Chana Pollack is the Forward’s archivist. Contact her at pollack@forward.com.
Chana PollackArchivist
By Chana Pollack
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News ‘You read the Forward backward’: 15 readers recall their dads’ love for our paper (and that joke)
Pat Koch Thaler, whose brother Ed went on to become Mayor of New York, recalled their dad, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant furrier, falling asleep with The Forward on his lap. Their mother, she said, saved “the paper after it was read to put on the kitchen floor after she washed it before Shabbat. “ Richard Hammerman…
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Opinion Some koved for covid
Previous Article Next Article Like a favorite bra or gentlemen’s truss, Yiddishland during the pandemic continues to offer this Yiddish-head the greatest uplift, providing some virtual koved during covid. Given shelter at home rules, you’d think a Yiddish svive (reading group) might be the first casualty. We usually gear up with a nice selection of…
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News ‘She helped me learn Yiddish reading the Forward:’ 16 readers recall their mothers’ love for our paper
Raquel Bakalar, a Cuban immigrant who grew up in Los Angeles, remembers her mom proudly pointing out her name as a solver of the newspaper’s Yiddish word puzzles. Linda Galler, a law professor at Hofstra University, said her mom used the Forward to teach her Yiddish as a teenager. And Betty Baumel recalls the Sunday…
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Archive Mit mazl geyert zikh! It’s our 123rd birthday!
On April 22, 1897, The Forward published our very first issue. The one-page sheet in Yiddish costing a penny carried reports from the Middle East war front, accounts of Cuban unrest and stories of a steam-fitters’ strike in New York. The headlines held an enormous amount of news and information. “From the Class Struggle: Locked…
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Archive From the archives, Influenza 1918: Till death do us part
September 1918, normally a time for celebrating the upbeat Sukkot Jewish harvest holiday, instead saw the first influenza obituary published in the Forverts. It made front page news with this clickbait headline about George Abbot of Yonkers, NY: “Sought To Marry Before Dying, And Died Preceding Wedding.” Twenty-six-year-old Abbott died of influenza at St. John’s…
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Archive From the archive, 1959: Passover in Castro’s Cuba, yearning for freedom
In the very first edition of the Forverts newspaper, published during Passover 1897, Cuba made headlines. “Bravo Kubaners,” read our story in support of an independent Cuba, freed of Spanish rule. A century or so later, as we celebrate Pesach 2020, Ben Weitz figured it was the perfect time to tell the tale of his…
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Archive From the archives, influenza 1918: “Eat healthy—and change your underwear!”
October 28th, 1918 the Forverts published a curious ad on their 6th page—in an issue featuring, above the masthead, a one thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the attempted murder of butcher workers’ leader Isidore Korn. He had been stabbed only that last Wednesday, while addressing a socialist gathering on…
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Archive From the archive, Influenza 1918: Reb Velvele’s shiva adjustments
October 28, 1918, the Forverts published what is likely their first rabbinic pronouncement on the influenza epidemic. Written by New York’s Chief of the Rabbinic Courts, Rabbi Gavriel Zev Margolis, it could be found above the fold, technically speaking, but on the very last page of the secular Yiddish Forverts. The informal, chatty headline made…
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