Jerry Lippman, the indefatigable writer of the Lengthy Island Jewish World and the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel, who handed away Sept. 1 at age 76, was extra than simply one other Jewish newspaperman.
He was, in some ways, the personification of every thing he thought a Jewish weekly needs to be. He knew the names and faces of each colourful character round city, the machers and the minyan makers, and so they knew him. He was intimate with senators and mayors and nonprofit CEOs.
And but, behind the grins and hugs, he unnerved and unsettled an institution that noticed him as a perennial gadfly.
All of that, nonetheless, would hardly describe the standard Jewish newspaper writer when Jerry first got here on the scene nearly 50 years in the past. Again then, Jewish weeklies had been, for essentially the most half, milquetoast affairs. Most churned out reliably puffed-up profiles of dinner honorees, touched-up sermons by native rabbis and travelogues of “solidarity missions” to Israel. In the event that they weren’t owned and operated outright by the native Jewish federations, many acted that approach anyway.
Lippman was decided to vary that. He had no background in journalism or Jewish organizational life. He’d owned a gasoline station earlier than he launched the Lengthy Island Jewish World along with his then spouse, Naomi Lippman, in 1976. His distinctive Brooklyn avenue drawl, filled with unintended neologisms, set him aside from the bookish wordsmiths he would lead as an editor in chief.
He recruited proficient and bold younger journalists, expressing a ardour for Jewish politics that made them suspect amongst Jewish leaders unused to their scrutiny. He inspired his workers to stick with a narrative, yielding options that ran longer and deeper than anything you’d discover in a group paper. They usually pushed boundaries — partially as a result of Jerry fiercely cultivated independence, whether or not from Jewish organizations, rich advertisers or conference.
Among the many writers who handed via his workplace had been Yossi Klein Halevi, the creator and fellow on the Shalom Hartman Institute; Larry Cohler-Esses, an investigative reporter on the Washington Jewish Week, the Ahead and the New York Each day Information; Jim Sleeper, a former columnist for Newsday and the New York Each day Information; Annie Karni, a White Home correspondent for the New York Occasions; Larry Yudelson, the writer of the Ben Yehuda Press; Jonathan Mark, the longtime columnist for the New York Jewish Week, and Shira Dicker, an creator and publicist.
He took probabilities on younger nobodies. I used to be one among them. As a youngster in Israel, I filed tales about Scud missile assaults and Ethiopian Jewish airlifts, adopted by years of stringing in and round Manhattan. Writing for Jerry turned, in impact, my school main, and his places of work had been like a second house. I can nonetheless hear his voicemails, left at 5:30 a.m. after he had already devoured the dailies and a dozen wire service tales, firing off “idears”: “Let’s do a collection on grass roots activists fed up with the institution.” “Let’s speak about a canopy story on Trendy Orthodoxy.”
In some methods, the Lengthy Island World seemed to be no extra within the 500,000 Jews dwelling in its yard than within the international Jewish group. Walter Ruby, who wrote for the paper within the Nineteen Eighties and ‘90s, remembers assignments in Algiers, Geneva, Paraguay and Germany, and travel-writing gigs in India, Greece and Jamaica.
After I completed school, Lippman requested me to be his assistant editor, partially to recruit the following era of Jewish journalists. To that finish, I launched him to Uriel Heilman, later an editor on the Jewish Telegraphic Company, alongside along with his colleague Ben Harris, now the managing editor at My Jewish Studying (JTA and My Jewish Studying share a guardian firm, 70 Faces Media); Andy Wallenstein, who turned co-editor in chief of Selection; Chanan Tigay, the creator, educational and Jewish newspaper editor, and a handful of others.
Not each one among my “recruits” was a very good match for Jerry. For all his dedication to writers and their freedom, he was a tricky boss, who hardly ever minced phrases or lowered his voice. But if he fought laborious, he forgave simply. And whereas he was cautious along with his money, Jerry rushed to offer what he might, be it connections, barter at lodges or airways, even heaping trays of chilly cuts and potato salad from delis that marketed in his pages.
Moreover, all of us knew the occasional spats had been simply the inevitable steam blasts of a locomotive struggling to maintain its freight on observe. And it wasn’t simple. Jerry’s insistence on independence price him. Whereas his federation-backed rivals benefited from automated funds and subscribers, Jerry needed to hustle, scrounging for readers and advertisers and, at instances, workplace area.
In 1984, Lippman butted heads with UJA-Federation of New York, which sponsored the rival New York Jewish Week. In a problem that drew nationwide consideration, Lippman argued that by paying for subscriptions to individuals who made a minimal donation to the federation, it had created an unfair market benefit.
In a 1994 settlement, UJA-Federation agreed to permit its Lengthy Island contributors to decide on which of the 2 Jewish newspapers they’d obtain. He took over the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel the identical 12 months.
The dispute occurred as Lippman was serving as president of the American Jewish Press Affiliation, a few of whose members had been engaged in related disputes that pitted federation-backed papers in opposition to impartial rivals.
Because the digital revolution — which Jerry by no means actually joined — helped hole out or shutter different Jewish weeklies, the Jewish World stored coming, loudly and colorfully via the pandemic and the aftershocks of Oct. 7. In his closing years, Jerry lured again some reporting veterans like Ruby and Stewart Ain.
As Jerry one way or the other stored the Jewish World afloat, even via his decade-long battle with most cancers, it appeared to return the favor. Greater than his almost fixed medical interventions, the Jewish World gave the impression to be retaining him alive. That and his household — daughters Sarah and Hannah and son Michael — the one factor that, so far as I can inform, obsessed him greater than the paper.
To the remainder of us, his different “household” of present and former writers, the small world of Jewish journalism and the bigger world it dropped at gentle, has misplaced an irreplaceable spark.
is an affiliate professor of philosophy and regulation on the College of California, Irvine, who started writing for Jerry Lippman within the early Nineteen Nineties.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its guardian firm, 70 Faces Media.
