Forverts (The Yiddish Forward) is a legendary name in American journalism and a revered institution in American Jewish life. Launched as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper on April 22, 1897, Forverts entered the din of New York's immigrant press as a defender of trade unionism and moderate, democratic socialism. The Jewish Daily Forward quickly rose above the crowd, however; under the leadership of its founding editor, the crustily independent Abraham Cahan, Forverts came to be known as the voice of the Jewish immigrant and the conscience of the ghetto. It fought for social justice, helped generations of immigrants to enter American life, broke some of the most significant news stories of the century, and was among the nation's most eloquent defenders of democracy and Jewish rights.

By the early 1930s Forverts had become one of America's premier metropolitan dailies, with a nationwide circulation topping 275,000 and influence that reached around the world and into the Oval Office. Thousands more listened regularly to Forverts' Yiddish-language radio station, WEVD, "the station that speaks your language." The newspaper's editorial staff included, at one time or another, nearly every major luminary in the then-thriving world of Yiddish literature, from the beloved "poet of the sweatshops," Morris Rosenfeld, to the future Nobel laureates Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel. At the helm, guiding the paper for a full half-century until his death in 1950, was Cahan. Both as an editor and in his own writings - including his timeless advice column, the Bintel Brief - he set the populist, down-to-earth tone that was Forverts' hallmark. In thousands of Jewish households across the country Forverts was for decades more than just a daily newspaper - it was a trusted guide and a member of the family.

With the end of World War II Forverts entered a period of decline. The vast, Yiddish-speaking world of Eastern European Jewry was no more. Without replenishment, Forverts' own readership was dwindling and graying. In 1983 the paper cut back to a weekly publishing schedule and launched an English-language supplement. In 1990 the Forward Association, the newspaper's non-profit holding company, made the bold decision to remake the English-language Forward as an independent, high-profile weekly newspaper. The English Forward's current editor, the veteran journalist and author J.J. Goldberg, who took the reins in July 2000, has continued and expanded the paper's commitment to incisive, hard-hitting reportage while at the same time returning to the populist, progressive spirit that was the Forverts' hallmark in its early years.

In more recent years the Yiddish Forverts has experienced a revival, benefiting from the renewed interest in Yiddish on college campuses and from the leadership of a young, energetic new editor, the Russian-born essayist and novelist Boris Sandler, who took over in 1998.

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