A left-wing Yiddish weekly published here is feuding with two other leftist periodicals on the issue of anti-Semitism. The focus of the polemics between Joshua Gershman, editor of Vochenblatt, and Dyson Carter, who edits the Northern Neighbor, is not the current situation of Jews in Russia but whether Jews supported or opposed Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. Mr. Gershman has also taken issue with the Russian-language left-wing organ, Vestnik, which suggested recently that Jews think they are beyond criticism because they suffered at the hands of Hitler.
The Vochenblatt editor objected to Mr. Carter’s reaction to his criticism of an advertisement for a new edition of a book by Lenin. The advertisement, published in the Northern Neighbor, claimed that Jews fought against Lenin and the Revolution and that “Jewish nationalist poisons” like Zionism and Buddhism were responsible for anti-Semitism in Russia. “Why pick out the Jews who opposed Lenin? What about the tremendous number of Jews who went hand in hand with Lenin in all his struggles until after the establishment of the world’s first Socialist state,” Mr. Gershman wrote. In reply to Vestnik, he declared that no Jewish society ever accepted the idea that a Jewish offender should go unpunished because of Jewish suffering.
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.
