The Patriarch

Moses lived to the golden age of 120--and gave his people a toast that has endured the centuries. "Biz hundert un tswantsik [until 120]," says the Jew on anniversary occasions, expressing the hope that the honored guest may live to equal Moses' span. Last week Jews all over the world raised a figurative glass to one among them that had reached the magic year: the Jewish Chronicle, the world's oldest and most influential Jewish newspaper.

On its 120th anniversary, the weekly English-language Chronicle has reason to be proud. By a quarter century, no other Jewish publication has lasted so long. With 60,000 subscribers of all persuasions in 50 countries (there are even two in Thailand), the Chronicle has determinedly maintained its independence of political, communal or financial interests. It is read with respect by Zionists, anti-Zionists, reform, conservative and orthodox Jews --and by the British Foreign Office and the U.S. Department of State. Its headquarters staff of 100 (a third of them non-Jews), 40 British correspondents and 60 overseas stringers not only faithfully record the history, thought, hopes and fears of the world Jewish community, but spread their influence far wider than the Chronicle's circulation by providing Jewish news to more than 30 Jewish newspapers overseas.

Moralizer to Observer. Born in London at a time when Jews were forbidden to serve in Parliament, the Chronicle was founded by a onetime sailor in Nelson's fleet, Isaac Vallentine, who filled the four-page, twopenny Chronicle mostly with "religious and moral instruction" for the 30,000 Jews then living in Britain. By the end of its first year, it was reporting, with undisguised satisfaction, the appointment of a British Jew to public office (high sheriff of Devon).

Since then, the weekly has been less a moralizer (although a sermon still appears in every issue) than an observer. To its pages have flocked Judaism's leading thinkers, among them (in 1896) the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who graciously handed the Chronicle an exclusive beat on his plan for a Jewish state. The Chronicle has had other scoops. It first brought to world attention detailed news of the 1881 pogroms in eastern Europe, and in 1903, despite czarist censorship, smuggled to England the first full accounts (with pictures) of a massacre at Kishenev in which 47 Jews died. It scooped the British press in 1921 on the terms of the British mandate for Palestine, and during the early days of the Nazi regime persistently corrected the notion, widely entertained by British papers, that Jewish persecution in Germany could be dismissed as the exuberance of a youthful regime.

Stuff of Life. The Chronicle aggressively championed Zionism when the movement was new, but its great age has brought wisdom. Today it regards Israel with the same air of friendly detachment with which it regards Her Majesty's government--and feels free to criticize both with patriarchal gentleness. But the Chronicle is more than a good newspaper to many Jews: it is the very stuff of Jewish life. Managing Director David F. Kessler, 45, and Editor William Frankel, 44, fill column upon column of the paper's 40-odd pages with the names of Jews the world over who have been born, celebrated bar mitzvah, married or died.* They find space in each Friday's issue for the myriad little social and religious events that make up the texture of the Jewish community. In a recent issue, for example, the Chronicle did not overlook the local triumph of Mrs. F. Rosenthal. Along with a bristling column on new evidence of Russian persecution of Jews, it reported that that worthy lady had just been elected chairman of the Finchley Central Friendship Club near London.

*A wealthy Jew who dies expecting to take it with him used to get a mild obituary chiding from the Chronicle. Of such, the Chronicle would write, after examining his will: "To charity, nil."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.