Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Looking Back May 12, 2006

100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD

Men, women, boys and girls appeared by the dozens at New York City’s Essex Street Police Station, carrying baskets of cats and kittens that they left in the waiting room. Little by little, the felines began to creep out of the baskets and walk around. The station’s sergeant, James Post, was furious and dispatched a number of officers to collect the tiny beasts. Some of the locals also helped put the cats back in their baskets. The reason that people flooded the station with cats was on account of a prank: Someone put an advertisement in one of the Yiddish papers, stating that Post was in need of cats and that people should bring them in.

75 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD

It was announced in Jerusalem this week that the first group of Jews will be returning to Hebron this week after they were driven out during the brutal anti-Jewish riots of the summer of1929. The group is composed of 20 Sephardic families who will be resettling the Jewish quarter with funds provided by charitable organizations. These families hope that they will be able to return to Hebron and live there in peace. Hebron’s Arab leaders turned to the Jewish leaders of the Yishuv and requested that the Jews driven out of the city be allowed to return. Jewish leaders asked the British high commissioner to provide protection to those Jews returning to the city.

Three thousand Jewish grocery store owners are planning to found a cooperative chain store so that their stores are able to compete with private chain stores, which have begun to put small stores out of business. At its ninth party congress, held this week, the Jewish Grocers Association said that it must fight fire with fire if it is to beat the chain stores, which are able to buy massively in bulk and pass the savings on to the customer. Only through a cooperative can the independent groceryman compete with the chain stores, the association said.

50 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD

The residents at the Workmen’s Circle Home for the Aged typically divide themselves into two groups: old and young. The old ones are usually those over 80, and the young ones are composed of those in their 60s and 70s. There are some just in their early 60s, who are referred to as “babies” by everyone else. The young ones are very respectful to their elders: A person in his 70s always will give up his chair to a person in his 90s. There are a few local celebrities, like 86-year-old Yisroel Zalkoff, one of the original founders of the Bund, and 84-year old Bernard Fenster, a founder of the Cloakmakers Union. Many of these old folks reminisce fondly about the old days as revolutionary fighters.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.