The Press: For & About Jews

The structure of Jewry and the Jewish Press in the U. S. may be expressed in generations. There is the proud old immigrant group, slowly diminishing, which lives strictly in the tradition of its fathers. Through it the great Yiddish language dailies (Forward, Day, Morning Journal) wield their power. A second generation (roughly preWar) shied away from the piety and solidarity of the oldster. To it the selfconscious, defensive Jewish weeklies address themselves. Many students profess to see now the beginning of a third generation, youthful and intelligent, proud but inquiring, race-conscious but dispassionate. For that group, and for inquisitive non-Jews, was designed The Current Jewish Record which made its first appearance last week.

The Current Jewish Record is a pocket-size monthly similar to Reader’s Digest. It is an anthology of articles culled from the press of the world about Jews, Jewish problems, or subjects affecting Jews. By no means all the material is selected from the Jewish press. In the first issue are articles from Nation, Christian Century, FORTUNE, Outlook, Harper’s, New Republic. In the publishers’ words the magazine will “convey a cross section picture of the Jew . . . express no editorial opinion, sponsor no ‘isms’ . . . leave to the organizations which are better equipped for the purpose the task of safeguarding Jewish rights. . . .”

Founder & editor of The Current Jewish Record is frail, earnest Sidney Wallach, 26, lately managing editor of the defunct Jewish Tribune. For active associates Editor Wallach enlisted Rabbi Louis Israel Newman as an authority on religion; Harry Schneiderman, assistant secretary of the American Jewish Committee (of which the late Louis Marshall was president) as an expert on Jewish foreign affairs; and Dr. Israel Schapiro, chief of the Division of Semitic & Oriental Literature of the Library of Congress, authority on Jewish scholarship.

¶ To promote interracial harmony and provide a forum on Jewish questions will appear next month Opinion—A Journal of Jewish Life & Letters, edited by James Waterman Wise, 29, magazine and newspaper writer. Included in the editorial board are Ludwig Lewisohn, Dr. John Haynes Holmes and Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, father of the editor.