Moskot-designed Jewish Living to launch in New York next week

[This story has been updated.]

The magazine launch that lost Toronto Life an art director happens next week as New York-based Jewish Living publishes its first issue. Carol Moskot, left TL to move with her husband, ex-ad agency executive Daniel Zimerman, to art direct the title. Zimmerman said it was going to be a “thoroughly modern magazine” that aims to “celebrate Jewish home, family and cultural life.”

According to a story in Folio: magazine, it starts off with a rate base of 100,000—part newsstand, part pre-launch subscriptions sold to Jewish associations—targeting Jewish professional women aged 25-34 with a median household income of over $125,000.

[UPDATE: According to a story in the New York Daily News, the magazine's seed money was $10,000 put up by Zimerman and his friend Stuart Sherman, who in turn introduced the idea to wealthy Jewish financiers in Toronto, including Sam Reisman, CEO of invesment bank Rose Corp., and Morris Perlis, the former president of American Express Canada. A group of investors contributed $4 million and owns about 60% of the magazine. Zimerman, who put up about $50,000, owns the rest.

To create an initial subscriber base, they struck a deal with nonprofit Jewish federations across the country. Some 40,000 out of Jewish Living's 100,000 circulation rate base will be young families who'll get the magazine for free. The federations will pay between 50% to 70% of the subscription price. In exchange, they'll get eight-page inserts in Jewish Living to promote their efforts.]

Zimerman said that he hoped Jewish Living would complement the more irreverent Heeb (aimed at a younger demographic):

“We’re not creating anything that is earth-shatteringly innovative,” Zimerman tells Folio:. “Heeb — I love it, I’ve been a subscriber since day one — talks to a younger demographic, the 18-to-25-year-old. Our reader is slightly older; stylistically, we’re different.” Jewish Living, in other words, is more Martha than Matisyahu.

When Heeb readers turn 29 and start having kids, Zimerman says, “Our hope is that they’ll start reading our magazine.”

The new bimonthly which, while it is focussed on New York, will probably find a ready market in the large Jewish populations elsewhere, such as in Toronto, starts off with a 100-page issue and 25 pages of advertising. Zimerman said that 35% of the editorial will be food related.

The publishing team includes Moskot at creative director, ex-Saveur executive editor and parenting.com founding editor Liza Schoenfein as editor-in-chief; ex-Western Interiors exec Kim Amzallag as publisher.