Beginnings
Several months back, we introduced a new "department" in this magazine. We called it "Affirmations," and we invited our readers to nominate people whose lives reflect a special mentschlichkeit that...
...That invitation is hereby repeated...
...This period of growth is the longest and most sustained we've ever experienced, and we are naturally, delighted...
...Some of you have inquired as to when you can expect your copy of moment to arrive...
...Now and again, evidently, things do work themselves out constructively...
...Our eight monthly issues are mailed on the last Friday of the month preceding the cover month...
...we might, just as plausibly, have assigned it to Rob Kanigel's report on the Tifereth Israel Burial Society...
...As I've had occasion to write in the past, moment's subscribers are our best salespeople, and now that we're entering the spring, with all its gift-giving occasions, we hope you'll keep moment in mind...
...As to Julius Lester, some of you will remember him from the dreary days of 1968, when his name became one of those used to symbolize the tension between blacks and Jews...
...We called it "Affirmations," and we invited our readers to nominate people whose lives reflect a special mentschlichkeit that deserved praise and can serve as inspiration...
...This month, we assigned that word to Julius Lester's unusual story...
...Happy Spring...
...This issue, as a matter of fact, completes a full year of exactly on-time publishing at our end...
...Obviously, we'd prefer faster service from the USPS, but that seems to be the way it is...
...In the meantime, happily, there turns out to be rather more affirmation going on out there than the daily—and deadly—headlines might lead one to think...
...Not too often, lest we become spoiled...
...I'm very pleased that we are able to present again this month—as we did last, as we will next—an especially distinguished piece of Israeli fiction...
...The post office takes it from there, and, as nearly as we've been able to determine, copies take about a week to get to the Midwest, and about two weeks to get to the West Coast...
...The connection between American Jews and Israeli Jews, it has seemed to me, must be based on a more basic appreciation of each others' culture than we have thus far achieved...
...Our plan is to maintain the pace for all of 1980, and, with your help, we think we can...
...Whether through giving a gift of moment (see our new enticing offer on pp...
...4-5 in that regard) or through just telling your friends about it, and seeing to it that they follow through for themselves, you can make a very real difference to this magazine...
...Our two double issues are mailed six weeks after the issues that precede them...
...In any event, they tell us that good things are worth waiting for, and we hope you agree...
...That's a net figure, after taking account of those subscribers who have dropped from our roles—a reassuringly small number...
...Yitzchak Ben-Ner's haunting short story helps to foster that appreciation, and I enthusiastically commend it to you...
...It's a special delight to reintroduce him now, a dozen years later, in a new context, with new content...
...As to things working themselves out well, you'll be pleased to know that moment's circulation has grown by more than 70 percent since last June...
...How blessed are those who find their way to meaning in the midst of the more general madness...
Vol. 5 • April 1980 • No. 4
