MESSAGE TO OUR READERS: Help Us Continue Our Mission

Dear Friends,

On the cusp of the Jewish New Year, we offer this update on the state of The Jewish Week, with news of exciting plans and a request for your help so that we can continue to provide you with high-quality journalism, and more.

We appreciate your support and note with gratitude that as the largest Jewish newspaper in the U.S., we plan to continue to inform, entertain and at times provoke you for many years to come with our award-winning work.

But we would be less than candid if we didn’t acknowledge that in these difficult economic times, we are not immune from the serious challenges the news industry everywhere faces.

As an independent voice, we have no parent company or foundation to rely on for financial aid. In an effort to raise funds and consciousness for the vital service The Jewish Week provides in reporting on and building community, we will hold a gala dinner on Nov. 29 at Sotheby’s. We will present, with pride, the first Jewish Week Excellence in Journalism Award to New York Times columnist David Brooks and legendary journalist, photographer and humanitarian Ruth Gruber, who is celebrating her centennial year.

We hope you will join us for this inspiring evening and/or support our efforts (For further information, www.thejewishweek.com/gala).

Let us tell you why we think your support is a solid investment not only in The Jewish Week but in the Jewish future as well.

Every day, The Jewish Week, online and in print, brings you excellence in Jewish news, opinion, arts, culture, travel, food and more. Our website (www.thejewishweek.com) expands the ways we fulfill our mission to connect, enlighten and strengthen the Jewish community in New York and around the world.

Indeed, at a time of so many outreach efforts to ensure the survival and growth of the Jewish people and at a moment of increasing political and denominational rifts dividing us as a people, The Jewish Week is a powerful tool in keeping Jews connected to each other and to Jewish life.

Our form of outreach is actually inreach, exploring each week the way our community thinks, acts and lives.

Committed to inclusiveness and tolerance, we are the community’s Big Tent, entering homes and inviting a shared dialogue across denominations, political points of view and neighborhoods.

Through the pages of The Jewish Week, a lonely senior citizen in the Bronx can read about synagogue life in Long Island; young singles on the Upper West Side can learn about arts, culture and social activities throughout the region; a Reform rabbi in Westchester can read what an Orthodox colleague in Queens is thinking, and vice versa.

Support the New York Jewish Week

Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism in New York.

Donate

As David Suissa, the president of The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles wrote to his readers recently about Jewish community newspapers: “Our power is in our diversity, which is the ethos of the new generation. This generation finds meaning in the freedom to choose. We give them plenty of choice.”

In addition to reporting the news, The Jewish Week plays a growing role in educating and building community, especially among our youth. Among our innovative programs and projects:

• Write On For Israel, an intensive, two-year advocacy program through journalism, has given more than 400 high school students the skills and moral confidence to make Israel’s case on campus. Now in its 10th year, it is needed now more than ever;
• Fresh Ink, with its essays and insights written for and by high school students, is making the transition from print to online this fall, offering a platform for young people to express themselves;
• Text/Context, our highly praised monthly supplement, offers fresh encounters with Jewish tradition on a different theme each issue, from loss to optimism;
• The Conversation, an annual two-day retreat, brings a cross-section of American Jewish leaders and future leaders together for deep and open discussion on the challenges of Jewish life in the 21st century; more than 450 men and women have participated since 2005;
• Our Jewish Week Forums and literary events invite readers, at no cost, to hear from the leading opinion makers and authors of the day.

All of this helps connect us as a community; all of this costs money.

You can play a vital role in keeping The Jewish Week a vibrant source of news and educational activity in our community with a tax-deductible contribution to FJC, which holds donor-advised funds for The Jewish Week (www.thejewishweek.com/support).

So please invest in The Jewish Week now and join us at our Nov. 29 Gala dinner. We, in turn, renew our commitment to bring you a strong, independent voice in our community, a voice whose loyalty is to the truth.

Thank you, and may this be a year of good health, sweetness and peace for us, and all Israel.

Shana Tova.

Sincerely,

Peter Wang
President
Jewish Week Board of Directors