You’re holding the 500th edition of Mishpacha! For 500 consecutive issues, week after week, Shabbos after Shabbos, Mishpacha has been there — an integral part of the Shabbos experience and a vibrant mirror of our community’s priorities, personalities, and conversations. In honor of this milestone, we asked our writers to riff on the phrase “week after week” — in 500 words or less. What images and memories does the term bring to your mind?
What the readers want (or don’t)
Mishpacha is not art for art’s sake. It’s a product that’s constantly calibrated and recalibrated to satisfy the needs and wants of a savvy readership. What’s our sense of that readership and how have they clued us in to their inclinations?
What they want.
Take me far away they ask. Life can get so mundane and prosaic. The endless bills the orthodontist appointments the dirty dishes it all piles up high so high until it threatens to bury me. I want you to whisk me away. Take me to other countries to different centuries. Fling color and drama and excitement into my life.
Give me role models they plead. I’m all too familiar with human failings. Show me greatness. Let me see other Jews rising above themselves beyond themselves. Bring me along when they reach out to others and grasp eternity. And then perhaps today perhaps tomorrow I will try to do the same.
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