🗒️ A Letter From Our Editor | September

Breadth. Depth. Range of perspective, experience, opinion. These are hallmarks of The Forward and of any independent news outlet. But they are becoming scarcer, as social-media filter-bubbles and partisan polarization pull more and more readers -- and journalists -- towards articles that reflect back to them what they already think and know.
In this year of protests, politics and pandemic, with our country both more fiercely divided and more deeply in crisis than it has been in decades, it’s never been more important to look beyond your own experience and try to understand your neighbor’s. To help you do that over these intense news months, we have at several points paused and pulled back, and published collections aimed at challenging all of us to see things from a 360-degree perspective.
The latest of these is “Still Small Voice,” in which our contributing writer, Abigail Pogrebin, poses 18 questions about God to 18 Jewish thinkers. Its stunning illustrations are by Noah Lubin, whose drawings also accompanied the series Batya Ungar-Sargon, our Opinion editor, curated ahead of this very different Passover, “The 11th Plague.”
Earlier this month, Talya Zax, deputy culture editor, published a group of think-pieces marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. We also showcased Unsung Women, a series Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, Helen Chernikoff and Irene Connelly put together, with art by Yehuda Blum, for Women’s History Month to highlight Jewish women who did not get their due.
And Batya has also spearheaded the important and ongoing collection “On Persuasion,” about the very art of argument and debate, as well as “After Corona,” in which Jewish thought leaders imagine the pandemic’s lasting impact on our institutions and our communities.
With these packages, our editors and contributors hope to help readers get beyond the frenzy of the news cycle, to give you something to savor and share with your networks, to come back to, to dig deep with. This kind of lasting work is what you’d be supporting by becoming a Forward subscriber.
We are a nonprofit newsroom devoted to journalism as a public service and pillar of our democracy. It only works if you help make it work: please, join The Forward family today.
Best wishes for a happy -- and healthy -- Shana Tova,