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 Editor’s note: We are doing some work on our website, so there are no links to Forward.com in this morning’s newsletter. If you click on links to Forward articles elsewhere, you may get an error message this morning, but all should be back – and better than ever – very soon.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!  125 years ago, the Forward’s first issue hit newsstands
This Friday, April 22, marks our quasquicentennial – that’s fancy for 125th birthday. Or anniversary – as you wish. Nor af simkhes — may we all merit joy and parties in the years ahead! In honor of the occasion, we’re looking back on our very first front page.
“Enough swindlers!”: Several headlines embodied the strident pro-working class tone that would come to characterize the Forward’s early years. Among them was a dispatch “from the class struggle” that proudly announced: “Locked out steamfitters are holding fast;” a scathing report on medical professionals seeking to bilk immigrant Jews headlined “Bloodletting without leeches;” and, yes, one article simply titled “Enough swindlers!” (Agreed!)
Socialism front and center?: Um, not quite. For much of its Yiddish print run, the Forward famously framed its name at the top of the front page with two so-called ears — the small rectangles you can see to the right and left of the paper’s name in the image above — containing Socialist slogans. By August 1922, for instance, the right ear blazoned both “The liberation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves” and “Workers of the world unite.” But for the inaugural issue, business came first. The right ear explained where readers could direct letters to the editor — 14 Duane St., right next to City Hall — and the left, perhaps more importantly, where to send money (an address on Canal Street).
A ramshackle operation: In the early days, the Forward’s inner workings were not very reliable. Ab Cahan, our founding editor, once said that payment of his $15-a-week salary “wasn’t guaranteed” — and archives were apparently not a priority. That’s why the only known image of our full first front page is from April 22, 1898, when the editors re-printed it in honor of the one-year anniversary of the debut. If actual copies of the first issue exist, aside from the half-image above, we are not aware of it.
Plus: Want to wish us a happy birthday? Here’s how to do it in Yiddish! Watch the video ➤ Those letters the Forward invited readers to send? They veritably poured into 14 Duane St., and Cahan soon realized that they were a goldmine: the most authentic, visceral, intimate window into the Jewish American experience of the day. So he decided, nine years after the paper’s birth, to publish the letters – and his own responses – under the label, “A Bintel Brief,” Yiddish for “A Bundle of Letters.”
This was one of the first advice columns in American newspaper history – a half-century ahead of “Dear Abby” and “Ann Landers,” never mind “Dear Prudence” and “Work Friend.” It was so popular on the Lower East Side that signs popped up with scribes charging 25 or 50 cents to pen letters to Bintel for the illiterate. The column has been collected in books and was the subject of a 2018 play.
And, last summer, it became a podcast! Co-hosted by Ginna Green and Lynn Harris, “A Bintel Brief” continues to tackle the most complicated and intimate dilemmas of American Jewish identity, politics, relationships, families and more. And our archivist, Chana Pollack, brings a letter from the past to bear on each discussion.
 We've got special coverage and events planned to celebrate this momentous occasion all year long. Next week, join Jodi Rudoren, our editor-in-chief, for a unique conversation with the three living former occupants of that job.
That would be Seth Lipsky, who founded the English Forward in 1990 and now is editor-in-chief of the newly relaunched New York Sun; J.J. Goldberg, who ran the place in the early 2000s and still has the occasional byline in our Opinion pages; and Jane Eisner, Jodi’s direct predecessor, now a dean at Columbia Journalism School.
Jodi will be asking them the great innovations each made to bring us to this quasquicentennial – she’s already been practicing saying that ridiculous word – and, among other things, what they think Cahan would make of today’s fully digital Forward, and of our American Jewish world in the 21st century.  WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY  Several thousand worshippers gathered on Monday at the Western Wall for the Passover priestly blessing. (Getty) 🇮🇱 The Iron Dome missile-defense system intercepted a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel on Monday night, the first such attack in four months. Meanwhile, 10,000 right-wing demonstrators – including some members of the Knesset – were expected at a march today in the occupied West Bank. (Jerusalem Post, Haaretz)
🇷🇺 Moscow summoned Alex Ben Zvi, the Israeli ambassador to Russia, to formally reprimand him for Israel’s vote earlier this month to suspend Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Since the war in Ukraine began, Israel has walked a fine line in its relationship with Russia because of Moscow’s key role in containing potential threats from Syria and Iran. (Haaretz)
🕺 As Ukrainian Jews spread out across Europe, language barriers are impeding their integration into local communities. One rabbi in Moldova is using TikTok music videos to make them feel comfortable. “This is the only way if I want to bring young people who didn’t grow up with Judaism back,” he said. (JTA)
🏫 An independent investigation has concluded that Linfield University in Oregon violated multiple policies last year when it fired a tenured Jewish faculty member after he publicly criticized its president for antisemitism and neglecting sexual harassment allegations. The professor has sued the school for $4 million. The investigation by the American Association of University Professors found the university’s actions “deplorable.” (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
📖 In a new memoir, actress Jennifer Grey opens up about what she calls “schnozzageddon” – two aggressive nose jobs that made her nearly unrecognizable. “After ‘Dirty Dancing,’ I was America’s sweetheart,” she writes of her role playing an awkward Jewish teen on vacation in the Catskills, “which you would think would be the key to unlocking all my hopes and dreams, but it didn’t go down that way.” (New York Times)
🎭 Beanie Feldstein discussed her starring role in the musical revival of “Funny Girl,” which opens on Broadway on Sunday. In it, Feldstein portrays real-life vaudeville star Fanny Brice, a role first made famous by a young Barbra Streisand in 1964. “I think to get to play one of the most tremendous Jewish women in our history, especially entertainment history,” Feldstein said, “is incredibly meaningful for me as a Jewish woman.” (NY Jewish Week)
Shiva call ➤ Marvin Chomsky, the director of “Roots,” died at 92. Chomsky won an Emmy for directing “Holocaust,” a 1978 miniseries starring Meryl Streep that included a scene recreating the mass killing of Jews in a ravine at Babyn Yar. While filming the scene, a young cameraman came up to Chomsky in disbelief and said, “Mr. Marvin, you are making this up for the movie. This didn’t really happen.” To which Chomsky turned to a German crew member, who told them it was all true. “All the kids ran off, crying their hearts out.” Watch Chomsky discuss the making of the series ➤
Dept. of corrections: A photo caption in Monday’s “Forwarding the News” incorrectly stated that Cantor Nathan Lam was forced out of a job in December. In fact, Lam left his roles at Stephen Wise Temple and as dean of a cantorial seminary program in Los Angeles last spring amid allegations of sexual harassment; December was when Wise Temple released results of its investigation into the accusations, finding Lam had violated its standards and the ethical codes of the Reform and Conservative cantors’ associations. ON THE CALENDAR  On this day in history: The Simpson family made their TV debut on April 19, 1987, in a sketch on “The Tracey Ullman Show,” where the characters appeared in almost 50 shorts before getting their own sitcom in December 1989. Mike Reiss, the longest-serving writer on the series, once described the backstage environment as “sort of like a kibbutz, only more Jewish.” About half of the show’s writers have been Jewish, as are three of its main voice actors: Julie Kavner, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer. And Krusty the Clown — the son of a rabbi, and the only member of the fictionalized “Brotherhood of Jewish Clowns” — whose real name is Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky.
Last year on this day, we reported that NASA named two asteroids after the Israeli student who discovered them.
On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 18th of Nisan which is:
VIDEO OF THE DAY Go down, Moyshe, way down to Egypt land. Yisroel Leshes, assistant cantor of the Lincoln Square Synagogue, released a video in which he sings a swinging Yiddish rendition of the spiritual, “Go Down, Moses,” a perfect Passover medley.
––– Play today’s Vertl puzzle (aka the Yiddish Wordle)
Thanks to Kayla Cohen, Chana Pollack, Rukhl Schaechter, Angelie Zaslavsky and Talya Zax for contributing to today's newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.
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