‘Dear Abby’ Dies — And Ab Cahan Weeps
Image by liana finck
Pauline Phillips, who wrote the ‘Dear Abby’ advice column, died yesterday at the age of 94.
The daughter of Russian immigrants was born on the Fourth of July in Iowa and learned the lexicon of everyday middle American life growing up in the heartland. Her advice was always sharp, witty and sound — and her audience swelled into the tens of millions.
Before Phillips’ birth in 1918, Forward editor Ab Cahan was credited with virtually creating the advice column genre with the Bintel Brief. That column helped make the Forverts indispensible reading to Jewish immigrants and a central pillar of Jewish life in New York in the early part of the last century.
I believe Cahan would have been a fan of Phillip’s work, which was rooted in the everyday concerns of her tens of millions of readers.
He would have mourned her. We mourn her.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
