As editor-in-chief, I’m finding my way Forward (and back)

Photo by Vincent Verdi

By Alyssa Katz January 30, 2026

It’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was and will be — that I arrive as your new editor-in-chief, at a moment like so many before when the Jewish world (and the world, period) urgently needs unflinching journalism.

Disorientation is hardly just a Jewish experience in this moment — nor is the craving for community, inspiration and joy. But an extraordinary mix of forces pulls at us.

Antisemitism gains currency even as the hounding and hunting of asylum-seeking immigrants echoes ancestral trauma. The same president who has sent deadly troops into U.S. cities to round up “aliens” has also declared himself the angel of peace in Gaza with a brazen, self-serving scheme that at the same time can’t be dismissed.

A flagrantly Jewish movie about the American Jewish experience, starring Hollywood’s hottest (Jewish) star, is a leading Oscar contender, exhilarating and demanding to be discussed. Ask me about Marty Supreme’s ending, anytime.

We’re on a wild, sometimes stomach-dropping ride. And it’s all happening at a moment when knowing what’s signal and what’s noise, sorting through AI garbage and disinformation, while seeking out news and informed insight, is a frustrating experience even for those of us whose job it is to report what’s happening in the world. The temptation to tune out the din is powerful.

It’s the job of the Forward’s committed and talented editorial team to make sense of the chaos, to highlight what’s important in the face of information overload, and to elevate Jewish concerns and achievements. To analyze the evidence and arrive as close as possible to the truth of complex conflicts. To offer a compassionate and inclusive alternative to fury and contempt. To say “no thanks” to talking points, and “yes, please!” to inquiry.

And that’s just the foundation. The Forward was born of chutzpah and ambition — and of an immigrant, let’s remember — and I intend to advance that legacy with journalism that takes on tough subjects, challenges assumptions and holds power to account. Why else do this work?

As a journalist, I’ve played a lot of instruments in the orchestra, as a writer and editor, in magazines (remember those?), books and online, covering culture, crafting editorials and driving investigative journalism that exposes exploitation. My work has led to criminal convictions for wrongdoers and exposed corruption. A nerd for my passions — law and policy, music and film among them — I’m driven by a need to make sense of a world that often doesn’t. Grateful readers and viewers make it clear that they value the results.

Until now, I’ve kept my engagement in Jewish life separate, including as a volunteer leader in my synagogue — shoutout to East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn! — and a participant in a family historic preservation project in Warsaw. My own upbringing, as the daughter of a hidden child Holocaust survivor mother and an Israeli father, pushed me toward assimilation in the tribe of New Yorkers, in which I proudly remain.

Many events in my life and the world aligned to bring me to Jewish journalism now. Those certainly include the horrors of Oct. 7 and its intolerable aftermath. I am committed to taking on the tough questions of what it will require, both here in the U.S. and there in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, to build a functional, peaceful future for all. For the first time in my American life that my parents paved the way for, I realized that my disengagement was a choice, and that my skills and experience have a role to play in helping lead compassionate and constructive coverage.

The Forward is also a forum for necessary conversations about influential institutions and individuals within Jewish life in the U.S., as well as about the political movements challenging their actions.

As a longtime muckracker turning my lens to Jewish affairs at a time of political tumult, I’m mindful of the legacy set by Abraham Cahan, a socialist refugee and activist who, after founding the Forward in 1897, turned for a time to a newspaper called the Commercial Advertiser, where — writing in English, his newly acquired language — he produced powerful, often humorous portraits of the lives of immigrant Jews of New York’s Lower East Side for audiences of curious outsiders.

There, as former Forward editor Seth Lipsky writes in The Rise of Abraham Cahan, he was mentored by legendary investigative reporter Lincoln Steffens. It was only with some persuading that Cahan came back to the Forward, to Yiddish, to elevate the newspaper into a guiding light for its readers, who relied on it to navigate a new country and its intoxicating freedoms, finding their place within its pages.

In this perpetually strange land that I was born to and that, like so many, I increasingly do not recognize, carrying on that legacy of helping readers steady their place in the world is my new aspiration. I’m so glad to join you in the Forward community.