Home / Columns / The Making of Jewrotica, Part II

The Making of Jewrotica, Part II

By on November 8, 2012
Prev2 of 2Next
Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse

From The Desk Of New

After getting off the phone with the domain folks, I made the best decision of this entire project: not to go it alone. Priority #1 was building a kick-ass team of talented and like-minded spirits.

The first team member that I brought on was Jewlicious‘ founder, David Abitbol. David has been a part of Jewrotica from the very start. He slaved over the logo at ungodly hours of night, perfecting the daring Adam and Eve Jewrotica image that adorns the site today and transforming my idea into a reality. David is part webmaster, part visionary and part whatever you need him to be. He knows how to make a page soar when it comes to SEO with building on it and on other sites (like how you’d see on https://victoriousseo.com/services/off-page-seo/), as well as how to sort any of the bugs that come up when you make a website this big.

One fateful afternoon, as I was reading some posts on Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus’s blog, I came across a piece called “The Rabbi and the Vibrator“. I fell in love with its author STS (Sarah Tuttle Singer) on the spot, and offered her a position as Jewrotica’s social media guru. Sarah is the voice of Jewrotica on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. (And call me old fashioned, but the idea of spending my day on Twitter makes me want to cry, so Sarah is one of my most valuable assets.)

In July, I started putting up introductory posts on the site and trolling Google images in my attempts to find aesthetically-pleasing graphics. I quickly realized that we needed a graphic designer who could deliver on my compelling, provocative vision for the site. In early August, I identified and courted our graphic designer, Larisa B. I’ve known Larisa since my teenage years and remembered her as an incredibly talented graphic artist even then. With just a bit of convincing, she joined the Jewrotica team and she has delivered! (Just look at the difference in graphics between Confessions #1 and #4.)

The last core member to join the Jewrotica staff was an addition to our content team. I remembered Adi Elbaz from Johns Hopkins, where she was kicking up a storm in the Writing Seminars, Anthropology, Jewish Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality departments. Her writing was fun and snarky, and her academic background was practically overqualified. Adi joined the team just over a month ago as Author and Cultural Outreach director, and now oversees the editing of much of Jewrotica’s content.

Our team continues to grow with Ezra Hamui as our Latin American outreach coordinator, Tamar Fox as our brand new Judaic Outreach director and Mara Yacobi as our soon-to-be-onboarded resident sex educator.

We keep a pretty flat team structure and maintain the transparency, fun and passion that comes along with the building of any good start-up. Though we are a professional and highly motivated crew, we occasionally experience the humor of Jewish geography… It was recently brought to our attention that a third of the team graduated from the same yeshiva high school. Every now and then, I wonder if they are proud that the three of us have become, erm… Jewish professionals. I don’t foresee us being asked to speak to the senior class this year, but they’ll come around eventually! 🙂

Thanks for following our journey and keep on reading!

Light and Love,

Ayo Oppenheimer - Final Version of Signature

Prev2 of 2Next
Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse

Founder and editor of Jewrotica, Ayo spent the past two years full-time RVing North America with her Jewish educational film program. Ayo alternates between intensely pursuing fun new experiences and equally intensely trying to do good by people. She would love to hear from you.
Related Items

2 Comments