Devorah Rose: Future reality star or upstart Jewish socialite? (2024)

• By Danielle Berrin
• Published June 9, 2011

Step aside Paris, a new parvenu plans to snatch the spotlight and her name is Deborah Denise Trachtenberg, or, Devorah Rose, as she prefers to be called (it’s a new trend: trading your Jewish-sounding name for a biblical one!)

The twenty-something self-made socialite is the editor in chief of Social Life, a bi-monthly glossy based in the Hamptons. According to a recent New York Times profile, the position has garnered her enough attention to gain entry to exclusive society parties and has sparked dreams for reality television stardom. Reality TV, she told The Times, is “the new Hollywood.”

Rose does not reveal her age (“I always lie about my age” she told The Times) or her full family details, but offered a brief glimpse of her background: born in Texas, moved to Venezuela, then to Boston, and finally settled in New York in the 1990s. She has a Venezuelan-born mother and a Guatemalan father. Besides her biblical-sounding name, the article makes no mention of her Jewish background, except to say that when she was 6, she and her mother moved to Newton, “a predominately upscale Jewish suburb of Boston.”

The blogosphere is none too kind to Devorah. Gawker called her “a professional partygoer” and a “pro-ana bitch” (this term I had to look up; according to Wikipedia, it refers to “the promotion of the eating disorder anorexia”). Rachelle Hruska, who writes the party blog Guestofa*guest.com told The Times Rose is not considered a real socialite but “more of a fameball and not someone people take seriously.”

But in an age when crafting your own persona and marketing it to the masses is de rigueur, Rose deserves a little credit for her impact. I can’t imagine The Times would choose to profile someone they deemed insignificant, however silly or fleeting that person’s fame. And while her Hollywood ambitions may not seem admirable to some, her Hamptons-storming chutzpah is a scarce skill.