Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards (JIB) Voting Open

Yesterday, I voted at the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards site for my favorite progressive Jewish blogs in the annual blog competition. Earlier in the week I’d nominated some of them when I noticed that no one else had: Mondoweiss, OCCUPIED and Sholem Zachary Berger among them. To tell you the truth, this is a skewed competition toward the Jewish right. Unfortunately, most Jewish blogs, as Mobius notes at Jewschool, are far to the right of mainstream Jewish opinion which is quite liberal:

I get riled up because I have a hard time accepting that the Jewish community – which is primarily liberal and progressive – should appear to be so overrepresented by the religious right… The domination of the blogosphere by the Jewish right is a stain on our community and reflects poorly on us internally and externally.’

…My goal…[i]s to help foster a larger, stronger left-wing Jewish blogosphere

He is more pleased with the diversity of this year’s JIBs:

Last year, there were only six politically left-wing blogs nominated throughout the entire JIBs contest, three of which were my own, and one of which was a Jewschool contributor’s blog. I’m very pleased to say that this year, there are 18 blogs nominated in the left-wing politics category alone (in fact, this is the first year a left-wing category was merited)…

While I agree that the competiton has improved markedly, you can still see where left and right wing blogs compete in the same category that the right wing blogs generally gain more votes. That being said, JIB is the best that we currently have and I think it’s worth trying to bend the flow of the river a bit in our direction.

The JIB site doesn’t make it easy to vote in an organized, methodical way. You have to carefully navigate your way through scores of blog choices in multiple entries. But be patient and take your time.

I encourage you to vote in the JIBs. And not just to vote for me or other progressive bloggers, but check out other blogs whose names sound interesting. Widen your world.

I wasn’t sure how gung ho I wanted to be about JIB but this snarky comment from the hardline rightist pro-Israel Soccer Dad published at my ‘old friend’ Aussie Dave’s Israellycool blog (where I’m now officially know as “Nasty Jewish Lefty blogger“) spurred me to promote both JIB and my own blogs’s participation:

And the votes keep rolling in for Tikun Olam. He must be getting stronger, he’s disappeared!

Apparently, he can’t count as Tikun Olam has received 11 votes out of 221 cast thus far in the News/Current Events blog category. And that’s before I’ve even suggested that any of my readers head on over there to vote. It’s Soccer Dad’s generosity of spirit I most appreciate, you know? And I do like being Aussie Dave’s bete noire. I take it as a badge of honor. Too bad you can’t vote AGAINST certain blogs!