For 125 years, the Forward has delivered accurate, timely and nuanced news to American Jews. From breaking news to in-depth investigations, our reporting team covers the people, institutions and issues that define the many ways to be Jewish in the…
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A Newspaper That Was No Mere Newspaper
The men and women who founded the Jewish Daily Forward were not business people out to make a buck. They were socialist intellectuals and labor activists who wanted to create a new tribune for Yiddish-speaking workers. On January 30, 1897, they met in a rented hall on Orchard Street to make plans. Unlike the leading…
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A Friend to Those Who Struggle — Then and Now
‘Victory!! Bravo, Hurrah, Cap Makers! Cheers to the entire Jewish quarter, which helped win this amazing battle! Hurrah to all the unions!” Thus read the Jewish Daily Forward’s front page in 1905 in response to a huge victory by the cap makers’ union. The Forverts published in red ink to honor the workers’ victory. At…
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A Community of Readers
For the thousands of Jewish immigrants who flooded into America during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Jewish Daily Forward was far more than a newspaper — it was a lifeline, an advocate and a basis of community. Led by its legendary founding editor, Abraham Cahan, the Forverts helped generations of newcomers adjust to…
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Forverts!
For this week’s anniversary issue, I’ve been asked by the editors of the Forward to write about how the paper got its name. This is in some ways easy to do and in some ways not. What gave the Forward’s founder, Abraham Cahan, the idea of calling his new Yiddish paper Forverts when it first…
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On the Radio
Since 1922, when radio was exceedingly new, Forward business manager Boruch Charney Vladeck had dreamed of a transmitting tower atop the Forward building — already the most imposing structure on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In 1932, Charney Vladeck convinced his boss, Abe Cahan, to come up with $250,000 to bail out New York’s faltering radio…
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The Newspaper That Speaks Your Language
In 1970, soon after my bar mitzvah, at the instigation of my uncle — late Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter — I joined in a demonstration with family and friends in front of the old Forward offices on East Broadway, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, demanding that the paper clean up its language. No, it was…
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110 Years of Sports in the Forward
From baseball to boxing to football, Jews have been shining stars on American sports teams for generations. Two-time American League MVP Hank Greenberg hit 58 homeruns in 1938, just two shy of Babe Ruth’s single season record. Featherweight champion Abe Attell, who won his first fight in 1900 at the age of 16 when he…
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The Commemorative Issue
This month is set to be a historic one for the Forward. It is, of course, our 110th anniversary — cause enough for celebration. But we are marking this milestone in a uniquely symbolic way: Rather than simply looking back at our first century, we are inaugurating several projects that will bring us, thrillingly, into…
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Yente at the Telephone
The Forward was known for its stable of erudite Yiddish writers, whose stories reflected the lives of the paper’s immigrant readership. One such prolific scribe was Jacob Adler, who, under the penname B. Kovner, wrote a much-loved humor column that sketched the everyday foibles of life on the Lower East Side. His most iconic character,…
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The Showdown Between Two Forward Icons
Legendary editor Abraham Cahan and writer Isaac Bashevis Singer
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Catch Giuliani at JTS
Rudy Giuliani will be on hand at the Jewish Theological Seminary next Thursday, for a lunch honoring lawyer Randy Maestro. The former NYC mayor is scheduled to give the keynote address.
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