The Life and Times of the Jewish Daily Forward
Goldblum, Tracey
THE UFE AND TIMES OF TRACEY THE JEWISH DAIIY FORWARD GOIDBLUM After the war a funeral cortege was moving slowly down a narrow street on the Lower East Side. The cars had left the parking lot...
...But if, God forbid, the Forward has to die, they add, at least it will be a natural death...
...At first, Cahan answered all the letters personally, and when there was a shortage of letters, he made them up...
...She remembers running out to buy him a copy every day, rain or snow, he couldn't be without it...
...It's my country right or wrong...
...True, the 12 Yiddish theaters that once flourished in New York have dwindled to three, but the Yiddish stage still is drawing large crowds...
...The old Yiddish vocabulary simply cannot accommodate modern technology and new fangled ways...
...And here is Yiddish, still kicking around...
...This is a new phase of an old fight between the Yiddish intelligentsia and the proponents of a popular press...
...And then, there are still those for whom the Forward is the only contact with the world around them, for whom national and international news is made accessible through the Yiddish press...
...The Forward not only was the "spokesman and soup kitchen for the workers," but also was the "elementary school, high school, university, and even kindergarten" for the immigrants...
...According to Rich, the Forward—Forverts to its readers— arrived on the scene at a time when New York City was rife with political corruption...
...The death of the competing Der Tog (The Day) in 1971 gave a bit of a boost to the Forward, but the paper still shows the degenerative signs of old age...
...But like all workers, actors are entitled to eat and pay their rent, and eventually the Hebrew Actors Union was formed...
...Singer "went too much into this sex business" for his tastes, Kagan says, adding confidentially, "I think he went to sex because it's a big-selling item in English...
...Today, there aren't many Jewish trade unions for the Forward to rally behind—needle trade organizations like the International Ladies Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers now are primarily non-Jewish in constituency and leadership...
...Rich himself was assigned to break in the young writer to the Forward, and he says the two of them had daily arguments about the virtues of Litvak versus Polish Yiddish...
...This practice is carried on to this day in parts of the country, and a "reader's chair" is even provided in certain union contracts...
...print one less...
...Every periodical that writes about Yiddish theater, that we are here and are doing the best we can, it's to us very, very essential," he concludes...
...created in 1877, it is one of the oldest in this country...
...The organization chose to march in front of the Forward and the now-defunct Morgen Zhurnal (Morning Journal) on Earth Day, tying in the antipollution demonstrations of people around the country with their own demand for linguistic purity...
...Simon Weber offers a smile that, like Yiddish, seems to transcend death...
...only an outmoded dictionary written around the turn of the century was available for staff use...
...One Forward is not enough for Jacob Kagan and his roommate Morris Pasternack—they each have their own subscription so they can peruse the paper at their leisure...
...Harold Ostroff, Forward General Manager, says enthusiastically, "Singer's Nobel Prize emphasizes the old saying that a success has many fathers and a failure is an orphan...
...The one looking out the window saw the funeral procession passing by and called out to his colleague: "Hey Mot tel...
...So she just thought she'd come down and maybe get something, anything, in Yiddish by Singer—for her son...
...Barbara Getzoff is one of the alienated...
...And then, she thinks: Singer, Singer, this Singer who just won the Nobel Prize—he used to write for the Forvertsl The very same...
...My salary is $269 a week of which I get $214," he says, his remarkably blue eyes brimming with good humor...
...According to Herman Yablokoff, president of the Actors Union, Cahan originally did not believe actors should be organized—after all, artists were souls, neshumamensh, and how can you have a union of souls...
...Without the strong leaders of the shietl to turn to, the immigrants sought answers from the paper that served as a bond between their East European past and their American present...
...In a piece written for the 75th anniversary edition of the Forward in 1972, Rich gives added meaning to the paper's name, which was adopted from the German socialist newspaper, the Berliner Vorwaerts: Forward with a new venture in life, Forward with a bright vision of a just society...
...Singer, Nobel Prize winner and author of 30 books, including Satan in Goray, The Family Moskat and Shosha, regards the Forward with all the affection of a man who does not forget his literary origins...
...Still, many people in the Yiddish-speaking community assume a more die-and-let-die attitude...
...In brief, Forward toward the goal of the just society, the high minded society where the good will prevail over all evil because none will profit from injustice and evil...
...Every Yiddish folksmensh knows that you can't get a learned bridegroom without a dowry—and you can't sustain a daily newspaper without journalists, readers, and funds...
...So in that sense, it's more an award to the whole spectrum of Yiddish literature...
...Even Suller concedes, "As long as the paper exists, there is a chance it may improve...
...Weprinsky began her own career on the Forward in 1932, when she sent in a short story to the paper with the hope of earning a few extra dollars...
...yet the Forward and the Freiheit remain fierce political foes...
...In World of Our Fathers...
...For its elderly readers, the Forward fulfills a deep hunger for community and continuity...
...Staff people are taking on a variety of incongruous roles: David Mattes, for example, is the paper's film critic and United Nations reporter as well as the assistant editor...
...The Forward, which was created as a vehicle for "the propagation of the socialist and trade-union idea," began publication in April, 1897, after a group of disgruntled Socialists disassociated from the doctrinaire revolutionary politics of Daniel De Leon, head of the Socialist Labor Party...
...For Yiddish is a historical hybrid, rich with memory and the sounds of the Diaspora...
...The two papers are constantly sparring with each other over current issues...
...Although critics of the Forward are always leveling charges of yellow journalism, low standards and unprogressivism at the paper, few people want to see the Forward go the way of The Day, the Morning Journal, and other Yiddish dailies...
...Until recently, the Freiheit joined the Forward on the daily newspaper scene...
...Now, she says, the Forward editors often have to reprint old letters—or invent new ones...
...The Freiheit and its followers are not the only ones who believe the Forward is reactionary...
...How wonderful...
...Editor, Please help us decide who is right in the debate between friends, whether a Socialist and freethinker should observe yohrzeitl Dear Mr...
...The Yiddish paper is important to me and my friends because the language reflects the culture of those people who created it...
...And Rechel Weprinsky, fiction writer and wife of the late Yiddish poet Mani Leib, recalls a story about the Nobel Prize winner when he was not in such hot demand...
...Simon Weber, the current editor-in-chief, once claimed that "it wasn't the Jewish Defense League that began the campaign to save Soviet Jewry but the Forward " During the McCarthy period, Weber testified in favor of disbanding the Communist-dominated Jewish People's Fraternal Order, and vigilantly pursued other communist organizations in his writing...
...Allowing for the pass-on rate, anywhere from 70,000 to 90,000 read the paper each day, but the number is falling steadily...
...Their outlook, so full of irony, pride and a hopeless sort of hope, is as stubborn and flexible as Yiddish itself...
...In the heyday of the Forward (following World War I), circulation had reached approximately 250,000...
...Rich has known every one of the Forward's editors, including the first and most influential chief, Abraham Cahan...
...In 1975, however, the paper launched a four-year fund raising drive, and the $735,000 donated by individuals, unions, and Jewish organizations was enough to prolong the life of the Forward a little longer...
...As a voice of the labor movement, the Forward also played a significant role in organizing the exploited Jewish workers who crowded the sweatshops of the garment industry...
...Through the pages of the Forward, the immigrants received lessons in American civics, reading, and basic hygiene...
...And the immigrants learned...
...Of course, she doesn't remember much Yiddish herself, no, she's sorry but she's forgotten all but a few expressions, and she can't read it at all...
...The ad was signed by a number of Communist dignitaries as well as by the outspoken opponent of Israeli policies, Noam Chomsky...
...Its author, of course, was I.B...
...If it costs $6, we'll pay $6, we can't help it...
...Rather than substitute English words to fill the gap, Schaechter believes the Yiddish press could coin new terms out of the available Yiddish words...
...The idea took hold, and as more and more notes were received, other staff members assumed the task of editing the letters and framing the replies...
...Singer, author of The Brothers Ashkenazi...
...All of them are eager to recount the glorious history of the 82-year-old social-democratic daily...
...But the Forward has been accused of a more serious offense than conservatism and complacency...
...The audience which the paper addressed was largely illiterate and almost universally poor, yet the Forward grew to be a necessity for many Yiddish-speaking Jews throughout the country...
...in his massive work on the Jewish immigrant experience, Howe quotes a Forward editorialist as saying, "We will consider our task done when we have so awakened our readers' interest in socialism, literature and science that they will turn to other languages, and most of all, to English...
...Others at the Home believe that the Forward gives the best view of the Jewish street—like a gossipy neighbor who looks out the window all day and is always happy to sit down with you for a chat over a glass of tea and maybe a little piece of cake...
...In addition, many of these radicals were not naturalized citizens, and so could not vote down Tammany Hall...
...Most of the Forward personnel wave off the question of the paper's future with this statement...
...For now, Forward staffers have come up with their own Yiddish maxim: as long as there is one Forward reader, they say, there will always be a Forward...
...The New York Times is radical compared to the Forward," he comments...
...A review in the New York Times is always welcome—and rare...
...He still does...
...Under the headline "Liberals, Communists and Peace Doves are Combining to Support the Murderers," Weber complained that Erlich, the son of a noted Bun-dist leader executed in Russia in 1941, was joining with the killers of his father in defense of the PLO...
...Burdened by the high cost of labor and printing, the Forward began coming out five days a week last August...
...The Forward was always a paper of the people—written in simple, forthright Yiddish that propounded its socialist message without abstractions, as part of a general effort to achieve a better life...
...If we would stop being in trouble, this would be the real trouble...
...It means—we hope...
...Carrying signs with slogans like "Whoever Stays Put Will Go Under" and "I Am the Reader of Tomorrow— Don't Ignore Me," the group mobilized in order to urge the papers to improve their content and style, to update their language and provide more youth-oriented articles...
...A bust of Cahan in the hallway of the Workman's Circle building stares possessively toward the Forward office...
...Do you know what mir hofn means...
...Coming to the United States in 1907, the bald, slightly hunched icecream cone manufacturer has been reading the Forward from the day he arrived...
...You're writing for the lowest common denominator and don't you forget that," she was summarily informed...
...In Rich's view, Singer's Polish dialect was inadequate because it "denied a girl's sex...
...Its impact on the literary life of the Jewish community was tremendous, for in addition to publishing the serialized soap operas beloved by Yiddish readers, the paper also gave the masses access to the finest Yiddish and English literary works...
...And enough to entice her to continue writing for the Forward...
...It is, and will remain, a universal language...
...Once a major institution in Jewish-American life, the Forward now is a frail-looking publication with about eight pages of news, editorials, and features aimed at the elderly Jewish community...
...Originally formed in reaction to the doctrinaire stance of the Socialist Labor Party and its organ, the Ovent Blatt (Evening Journal), the Forward continues to fight against totalitarian politics...
...Isn't it wonderful, isn't it wonderful how the world goes 'round...
...Alexander Erlich, professor at Columbia University's Russian Institute, claims that the paper viciously attacked him after he signed a New York Times advertisement dated May 1978 calling for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization...
...Although the Socialists waged a continuing war against the municipal administration, they had difficulty gaining the support of non-Jews—as Irving Howe points out in his book, World of Our Fathers, many people thought of socialism as "a Jewish tempest in a Jewish teacup...
...No kidding...
...Since I came to this country, I've been writing for the Forverts, and the Forverts is really the discipline which makes me work," he says...
...And the award was not given for one single work of Singer's, but rather for the whole complex of his literary efforts to educate the reader to a particular period of time in the area where Yiddish flourished...
...The philosophy may not have changed, but the status of the paper has altered drastically...
...Through a variety of cost-cutting measures and a new reliance on major Jewish institutions, the daily should soon be back in a relatively good position: at least the staff won't have to worry about closing up shop next year...
...But eventually, by establishing a public opinion in the Jewish community hostile to Tammany officials, the Forward ' helped break the stronghold of Tammany leadership...
...Mordkhe Schaechter, leader of Yugntruf and professor of Yiddish at the Max Weinreich Center in New York, has been campaigning to raise the linguistic level of the Yiddish press...
...Koreagate...
...Except for a five-year estrangement precipitated by policy disagreements, Cahan ran the paper from its inception until his death in 1951—and his personality and beliefs guide the Forward to this day...
...Cahan battled for years against those who wanted to include highfalutin literary language and complex socialist debates in his newspaper, preferring to reach the masses with simple, digestible journalism...
...This is the first time a writer has been awarded the Prize who has no country...
...Like the Yiddish language itself, the Jewish Daily Forward derives much of its character from the past...
...The Forward receives a nominal amount of money from its wholly-owned radio station, WEVD-FM (named for the Socialist hero, Eugene Victor Debs), but the multi-lingual programming on "the station that speaks your language" is not extremely lucrative...
...Asserting the rights and the dignity of working men and women, the paper raised the consciousness of the workers while it gave moral and physical support to striking workers and struggling unions...
...Getzoff found that many of the older Yiddish journalists do not take young people seriously, believing that they are themselves the last generation of Yiddish readers and writers...
...She's very proud...
...Still, the tragicomic attitude of Forward employees resembles that of Edelshtein's anecdotal editors...
...he asks...
...And unfortunately, few young Yiddish journalists are waiting to take their places on the paper...
...There, she found a disheartening conservatism and an inertia that seemed predicated on a vision of the paper's inevitable end...
...I mean, her father used to read Singer too...
...Shrugging off suggestions that the Forward may have Americanized itself out of existence, readers and staff members point out that Cahan predicted the end of Yiddish within a few years of its transplantation to the United States...
...Last year, Getzoff worked in the Forward city room for six weeks and freelanced for the paper for several months...
...In the past, residents at the Home received copies of the Forward at no cost, but when Old Age Assistance stopped financing this service, most of the elderly occupants readily laid out $4 from their $28.50 monthly allotment to subscribe to the paper...
...Operating at a deficit for many years, the Forward subsisted until recently on profits earned during prosperous times...
...Rumor has it that the advice columns of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren evolved out of the experience of two nice Jewish girls from Sioux City who used to hear the Bintel Brief read aloud at home...
...The Yiddish theatrical companies simply cannot afford real estate prices...
...Nevertheless, some people, like Schaechter, believe the fate of the Forward rests with the Jewish Establishment and hope that community groups will take over the financial burden of the Yiddish press...
...But Singer remained as doggedly attached to his Polish Yiddish as to his Polish milieu...
...He believes that if the press is to survive, it must become more open-minded...
...And thousands of Forward readers have unburdened their hearts in the Bintel Brief since the feature was started in 1906...
...The Forward she discovered resembled a cranky old man who dislikes animals and children and looks to his own death with grudging hopelessness...
...Although the Forward has undergone some dramatic shifts in character and outlook, the paper remains as militantly anti-communist as ever...
...The need for social and economic reforms was, particularly apparent in the poverty-stricken East Side...
...Her father, may he rest in peace, used to read the Forverts regularly...
...But the Forward gives birth to new words like a woman gives birth to a child—the same effort," Schaechter insists...
...While the Forward was never created as a money-making proposition, the daily at one time generated enough cash to give substantial monetary support to the unions—but lately, the unions have had to contribute funds to maintain the floundering newspaper...
...After holding every post on the Forward since he was hired as a campaign writer in 1922, Jacob C. Rich has earned the role of historian for the daily...
...In the early days, the Actors Union helped finance the Forward with money raised from benefits...
...And the new office, occupied five years ago, never became a real political center...
...Yiddish...
...But her son...
...I can't say everything I have to say in English, and so I feel a real need for communication in Yiddish...
...The Forward can't forget that we once supported the Communist Party...
...it is also languishing from a shortage of writers...
...Workaholic...
...Actually, Edelshtein exaggerates—there are not two, but 16 staff writers on the Jewish Daily Forward, the final hold-out among Tracey Goldblum is a freelance writer based in New York City...
...Jacob Kagan, a faithful reader and resident of the Workman's Circle Home and Infirmary in the Bronx, has a different complaint about Singer's writing...
...The stable of writers on the Forward once included such Yiddish luminaries as Sholem Asch, Mani Leib, Morris Rosenfeld, and Israel J. Singer...
...but because of rising production costs and a circulation that has dipped to 6,000, the impoverished Freiheit started publishing three days a week last November...
...She received the stupendous sum of $12 for her work—enough to rent a small room, purchase food and send some money to Mani Leib, who was in a sanitorium with tuberculosis...
...Calling the Forward opportunistic and insensitive to the threat of anti-Semitism, Suller feels that the paper's politics are harmful to the Jewish population...
...Yablokoff admits that the Yiddish theater is in the same tenuous position as the Yiddish press— "everything is not the same"—but he grows angry when he reads articles that prematurely recite Kaddish over the Yiddish theater...
...But the past...
...Gliterati...
...It's only about ten years or eight years that I can make a living from fiction—barely a living—but then from the Forverts I made a living for 40 years or 43 years," adds Singer...
...Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish at McGill University in Montreal, points out that Cahan envisioned the Forward as an interim paper for people who could not read English, and he felt that people who did know English should be reading the American press...
...So to me, this is the real job...
...Most of the aged at the Workman's Circle Home chose that institution because they knew they would be surrounded by people who speak and read Yiddish...
...His letter, which was printed in the Forward, sparked a string of replies attacking him for his stand...
...They believe it does not matter because they know they will keep the readers they have now and they don't have to feel there is anyone out there they can get that they don't already have...
...Getzoff can barely control the anger in her voice as she explains, "Yiddish connects me with the day-to-day life of most of the Jewish people for the last 1,000 years...
...Cahan recognized that in order to teach his readers the English language and American ways, he first had to teach many of them how to read Yiddish...
...In the cubbyholes of the newsroom, the 1968 Uriel Weinreich Yiddish dictionary was nowhere to be found...
...Yet Schaechter says the paper still is suffering from "linguistic future shock...
...In response to Weber's article, Erlich wrote a letter explaining that his action did not indicate he was prepared to accept the obliteration of Israel or that he backed the PLO— he simply believes the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and that peace in the Middle East can only be achieved with the cooperation of the PLO...
...And like any cheerful pessimist, Singer himself thinks that "trouble for us is the very air we are breathing...
...Dear Editor, I am one of those unfortunates who for many years has suffered from the worker's disease...
...But Chaim Suller, co-editor of the Freiheit, says he would like to see the two publications work together for the advancement of Yiddish culture...
...They once were Socialists, now they are trying to be all things to all people," complains Ahrne Thorne, the last editor of the Freie Arbeiter Shtime (Free Voice of Labor), an anarchist Yiddish monthly that failed in 1977 after 87 years...
...Like many other new arrivals from Eastern Europe, Cahan was strongly attracted to the socialist ideal...
...Cahan, who had a canny sense of what the Yiddish public liked to read, decided to substitute her first novel for a serialized piece he was then running by another new author...
...To younger readers, the Forward means a connection with the past: with parents, with grandparents, or perhaps with the whole historical community of Eastern Europe—a world they never knew and a culture that was destroyed by World War II and Soviet repression...
...the Forward became a center of instruction and discussion at dinner tables, on street corners, in the sweatshops...
...This scene is typical: a second-generation Jew enters the Forward office...
...Dear Editor, Since I have been a Forward reader from the early days, I hope you will allow me to unburden my heart in the "Bintel Brief...
...Like an enclosing mirror," he continues, "the Forward reflected the whole of the world of Yiddish—its best, its worst, its most ingrown, its most outgoing, its soaring idealism, its crass materialism, everything...
...The paper bridged two cultures, serving as both an Americanizing agent and a way of retaining a sense of community in an increasingly large and bewildering world...
...a post on the paper, he thought the whole affair rather shady...
...One of these sometime counsellors was Weprinsky, who describes how she and Mani Leib used to select the letters for publication out of a huge barrel heaped with requests for guidance...
...While the paper devoted much space to instruct the proper use of the handkerchief and other minutiae of living, the Forward also helped to raise the quality of Yiddish culture...
...Erlich is bitter about his treatment by the Yiddish newspaper, adding that a number of prestigious individuals have been denounced in the pages of the Forward, and he considers himself in good company...
...Because most of the journalists on the Forward are approaching retirement age or are already on Social Security, Getzoff s observation is particularly distressing...
...Although the Forward has never been the target of an economic strike, the paper was picketed in 1970 by members of Yugntruf, a group of young people who want to revitalize Yiddish...
...After all, they knew him when he was only the baby brother of novelist I.J...
...Their route took them past the newspaper offices of the last Yiddbh daily left in the city...
...But today, with cultural and linguistic assimilation, the decline of new Yiddish-speaking immigrants entering the United States, and the death of much of its readership, the Forward prints only 30,000 to 35,000 copies...
...but afficionados of the Bintel Brief deny that the Forward feature resembles the synthesized, syndicated advice to the love-lorn doled out by the former Friedman sisters...
...Since that time, Dr...
...Because of the demography of its readers, the Forward cannot compete in the advertising market, and although circulation continues to 'From A Bintel Brief by Isaac Metzker plummet, the paper has been forced to stabilize its prices at 25...
...To the Jewish theatrical community, the Forward was its Yiddish Times...
...Cahan could dictate the fate of a production according to his view of its artistic merit, although at times a famed and feisty playwright such as Jacob Gordin would answer Cahan's invectives from the stage...
...But if it dies, then another Yiddish newspaper has disappeared...
...He insisted on intermingling Yiddish with American words, for he believed that Yiddish was not long for this world and wanted to Americanize the language as well as the manner and mores of Forward readers...
...Today, however, Yiddishists claim that the Yiddish press no longer has to educate a semi-literate audience and that the Forward would have a better chance of survival if it would dignify the Yiddish language and culture rather than talk down to its readers...
...and in turn, the Forward gave life to the Yiddish stage...
...He died...
...Most people with an affection for Yiddish view the possible demise of the Forward as a tragedy, recognizing the importance of daily expression for the continuation of the language...
...Even today, literary greats like Chaim Grade and Isaac Bashevis Singer remain on the payroll, regularly publishing their stories in the paper before the pieces are translated and offered to a hungry American reading public...
...As an old Yiddish proverb points out, time brings wounds and heals them...
...With this joke, Edelshtein, the central character in Cynthia Ozick's short story "Envy...
...Its youthful idealism has been muted somewhat for the sake of survival: socialist arguments have given way to religious articles in order to accommodate the diverse Yiddish readership left without a paper when the other Yiddish dailies expired...
...Without a reference guide to the modern Yiddish vocabulary developed in the last 80 years, Forward writers had to employ Americanisms when translating wire copy and English texts...
...Forward to freedom from exploitation and abuse by the high and mighty of our world...
...As an editor of the Yiddish weekly Arbeiter Zeitung (Labor Journal) and the monthly Die Zukunft (The Future) and contributor to English publications like the Commercial Advertiser and the New York World, Cahan accumulated a good deal of journalistic experience before becoming the editor of the Forward...
...Because of the paper's position on Soviet Jewry, the Freiheit eventually broke with the communist line, and the editor-in-chief, Paul Novick, was expelled from the Party...
...If the Yiddish press had done this in 1920, it would have had thousands of readers...
...Forward with labor...
...According to David Mattes, Forward staff writer for nine years, the purpose of a Yiddish paper is "to be partner to the joy and misery of the Yiddish reader...
...This year, Yablokoff says, the problem is not audiences, but space limitations...
...Singer...
...But they are not too optimistic that the Yiddish press will benefit from the new surge of interest in Yiddish in the United States...
...The rest is taken out maybe, I don't know, for socialism, for any -ism in the world...
...He had his quirks and his prejudices," recalls Rich, "but there was no question he was a newspaperman...
...So what's to be done about the floundering little newspaper that has struggled for so long and is symbolic of so much...
...Editor, I am a young man of twenty-two and have every reason to be happy, but I am unhappy because nature saw fit to give me red hair...
...Its policies still are determined and its officials elected by the 100-member Forward Association, a volunteer group of interested readers composed mostly of older trade-unionists and members of affiliated fraternal organizations such as the Workman's Circle...
...Like Schaecter, Getzoff feels the Forward condescends to its audience...
...but the Forward constantly is surveying the Yiddish theater scene, and Yablokoff is grateful...
...Since that time, Weprinsky has contributed numerous stories and biographies, as well as two novels...
...No more...
...Along with the most distinguished literature, Cahan also published the cruder but equally affecting literary efforts of his readers in a feature known as "A Bintel Brief...
...The people who came here had a conscience and a concern about themselves and their children," says Rich...
...Oy, he died...
...Self-perpetuation never really was a basic aim of the paper...
...A number of Yiddishists, individuals who have an ideological concern for Yiddish, believe that the paper is not progressing linguistically, and that the journalistic standards of the Forward need to be raised...
...or Yiddish in America" supplies a bleak picture of the state of the Yiddish press in this country...
...The Bintel Brief epistles were studied with active concern by a community that, according to one reader, looked to the editors of the Forward as it would have looked to the rabbis of the old country...
...Because it wonH work...
...He was disappointed when the Forward barred Freiheit supporters from participating in the international Yiddish cultural conference headed by the Forward in Jerusalem two years ago...
...That's the worst thing in the world to them...
...Recognizing the value of the Forward, many Jewish agencies have already begun placing institutional ads in the paper to bolster its economic resources...
...and time alone will determine whether the Jewish Daily Forward will survive the injuries of immigration quotas, death, and most of all, Americanization...
...According to Weber, most staff writers who no longer are on the Forward are in the cemetery...
...To this day, the Forward will not even acknowledge its left-wing rival, the Morgen Freiheit (Morning Freedom) as a force in Jewish life...
...The Forward has been able to outlast commercial competitors like The Day because of its acknowledged public base...
...American newspapers invent new words all the time...
...Worthy Mr...
...At the Forward office on East 33rd Street, the steady stream of visitors requesting samples of Singer's work in the original Yiddish illustrates that Singer is not the only one who remembers where the writer got his start in America...
...Hyman Richman, a labor mediator who, as a child, had a Forward delivery route, tells how in Pittsburgh's cigar shops, the workers commonly would relieve one person of his tasks for the day so that he could read the Forward aloud to his fellow laborers while they rolled their stogies...
...Yiddish dailies...
...Howe writes that the Forward contained "the widest range of Yiddish sensibility, from cheap sensationalism to high culture...
...Singer began as a journalist on the paper in the 1930's and started to contribute fiction about 20 years ago...
...Schaechter criticizes the Yiddish press out of love for a language and culture he feels are still vibrant...
...He believes the Forward does not reflect the liberal approach of most of the Jewish community in this country...
...The Forward not only suffers from a declining readership...
...It's the most jingoistic journalism in the world...
...And they would rather explain how the paper vitalized the Jewish labor movement in the early 1900's than describe the latest austerity moves...
...The stories in this "Bundle of Letters" were not fiction, however, for they told of the real sufferings of people who were befuddled by life in a new country...
...Some changes subsequently were initiated on the Forward: the spelling was modernized and many of the writers began dropping the English and German words that used to hold so much prestige for immigrant Jews...
...Whatever you do, don't take away the Forverts," Kagan says, raising himself dramatically in his chair...
...But the papers were so opposed to change that they alienated the young and the intelligentsia...
...While long-time associates of the Forward speak of Singer's recent honor with an almost personal pride, they also talk about the writer and criticize his work with fraternal freedom...
...Although he regularly reads American newspapers, Kagan remains attached to the Forward, for he feels it is the only paper that represents his class: the Jewish workers...
...As our old friend Singer says, there's a big difference between being sick and dying...
...Rich remembers that when I.J.— "the great artist in the family"— exerted his influence to get I.B...
...But the edifice on East Broadway, still decorated with socialist emblems, today is a commercial building for mainly Chinese enterprises...
...In May, the Forward sold its AM operation because most of the station's Jewish listeners live outside its broadcasting signals...
...As early as 1923, Cahan condemned Russian "despotism," and since that time, the Forward has printed articles exposing the concentration camps in Siberia and the 1952 Stalinist executions of Yiddish writers...
...The Bintel Brief and the Gallery of Vanished Husbands, a column of letters by deserted wives accompanied by pictures of their missing spouses, were more than popular reading matter—they were vital social services...
...Can you believe it...
...There's a strong feeling of not wanting to rock the boat in politics, subject matter and language," Getzoff says...
...All the other things are just happy events...
...Nevertheless, few argue with the Forward's increasing support and coverage of Israel...
...for a weekday issue, 35# for a weekend edition due to the economics of its readership...
...while the paper still espouses a socialist rather than a Zionist solution to Jewish problems, the daily is a vehement defender of Israel...
...Critics point to watered-down politics with disdain, deriding the decision to support democratic candidates and to include religious features in its once-atheistic pages...
...If it costs $5, we'll pay $5...
...Her son, God bless him, is out in California, and of all things, he's studying—not meditation, not surfing—but Yiddish...
...But one Jewish union still in existence is the Hebrew Actors Union...
...But the Yiddish press in this country does not speak to us...
...That work, he thought, presented too negative a picture of Polish Jews for the Forward audience...
...In the old days, hundreds of Jews would gather in front of the Forward building on East Broadway to hear speakers, watch election returns projected on a huge outdoor screen, or celebrate union victories...
...ah, the past...
...And he talks about the Forward and the Jewish labor movement from which it sprang with undiminished enthusiasm and love...
...Calculating the total number of writers, Weber notes with pride that the Forward maintains foreign correspondents in Israel, Paris, and South America...
...Without a Forverts, we're lost...
...A graduate student in Yiddish literature at the Max Weinreich Center, Getzoff is one of a growing number of young people who are studying Yiddish and actively trying to perpetuate the culture...
...Don't forget England," Rich reminds him...
...Yiddish has no homeland...
...The cars had left the parking lot behind the chapel in the Bronx and were on their way to the cemetery in Staten Island...
...A squat, elderly man with handsome eyes, Rich still publishes regularly in the paper...
...Of course, the Freiheit is not totally prepared to forgive and forget either, and Suller makes his differences with the Forward abundantly clear...
...As proof, he pulls a rumpled check from his coat pocket and holds it up before a claque of admirers clutching copies of Shosha...
...There were two editors, one to run the papers off the press and the other to look out the window...
...Acutely aware of the needs of the immigrant Jews who fled Eastern Europe for America from 1881 to 1914, Cahan refused to permit the Forward to become absorbed in socialist polemics when the newly arrived "greenhorns" had to be taught how to cope with America...
...The Jews were one in behalf of intellectual advancement, and while many of them became free of the discipline of religion, they were never free of the discipline of conscience," he explains, embellishing his words with gestures and pressing forward on his armchair until he is almost kneeling on the floor in his excitement...
...He smiles shyly when he says, "I still get a check every week, and I still feel that I make a living from the Forverts...
...They would much rather talk about how the Forward scooped the New York Times by publishing that Stalin and Hitler were in cahoots than talk about dwindling circulation and aging writers...
...Yiddishists are encouraged about the future of the language by the rising enrollment in formal and informal Yiddish programs across the country and by the increased acceptance of Yiddish in Israel...
Vol. 4 • July 1979 • No. 7
