in the online market for the coming decade. Based upon my ShulShopper concept, the forthcoming initiative (codenamed JMetros) will set the standard for Jewish content and interactivity online.

The bottom line? From the day I started to the day of my departure, JTA’s website traffic has increased 1½ times over. Ie., the number of visitors to JTA’s website today is more than double what it was when I began two years ago.

That’s what I call “mission accomplished.”

Best of luck to my colleagues. I look forward to seeing what comes next from JTA.

I have been given the distinguished honor of co-chairing this year’s New Israel Fund New Generations benefit. The event, which will take place at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on September 9, features the Israeli DJ crew Soulico, as well as the Ethio-Israeli hip-hop duo Axum, and will help support New Israel Fund programs in Israel over the next year.

For you, this means two things:

1. That you should buy tickets, which go on sale Monday are now on sale!
2. That you’re going to be hearing a lot more about this event until it’s over.

Save me the trouble of reminding you every couple of days for the next month (which I fully intend to do): Purchase your tickets ASAP and sell this thing out in a week.

Details below. Click here to purchase tickets.

Here are 10 things that happened in the Jewish world yesterday which Tablet thought less significant than the fact that I mistook a piece of art by Dan Colen for one by his longtime collaborator, Dash Snow, in a tweet:

1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to bring down Iran’s “western foes.” [Reuters]
2. The World Jewish Congress called on the European Union to take a tougher stance towards Iran. [Haaretz]
3. Israel tested a new anti-Katyusha missile defense system. [AP]
4. Representatives of the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta traveled to Gaza to meet with Hamas’ isolated leadership. [Xinhua]
5. “German prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Heil Hitler salute breaks the law.” [Times Online]
6. Police investigated members of the Westboro Baptist Church after a bomb scare at the Tulsa Jewish Retirement and Health Care Center. [Tulsa World]
7. Ivanka Trump, who officially became a Jew this week, announced her engagement to NY Observer publisher Jared Kushner. [Gawker]
8. MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan, appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show, went off on a tirade about how “This has been a country basically built by white folks.” [Gawker]
9. Maksim Katsnelson, a 23 year-old Jewish man from the Bronx, was arrested for the second time yesterday, after donning a Superman outfit and scuffling with police officers in midtown Manhattan. [ANIMAL]
10. “An American citizen was arrested on Thursday after trying to force open the doors of an El Al jet bound for New York seconds before take-off from Ben Gurion airport.” [Jerusalem Post]

Oh, and for the record, a single tweet does not a backlash make.

Jewish communal leaders should consider that the more aggressively they criticize this president’s sensible pro-Israel policies, the more they will alienate us from their aging institutions.

Amen, amen.

You’d think you wouldn’t have to spell it out for them, and frankly you don’t. Our elders of Zion seem to be fully aware of this schism and some are fighting tooth and nail to repel the paradigm shift, issuing endless denunciations of our generation’s liberal values as contrary to Israel and the Jewish people’s interests. Commentary’s narishkeit last week is only a recent, albeit embarrassing, example.

As such divisions become more pronounced — raising the stakes for a faction which has enjoyed uninterrupted dominance of the collective Jewish public agenda for longer than our age cohort has walked the earth — expect the rhetoric to ratchet up another notch or twelve.

I had the pleasure of spending the day yesterday at Eden Village Camp, the new Jewish environmental summer camp in Putnam Valley, NY, run by Yoni Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer. Based at the site of a former UJA Federation camp, the new camp, which will teach children environmental stewardship, sustainable agriculture, and Jewish agricultural values, was founded with an innovation grant from the Foundation for Jewish Camp.

Yesterday was the Beresheit Festival, a workday where volunteers helped refurbish the camp to prepare it for next season’s campers and also celebrated the camp’s launch with various family activities and live rock and reggae music. In addition to DJing a brief set, I was on camera duty, popping snaps and shooting video for a JTA news segment. My lady, Ris, was kind enough to help out with the camera work.

The video news report follows. Photos here.

Medical marijuana is already legal in Israel and MAPS has approval from the Israeli Anti-Drug Authority and other government agencies to proceed, but has recently hit a wall with the Israeli Health Ministry due to the prerogatives of United Torah Judaism’s Yaakov Litzman, the current Deputy Health Minister, who is unfriendly towards the initiative.

MAPS is seeking the assistance of rabbis ordained by the Israeli Rabbinate who are willing to petition Litzman to support the compassionate use of medical marijuana.

This is not an end-run around the system to legalize pot. This is a serious effort to provide medicine to the sick.

If you or anyone you know would be willing to make such a petition, you would be doing a tremendous service to the thousands, if not tens-of-thousands, of ill patients in Israel who could derive benefit from the use of medical marijuana.

A halachic case for dispensing medical marijuana can be found here.

Please consider helping.

MK Litzman can be reached at 02-6753730 or at ylitzman@knesset.gov.il.