Thoughts on Jewish journalism, Rockower awards, and gratitude

It’s hard to figure out the balance when you’re watching a teeter-totter; one side of the plank holds the-world-going-insane and the world-going-on-its-regular-business sits on the other. They both seem to be of about equal weight.

Regular joy — graduations, weddings, births, and other bits of bliss — and even normal grief are on one side, as well as entirely quotidian things like shopping and sending the kids off to camp and getting gas — and Israel and Gaza and Iran and Ukraine and Russia and U.S. politics and polarization are on the other.

We at the Jewish Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News joined our colleagues in the Jewish newspaper world in the celebration of normal this week, as we met in Pittsburgh for the annual meeting of the American Jewish Press Association.

We’re in an odd and dangerous time right now. People get their news from a wide range of sources, and not everyone gets the same news. What you know depends not only on how interested you are in knowing, but also your source of knowledge. Even if everything else were equal — if it were possible to have a thoroughly objective, dispassionate news report — there isn’t world enough, or time, for that report to cover all angles of every subject.

And of course many of our public figures lie; there are some who you can be sure are not lying only when they are sound and silently asleep, because even if they babble in their sleep, they probably babble falsehoods.

So — Jewish newspapers take as our mission the obligation to provide news that not only is true — given our human limitations because we are not all-knowing — but also that looks our specific local part of the Jewish world and reports on it. We can never tell every story, but we can do our best to offer representative looks at Jewish life as we all live it, here and now.

We got together in Pittsburgh earlier this week to talk about our shared problems and solutions, as well as our individual ones. We also joined to celebrate some of the best examples of what we do, as the organization gave out the 44th annual Rockower awards for excellence in Jewish journalism. I’m proud to report that although we are a small staff, we did very well.

The Jewish Standard/New Jersey Jewish News won 10 Rockowers. That’s a lot of Rockowers!

Our columnist Joseph Kaplan of Teaneck won an honorable mention in the health care category for “It’s just nuts,” an invaluable column in which he demystified Medicare in general, and the cost of prescription drugs in particular.

Our frequent writer Merrill Silver of Montclair won second place for “The genie is out of the bottle,” where she wrote about how her Haitian ESL students reacted to the racism aimed at them when Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were accused, ridiculously but dangerously, of eating dogs, cats, and other household pets. (It is breaking no news to say that they do not.)

And I won eight Rockowers — three honorable mentions, one second place, and four first place wins, because I write abnormally quickly — for subjects as diverse and as wonderful as Sandi DuBowski’s film about Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (“Blurring boundaries”), Jews and post-October 7 tattoos (“Am Yisrael Chai”), Rabbi Sharon Brous (“The Amen Effect”), the Mount Freedom Jewish Center, muppets in Moscow, NechamaComfort (“Loss, grief, and resilience”), the extraordinary work of Israeli forensic dentist Esi Sharon-Sagie (“Names, not numbers”) and the equally extraordinary work of the reality-based, wildly creative entrepreneur Naomi Eisenberger (“Good people help good people”).

I am deeply proud of all of us. Our staff at the Jewish Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News all contribute profoundly to our success. Our advertising department can’t win awards because there are no awards given out for the kind of hard work they do, but if they didn’t do it, there would be no newspapers. Thank you, Natalie, Brenda, Robin, Nancy, and Peggy. Our art department is brilliant and tireless, and the paper looks good because of the love they put into it. Thank you, Jerry, Deb, Andrea, and Kelly. And all our writers and columnists and editors — Beth, Abby, Abby (not a typo!), Rosanne, Leah, Deb, Tzivia, Joseph, Lori,
Banji, Merrill, Esther, Shammai, Lois, Jon, Dave, and of course Jenna and Larry and everyone I’m sure I’ve forgotten — thank you all so much.

But most of all it’s the community. We are blessed in an extraordinary community — in a way two communities, North Jersey and MetroWest, and in another way many smaller communites, and in maybe the most important way one community. The Jewish community.

Thank you, everybody. Let’s all face whatever’s coming at us next together, with strength and courage and good humor and heart and art and words. Lots and lots of words.

—JP

Opinion

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