In 2014, Jonathan Brent discovered something he didn’t know he was missing. Walking into the Wroblewski Library in Vilnius, he saw a long table covered with boxes. Inside were documents belonging to the organization he heads, YIVO, the Institute for Jewish research, which was founded in Vilna and moved its operations to New York in…
It’s traditional for the gay community to gather for brunch before a Pride march during Pride month, or nachas khoydesh in Yiddish. Today, we propose instead a forshpayz, an appetizer-sized portion of queer archival Forverts history — rare treasures celebrating LGBTQ dignity, visibility and equality: our first archival Pride march back in time. For me,…
Toward the end of the new Seth Rogen comedy, “An American Pickle,” time-displaced pickler Herschel Greenbaum’s millennial great-grandson informs him that Brooklyn hipsters are pickling watermelon. “They pickle fruit these days?” says Herschel, who spent a century salinating in a pickle vat before being revived in 2019. “Just when I think I figure it out,…
This piece originally appeared on the Urban Archivist. Newspaper collections are not always the most impartial historical documents, but they provide a unique account of past events, both important and mundane, as primary resources. Since the vast majority of our partners’ collections are architecturally-focused, the two documentary-style newspaper collections that are available on our platform…
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…
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…
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…
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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