From the archives, influenza 1918: “Eat healthy—and change your underwear!”
One of the most important ways of staving off the influenza epidemic is cleanliness. Everyone’s advised to change underwear more frequently.
From the archive, Influenza 1918: Reb Velvele’s shiva adjustments
Those who must sit shiva, may god protect them, may and must ease off in observing the laws of mourning
Influenza 1918, a look back: Deutsch Bros. Furniture gives flu prevention tips
During the 1918 Influenza, a Forverts advertiser gave out helpful and less-than-helpful health tips.
Influenza 1918, a look back: Homes Must Now Be Heated, Says Board of Health
FYI: Reading the Forverts of early winter 1918, with the influenza epidemic ramping up and an election forthcoming, the paper sounds eerily like today’s news. The Forverts reported nearly 3,000 cases of influenza in the city and a commissioner who thought it wasn’t serious (10/10/18). At the tail end of the article, they placed an inhouse public service announcement encouraging women to get their sisters in their tenements registered to vote. A few days later, founding editor Ab Cahan managed to mash up these two critical points affecting his immigrant majority working class readership. If you want better living conditions, like heating in your tenement rooms—vote the socialist ticket. It was life and death, he wrote.
‘The Plot Against America’: How the Forward reported the transformation of Charles A. Lindbergh
It was on our pages that many American Jews followed Charles Lindbergh’s transformation from hero to anti-Semitic avatar.
At 93, an erotic Yiddish poet finally has her moment
At an evening devoted to her new book, the audience listened and debated some of the explicit Yiddish terms Troim Katz Handler used in her poems.
‘If not for the Forward, I’d never have been born.’
At 90, Gert Levitan decided it was time to tell the unlikely love story of her parents, and how a beloved Yiddish daily played matchmaker.
‘Blood Flows Like Water And People Fall Like Flies,’ The Forverts Remembers The Great War
Forverts readers were often desperate for news of their hometowns and families in Europe during World War I.
Behold The Treasures Of Our Print Archives
Looking at these images, you can imagine yourself in a noisy, clanging, hot, dusty, dangerous press room.
Preserving Our Print Heritage On Eldridge Street
Long ago, we drove our metal plates and type to press in horse and wagon in the very neighborhood where this exhibition is being held.
