WEVD, N.Y.: 36 Hours a Week of ‘Jewish’ Programming, but is It Relevant?

WEVD-AM-FM, New York, is the only broadcast station in the country with substantial Jewishoriented programing–five hours dally. six hours Saturday, five hours Sunday. Particularly proud of its Yiddish and Hebrew offerings, it calls itself "The Station That Speaks Your Language." Named after the late Socialist leader and five-time Presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs, the 44-year-old outlet’s avowed purpose is to promote his concepts of "labor, social justice and liberties." Although its programing accents Yiddishkeit nostalgia, cantorial music and celebrity interviews, WEVD claims listenership from "grandchildren to grandmothers." Yet segments of the Jewish community–especially the ever-increasing, increasingly influential youth–have weighed the station in the balances and found it irrelevant. "Not enough" is the way Glenn Richter, national coordinator of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. describes WEVD’s newscasts, which total half an hour a day, with half of that devoted to Jewish news. Jacob Birnbaum, the non-student director of the SSSJ, goes further: "WEVD shows a total lack of overall responsibility to the needs of the Jewish community. They do not communicator to the Jewish community." The station’s coverage of Soviet Jewry, he charges, "was totally inadequate up to the Leningrad trials, when it became the fashion."

Richter states: "There is a tremendous need for Jewish news. They (WEVD) have to have at least an hour every day, plus weekly features and at least once a week a major symposium." Birnbaum adds that his attempts to register these points with the WEVD management were rebuffed with "You don’t know what you’re talking about. "Avi Coldworth, coordinator of the Brooklyn College Students for Israel and a member of the steering committees of the Student Activists for Soviet Jewry and the Jewish Student Union, observes: "It’s very simple. WEVD is geared to a much older generation." He gave up listening to the station six months ago because it offered "nothing" on such issues as youth problems and Jewish identity. Geldwerth; Yitta Halberstam, editor of Brooklyn College’s Bas-Kol student newspaper, and David Twersky of City College, chairman of the North American Jewish Student Network and coordinator of the Jewish Student Press Service, agree that their fellow students rarely if ever mention WEVD, "To be honest with you," says Twesky, "people just don’t talk about it." The view of an "Establishment" spokesman was also sought. Morton Yarmon, director of public information and education for the American Jewish Committee, said the Committee’s long-time bimonthly interview program on WEVD has provided a valuable community service. But he had no opinion of the rest of the station’s Jewish-oriented programing because he never listens to it.

WEVD OFFICIAL SAYS NEWS AIMED TOWARD YOUTH; SOME NEWS MORE NEWS THAN OTHER

WEVD manager Norman Furman demonstrates the station’s ties to Jewish youth by pointing out that board member Isaiah Minkoff is a member of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Committee, which is a member of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry along with the Student Struggle. But Furman admits that WEVD’s 21 board members are aged 40 to 80 and that he has acceded to pressures to retain several long-running fundraising programs sponsored by yeshivas and hospitals because otherwise "They’d call me an anti-Semite, and who wants the yelling and the hollering?" Furman’s decree that Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Jewish Defense League is not newsworthy because "he’s just looking for publicity" is challenged by Birnbaum, Richter and Twersky–all of whom oppose JDL tactics. "I disagree very strongly (with JDL tactics)," says Twersky, "but its obviously news." A newscaster recently fired by Furman puts it even more strongly. "WEVD doesn’t want to let free and open journalism thrive," says Ray Kestenbaum, 33, who was replaced after three months by Dr. Judah J. Shapiro, 58, the educator and historian with ties to the same organizations–the Jewish Labor Council, the Workmen’s Circle–as the board members of WEVD, which is operated by the Forward Association, which publishes the conservative Yiddish daily The Forward.

"They want," charges Kestenbaum, "to perpetuate an archaic Jewish lifestyle, and because I was too modern for them, too open, they decided to cut me out." Furman, while praising Kestenbaum’s abilities, says Dr. Shapiro is more "learned." Kestenbaum contends that under Furman’s "autocratic, intransigent" eight-year stewardship, the station’s personnel have become "thoroughly demoralized." When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency sought reactions from several long-time staffers, one who agreed to talk subsequently backed out without explanation, another flatly refused comment, and another–who called Furman a slavedriver and said he was sticking it out only for the money–phoned back the next day and pleaded for the deletion of his remarks for the sake of his job. Furman expressed amazement at this when apprised of it. "If a guy feels that his job is shaky, his throne is shaky, maybe he’s not doing the kind of job he should be doing," he says. "They have the union to protect them. I have to yell at them a lot when they make a lot of mistakes." Mistakes or not, WEVD is not reaching import ant segments of the Jewish community. Though it may sincerely believe that its Jewish-oriented programing is exemplary, it is obviously failing many Jews who have no other station to turn to for extensive coverage and analysis of the issues that excite and trouble their minds.