Print Journalism Just Read its Own Obit and Got Angry – In Yiddish
By Dan Friedman
Ever longer grows the list of newspapers whose print editions are closed, closing or in imminent danger. But while the chances of getting newsprint on your fingers from any of the Rocky Mountain News, New Haven Register, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Tucson Citizen, the Miami Herald and the Christian Science Monitor may be fading, that’s not true of all newspapers.
And, most surprisingly, not true of a Yiddish newspaper. Started in January 2006 as a sister newspaper to the Forward and the Forverts, the monthly Vayter appeals to those who want to learn the language at an adult level. Whereas “Forverts” is a Yiddishization of a German word for “forward” that seemed avant-garde in 1897, Vayter is the real thing — a Yiddish word for “further.”
Originally with a circulation of 1500 it has almost doubled its run numerically and has broadened its reach to such far-flung enclaves of Yiddish speakers and would-be Yiddish speakers as Australia and Finland. It also can be read – and heard! – on the internet. Although not large in absolute figures, the numbers buck the trend. This is testament to the burgeoning of Yiddish as a university language, a fact also reflected in Vayter’s nine-month publication schedule.
It is the monthly creation of Boris Sandler (editor of the Forverts) and Gennady Estraikh (professor of Yiddish studies at NYU) who have seen it spread to most countries that ever had a Yiddish population and to some that never did, until now. Estraikh told us that the success came as no surprise to him: “As a student of history of the Forverts I know that the newspaper used to publish additional periodicals, such as Tsayt-gayst and Veker, targeting various groups of its potential readership. Like them Vayter has found its niche — as an interface between language textbooks and ‘real’ books.”
Of course his interest is not impartial: “We hope that this nursery will also train new Forverts readers. Apart from fluency in Yiddish, Forverts readers have to know at least some basics of Yiddish-related history. So we combine two things: develop our readers’ language skills and, at the same, educate them.” In that vein the next issue talks about Yiddish in New York and on the early history of the NY Yiddish daily Der Tog (Day), 1914-1973.
Long may it continue or, as the Vayter might say “lomir geyn vayter”— “let’s go further ahead!”
September 24, 2007, 5:31pm
Mr. Katz Is Famous
By Daniel Treiman
This Sunday’s New York Times featured a great profile of the Yiddish Forward’s Mr. Katz:
BORN in Poland in 1936, Louis Katz was at a young age smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto to a farm outside the city, where he lived with a family that treated him as a grandchild. To shield him from mounting anti-Semitism, they concealed his Jewish heritage to outsiders, saying he was a Christian.
Upon immigrating to the United States in 1962, Mr. Katz knew he wanted to work for one of New York’s Jewish newspapers. After three months at another Yiddish-language daily, he passed the typesetter exam at The Jewish Daily Forward at its old location, 175 East Broadway on the Lower East Side.
Forty-five years later, Mr. Katz is at his same job, though the paper, now a weekly, moved its offices in 1974 to East 33rd Street and now publishes an English supplement in addition to the Yiddish.
Mr. Katz is among the honorees of Place Matters, a public art project initiated by City Lore and the Municipal Art Society, which celebrates city locations by sharing stories of their people. This month, the project’s directors installed signs in Straus Square, near The Forward’s old building, that include a photograph from the paper’s archive and a brief autobiography of Mr. Katz, in both Yiddish and English. Other signs elsewhere on the Lower East Side feature other contributors to the neighborhood’s history.
Read the full article for more, including a great anecdote about working with Isaac Bashevis Singer.
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