Intermountain Jewish News

Last updated
Intermountain Jewish News
Intermountain Jewish News vending machine in front of The Bagel Deli (48816747222).jpg
Type Weekly newspaper
PublisherRabbi Hillel Goldberg
Founded1913
Headquarters Denver, Colorado
CountryUnited States
Circulation 30,000 [1]
ISSN 0047-0511
Website ijn.com

The Intermountain Jewish News (IJN) is a weekly newspaper serving the Denver-Boulder communities and the greater Rocky Mountain Jewish community (Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana).

Contents

The newspaper was founded in 1913 and had a series of editors before being taken over by Robert Gamzey and Max Goldberg in 1943. Since then the newspaper has been owned and operated by the Goldberg family.

As of 2021 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is the editor and publisher.

The Denver Jewish News (1913-1925)

The Denver Jewish News was founded in 1913 after the Jewish Outlook folded. [2] :252 Its first issue appeared on February 26, 1915. [2] :277 A February 27, 1915 article in the Rocky Mountain News said that the Denver Jewish News would become a "permanent feature of Denver's newspaper field." [3]

The newspaper was the official organ of the Central Jewish Council of Denver, which had been founded in 1912 by community leaders including Rabbi Charles E. H. Kauvar of Beth HaMedrosh Hagodol or BMH (now known as Beth HaMedrosh Hagodol-Beth Joseph, attorney and philanthropist Milton Anfenger, and Dr. Charles David Spivak of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society. [4]

Spivak, who served as the Denver Jewish News’ first editor, [2] :277 was a political refugee from Russia who attended medical school in Philadelphia and helped found the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS) in what is now Lakewood, Colorado. [5]

According to an essay on the Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” collection, the Denver Jewish News covered Denver's East Side, consisting mostly of Reform Jews, and the West Side, consisting mostly of Eastern European (predominantly Polish and Russian) Orthodox immigrants. The newspaper covered national and regional news, including society happenings. [3] Following World War I, the Denver Jewish News reported on relief efforts for Jews in Europe, as well as reported on an increase of anti-Semitic activity in Europe.

The earliest editions of the Denver Jewish News, [6] along with the existing editions of the defunct Jewish Outlook, [7] were selected in 2017 as part of a History Colorado grant to be added to the digital Chronicling America collection hosted by the Library of Congress. [8]

The Intermountain Jewish News

In 1925, the Denver Jewish News’ then editor and Denver University economics professor Abraham D. H. Kaplan renamed the publication the Intermountain Jewish News to reflect its wider range. [9]

Notable editors and publishers included: Hattie Schayer Friedenthal (editor, 1917–1922), State Senator A.B. Hirschfeld (publisher, 1929–1943) and Carl Mandell (editor, 1933–1943). [10]

In 1943, in the face of ongoing financial strains, the Central Jewish Council approached Max Goldberg, a Denver journalist and ad man, to take over the paper. Goldberg, together with Robert Gamzey, took ownership of the newspaper. [2] :278 Max Goldberg served as publisher from 1943 to 1972. [11] Upon his death in 1972, Miriam Harris Goldberg took over as editor and publisher [12] and stayed in the role until her passing in 2017. [13]

In addition to weekly publication, IJN publishes special editions approximately once a month, including three magazines: L'Chaim magazine (fall and spring) and Generations magazine (summer). [14] Once every five years the IJN publishes a souvenir anniversary magazine. The 95th-anniversary magazine was published on July 7, 2008. The 100th-anniversary magazine was published on June 24, 2013. The 105th-anniversary magazine was published on June 25, 2018.

Syndicated columnists appearing in the IJN include Jonathan Tobin, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Mehmet Oz.

IJN is a member of the American Jewish Press Association (AJPA) and the Colorado Press Association.

Related Research Articles

IJN may refer to:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalonymus Kalman Shapira</span>

Kalonimus Kalman Szapiro, was the Grand Rabbi of Piaseczno, Poland, who authored a number of works and was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. He is best remembered for a series of homilies on parashah that were delivered almost ever Shabbat during the time he spent with his students in the Warsaw ghetto between the years 1939 and 1942. Shortly after the final entry in this series of meditations, the entire community in the ghetto were sent to the gas-chambers in Treblinka. This work is collected under the title Esh Kodesh.

Beth HaMedrosh Hagodol – Beth Joseph, known locally as BMH – BJ or simply BMH, and for a period after 2012 also known as The Denver Synagogue, is an Orthodox synagogue located in Denver, Colorado, in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Hamedrash Hagodol</span> Synagogue in Manhattan, New York

Beth Hamedrash Hagodol is an Orthodox Jewish congregation that for over 120 years was located in a historic building at 60–64 Norfolk Street between Grand and Broome Streets in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States.

Isaac Landman was an American Reform rabbi, author and anti-Zionist activist. He was editor of the ten volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yehuda Leib Ginsburg</span> American rabbi (1888–1946)

Yehuda Leib Ginsburg (1888–1946) was a posek and Talmudic scholar in Yaroslavl, Russia, and later in Denver, CO, in the early 20th century. He is most well known for his commentary on the Mishna which he entitled Musar HaMishna, as well as his commentary on the early prophets, titled Musar Hanevim. He also wrote a commentary on the Torah called Yalkut Yehuda and a smaller volume about the essence of Shabbat called Keter HaShabbat. Throughout his works he consistently mines the ethical values found within what seems to be dry legal code. Despite his brilliance Rabbi Ginsburg was known in Denver as being easily approachable and for the warmth he showed to all whom he encountered. He served as the president of the Denver Council of Orthodox Rabbis and was an executive board member for the National Mizrachi and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. He was also an active member of the Vaad Hatzala Board of Directors.

Ilan Daniel Feldman is an American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, public speaker and author. Since 1991 he has been the senior rabbi and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Jacob of Atlanta, Georgia, succeeding his father, Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Feldman, who founded and led the congregation for 39 years. Over the past 20 years Feldman has built on his father's work, bringing a community kollel to the city and nurturing the growth of Atlanta as one of the leading centers for Orthodox Jewish life in America. He is also a founding board member of the Association for Jewish Outreach Programs (AJOP).

Miriam Goldberg was an American newspaper publisher. From 1972 to 2017 she was the editor and publisher of the Intermountain Jewish News in Denver, Colorado.

The history of the Jews in Denver, Colorado extends from the discovery of gold in 1858 to the present day. Early Jewish pioneers were largely of German backgrounds and were deeply involved in politics and local affairs, and some were among the most prominent citizens of the time. Beginning in the 1880s, the influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to the U.S. expanded the Denver Jewish community and exposed cultural rifts between Jews from German versus Yiddish speaking backgrounds. As Denver became a center for those seeking tuberculosis treatment, Jews were among those who came seeking healing, and the Jewish community set up two important organizations that aided not only sick Jews, but the sick poor of all backgrounds. In the early 20th century, the Orthodox community in the city's West Side attracted religious new immigrants and built up a number of communal institutions. The community, especially the poor in the West Side, had to deal with anti-Semitism, sometimes violent, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, the community began to spread out of the West Side to the East Side, and then the suburbs. The community remains vibrant today, and as it has rapidly grown in the past decades so have the number of educational, recreational, and religious organizations and institutions that serve it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley M. Wagner</span>

Stanley M. Wagner was an American rabbi, academic, and community leader.

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The Jewish Outlook was an American weekly newspaper that was published in Denver, Colorado from 1903 to 1913. It was the first Jewish-affiliated newspaper published in Colorado and the unofficial organ of the National Jewish Hospital. The Outlook opposed both Zionism and Orthodox Judaism.

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Charles David Spivak was a Russian-born American medical doctor, community leader, and writer. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society in what is now Lakewood, Colorado. He was the editor of The Sanatorium as well as the first editor of the Denver Jewish News (now known as the Intermountain Jewish News. With Yehoash, he is also the author of what was once the premier Yiddish-English Dictionary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lipa Feingold</span>

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Charles Eliezer Hillel Kauvar was a Lithuanian-American rabbi who served in Denver, Colorado for 71 years.

References

  1. "Intermountain Jewish News". Mondo Times . Retrieved 2016-12-25.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Pioneers, Peddlers and Tsadikim by Ida Libert Uchill, Boulder, Quality Line Printing (1979), ISBN   0-9604468-0-X
  3. 1 2 "About The Rocky Mountain news. [volume] (Denver, Colo.) 1865-1925". Library of Congress.
  4. The Centennial History of the Jews of Colorado, 1859-1959, by Allen D. Breck, The University of Denver Department of History Series, Hirschfeld Press (1960), Page 110
  5. "Charles Spivak: Pioneer Jewish Doctor of Denver, Colorado". Jewish Museum of the American West.
  6. "Awardee: History Colorado". Library of Congress.
  7. "About The Jewish outlook. (Denver, Colo.) 1903-1913". Library of Congress.
  8. "Library of Congress taps IJN". Intermountain Jewish News. December 29, 2016.
  9. The Centennial History of the Jews of Colorado, 1859-1959, by Allen D. Breck, The University of Denver Department of History Series, Hirschfeld Press (1960), Page 193.
  10. Intermountain Jewish News, 100th Anniversary Magazine, June 24, 2013.
  11. "Goldberg, Miriam Harris, 1916- (oral history interview)". researchworks.oclc.org. 15 July 1982.
  12. "Miriam Goldberg". Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
  13. "Miriam H. Goldberg, IJN Editor and Publisher, dies at 100". Intermountain Jewish News. January 12, 2017.
  14. "About Us". Intermountain Jewish News. April 23, 2008.