Funeral Services were held today for Asher Penn, an author and former city editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, who died Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital at the age of 71. Born in Gaisin, in the Ukraine, Penn arrived in the United States in 1935 by way of Cuba where in 1932 he founded and edited Cuba’s first Jewish weekly, Havaner Lebn. His father, Sholem Pennes, who was prominent in Cuba’s Jewish community, had brought his family to that country in 1924.
Before joining the Forward in 1963, Penn was the news and city editor for the Yiddish-language paper, The Day-Jewish Journal where he also functioned as the paper’s United Nations correspondent. The author of a two-volume study, “Judaism in America,” which was published in Yiddish in 1958, Penn studied at the University of Havana and later in the United States at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia where he was enrolled at the School for Civil Engineers and Architects.
Penn was a member of the Farband, Jewish Lab or Committee, Yiddish Writers Union and YIVO.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
