A Bintel Brief

The Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts) is an American Yiddish periodical that was launched on April 22, 1897, in New York City by the socialist activists Abraham (Abe) Cahan and Louis Miller. Initially, the Forverts was a Yiddish socialist daily newspaper that emerged as a successor to the socialist newspaper Di arbeter tsaytung. It promoted socialist ideas and trade unionism among Yiddish-reading Jewish immigrants. In 1903, Cahan became the sole editor in chief and remained in this position until 1951. With a circulation of 120,000 copies in 1912 and more than 275,000 by the early 1930s, the Forverts was for decades the most widely read and influential Yiddish newspaper in the world. In addition to socialist and progressive editorials on political and social matters, it offered advice columns aiming to ease immigrant adaptation with practical insights, English lessons, a rich selection of Yiddish literary writing: stories, essays, and serialized novels, and news coverage of American and world affairs of interest to Jewish readers. Over time, its political line shifted from revolutionary socialist to support for Roosevelt’s Democratic Party and New Deal and concerns for the situation and fate of the Jewish people came to loom larger in its coverage. Now known as the Forward, the periodical continues to be published online in English and Yiddish.