Farewell, Dear Readers

In the 1970s, the only English newspaper that catered to an Orthodox audience was The Jewish Press. It was read – it seemed – in every religious home. It formed the discussions for the week, the Shabbos table, and often the rabbi’s sermon. The newspaper thrived, and every year an extra folio or two added to its girth.

From the beginning, the paper understood very well what its audience was interested in, what they wanted to read about – and it delivered that faithfully week after week.

As someone with a longtime association with this paper, I want to share some memories about The Jewish Press of yore. Of course, there is much to enjoy and discover every week in its contemporary incarnation – as I hope you do. But let’s take a little walk down memory lane.

A sophisticated joke is told about the fierce competition between the two preeminent religious Yiddish newspapers in New York at the beginning of the twentieth century: The Morgen Journal and the Tageblatt. The religious readership willing to buy a newspaper in Yiddish was not large enough to support two newspapers. Accordingly, each paper tried to out-scoop the other with outlandish headlines that would lure readers away from the competition.

One day, the Journal unfurled the ultimate coup de grâce, which put the grinding competition to a halt. The paper featured a banner headline reading: “The Daughter of the Queen of China is Coming to America Zucchin a Shidduch [Searching for a Match]!”

This story sounded so juicy that the Journal could not print enough copies. One thing became abundantly clear: With this exclusive, sensational story, the Tageblatt could no longer compete, and the paper’s venerable editor sat in his office mourning his paper’s death, totally bewildered as to how his competitor could have so vastly out-scooped him. After all, both papers ran the same stories that had appeared in The New York Times the day before, translated into Yiddish.

The morose editor scanned through the Times repeatedly – unable to find even a hint of this spectacular and breathtaking story. Hunched in his chair with a stream of tears sliding down his face, he made one final perusal of yesterday’s Times. And there it was! Tucked away in the shipping news was the spectacular item, “Empress of China is Sailing to New York on Its Maiden Voyage.”

This witty anecdote is the opposite of what The Jewish Press was. The Jewish Press had no interest in The New York Times other than to attack it. The Gray Lady could hardly find a kind word to write about Israel, and The Jewish Press never printed anything derogatory about Israel, Gedolei Yisrael, or the Jewish people.

On the contrary, the paper’s regular features included stories about Talmudic lore, halacha columns, everything of interest happening in the New York Metropolitan area (decades later to expand with local news pertinent to Los Angeles and Southern Florida), pages devoted to what was happening in Israel (including a column by Sheindel Weinbach about Israel’s sunnier side), a fabulously popular column by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis. Most significantly, The Jewish Press was the organ to spread the word of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Hy”d, and the JDL.

On a personal level, especially being an out-of-towner, I looked forward to the arrival of The Jewish Press all week long. Right in the beginning pages, the paper laid out what was in store for the coming days, and if it was a week blessed with a holiday, the paper spelled out what to do and what had to be avoided. For those of us who could not remember from year to year, The Jewish Press was there to remind us.

As a youngster, I remember curling up on the couch with the paper and reading the halacha columns by JP founder Rabbi Sholom Klass and by Rabbi Avraham Scheinberg, zichronam livracha, which were excellent and practical – preceding by decades the era of halachic works in English. The mantle in this realm was competently passed to Rabbi Yaakov Klass. Shifra Hoffman kept Rabbi Kahane’s legacy alive, and Naomi Mauer was like the grandmother of the newspaper, always writing something nice about something.

You would also find education columns, advice from psychologists and therapists, answers to readers’ questions, classifieds, personals, and a social register. If you had the patience, you would always find a notice of a birthday, birth announcement, or wedding anniversary of someone you knew (even if you didn’t know too many people).

For a while, Happy Tzivia Ehrlich-Klein had a column, assisted by Shifra Slater, entitled Ya’aleh v’Yavo, extolling the value of coming on aliyah. This feature, like so many other elements of the paper, did a lot of good for a lot of people. On the back page of the paper was a sketch of a boy performing gelilah, and the message was not lost – at least on me – that another week had lapsed and The Jewish Press was there to capture the Torah and Jewish ideas.

Writing about The Jewish Press of yore is making me sound like Arnold Fine in his “I Remember When” musings, which, while most appreciated by Baby Boomers-plus, sometimes had very important news nuggets stashed among all the nostalgia.

As much as we loved The Jewish Press, you had to admit that there was something a tad sensationalist about the headlines. This gave way to humor and a barrage of jokes at the expense of the paper. Alas, The Jewish Press, like every newspaper, amplified news to draw attention. Never did this come to a head more than in the 1979 publication of a satire of The Jewish Press released the week of Purim.

I never read or even saw the parody, but I did hear many of the jokes that were cracked at the expense of The Jewish Press. As parodies go, some of the spoofs bordered on cruel, some were not in the best taste, and some were downright funny. The fact is, of the 30,000 parody copies that were printed, they disappeared in days – which is only a tribute to the success, the influence, and the inspiration of The Jewish Press. No one lampoons mediocre players.

Speaking of parodies of Jewish Press headlines, I wish to share one that I saw in 1975, and all these years later, still vividly remember. I walked into the shiur room of Rabbi J.D. Bleich in Yeshiva University to ask a shaila, but the venerable sage was not around. “Where is Rabbi Bleich?” I inquired, and the few students in the room proudly pointed to the blackboard.

Some witty and humorous cartoonist had depicted three newspaper mastheads with emblazoned headlines. The New York Times: “Rabbi J.D. Bleich to Testify in Washington Before a Congressional Subcommittee on Abortion. The Daily News: “Bleich Hits Washington!” The Jewish Press: “Rabbi Bleich Becomes President.”

And now, dear readers, why have I elected to write a tribute to The Jewish Press (circa 1970s)? If you are a Jewish Press reader (the evidence suggests you are), you have gotten to know me over four decades. This is my final column, but I did not wish to say goodbye without first thanking and acknowledging the people and the paper that I grew up with.

I acknowledge Shimon Golding, of blessed memory, who was my shadchan to The Jewish Press. Every summer – we are talking decades ago – I landed a speaking gig in the Homowack Lodge, a favorite vacation spot for The Jewish Press upper brass. This provided me with an opportunity to get at least a glance at the people behind the names that I had become familiar with through The Jewish Press. My connection with Dr. Michael and Shaindee Fuchs and family was certainly strengthened through The Jewish Press. All the years Shlomo Greenwald (and at a time, if I remember correctly, even Meir Greenwald) saw to it that my monthly column ran on time (ehh, and if I am already dispensing congrats, kudos to me for the noteworthy achievement of never submitting a column late over the span of forty years!).

Penultimately, I wish to thank from the rooftops the gentle gentleman, the grand general manager of The Jewish Press, whose unsurpassed generosity and menschlichkeit has no peer. No matter what I requested from him over the course of all these years, his answer was always a consistent “yes.” I never once met Mr. Jerry Greenwald without walking away from the encounter wiser and happier than I was beforehand. (Because we share the same expert and affable dentist, Dr. Benjy Krupka, chance encounters were not infrequent, though alas, usually one of us was unable to speak.) When they say, “They don’t make them like they used to,” Jerry Greenwald is the image that always comes to mind.

And lastly, I wish to thank you, the wonderful readers, who always had a good thing to say about my columns. No matter where I would be lecturing in America, someone would always approach and extend a shko’ach for my articles in The Jewish Press. Mega shko’ach back to you!

For those interested in following what I have to say, tune into my educational podcast, Teller From Jerusalem, available on every platform.