Ezra Glin­ter is the edi­tor of the new sto­ry anthol­o­gy Have I Got a Sto­ry for You: More Than a Cen­tu­ry of Fic­tion from The For­ward. With the offi­cial book launch event, Ezra is guest blog­ging for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe series here on The ProsenPeo­ple.

Among the most inter­est parts of the Forverts that I came across while research­ing Have I Got a Sto­ry for You: More Than a Cen­tu­ry of Fic­tion from the For­ward were the many front pages filled with head­lines announc­ing the news of the day. Here are 12 that jumped out at me.

This head­line brought Forverts read­ers news of the Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist Fac­to­ry Fire, which killed 146 gar­ment work­ers. The sub­head reads, ​“The Entire Jew­ish Quar­ter Is In Grief.”

The 10-sto­ry build­ing at 175 East Broad­way that even­tu­al­ly housed the Forverts was con­sid­ered to be the first ​“sky­scraper” of the Low­er East Side: 

Mey­er Lon­don, a Euro­pean-born Jew­ish politi­cian, was one of only two social­ists ever elect­ed to the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. For the Forverts, it was a major triumph:

Social­ist politi­cian Eugene V. Deb didn’t win the pres­i­den­cy, but the Forverts did name their radio sta­tion after him, call­ing it WEVD:

This front page announces, in 1929, the con­struc­tion of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way — a project final­ly com­ing to com­ple­tion now (alleged­ly):

The Forverts report­ed the news from Europe close­ly, and the for­ma­tion of the Ger­man-Sovi­et Nonag­gres­sion Pact was nat­u­ral­ly of grave concern:

When Ger­many invad­ed Poland, caus­ing the out­break of the Sec­ond World War, the Forverts report­ed it with appro­pri­ate alarm. The main head­line on the page reads, ​“Nazi Armies Deep in Poland / Vil­na, War­saw, Lodzh Bombarded.”

The Doolit­tle Raid was the first Amer­i­can bomb­ing of the Japan­ese Home Islands dur­ing the war, and retal­i­a­tion for the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor the pre­vi­ous December:

The found­ing of the State of Israel was nat­u­ral­ly front-page news. The next day’s head­line read, ​“Amer­i­ca Rec­og­nizes the New Jew­ish State, Israel.”

News of the Six Day War nat­u­ral­ly filled the Forverts​’s pages, as it did that of news­pa­pers around the world:

Although it was pub­lished in Yid­dish, the Forverts cov­ered much more than just ​“Jew­ish” news. Here it reports on Apol­lo 17, the last of NASA’s manned moon landings:

When its own writer won the world’s most pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary prize, it’s no sur­prise that the Forverts put the news out front:

Ezra Glin­ter is The For­ward​’s deputy cul­ture edi­tor. His writ­ing has appeared in The New Repub­lic, Paris Review Dai­ly, Book­fo­rum, and The Wal­rus. His biog­ra­phy of the Lubav­itch­er Rebbe is forth­com­ing from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Relat­ed Content:

• Sasah Abram­sky: Frag­ments
• Wayne Hoff­man: A Fun­ny Thing Hap­pened — True Story!
• Matthue Roth: Pub­lish­ing a Real Life, Old-Fash­ioned Book