Jewish Ledger
Did you have---or do you perhaps still have---those green tin file cabinets into which your parents stuffed the papers and the pictures that they wanted to hold on to?
When the Forverts, the great Yiddish newspaper, moved from the Lower East Side to its present location on East 33rd Street, they took along many of these file cabinets and put them away in one of the storage rooms. And then, when the centennial of the newspaper came, they went in there and discovered what a treasure trove of memorabilia these cabinets contained. And now, to mark the 110th anniversary of the paper, they have published this handsome book for the edification and the entertainment of a new generation.
I can remember getting the Forverts in the mail in my childhood home. I remember the pictures, which were sepia colored and were done in a process called rotogravure. But I don’t think that I was aware back then that the Forverts had 250,000 readers---more than the New York Times! And I surely was not aware that these pictures would become a portrait of and a memorial to all that has happened in Jewish life in these last 110 years.
Some of the photographs in this collection get inside you. Some make you smile; some make you wince. There is a picture of a child, perhaps six or seven years old, in short pants, reading a book while smoking a cigar. You want to pick him up and hug him, and tell him to stop smoking and not to try to grow up so fast.