About The Jewish Advocate

The Jewish Advocate

The Jewish Advocate was a Jewish weekly newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1902 until it suspended publication with its issue of September 25, 2020. With 118 years of publication, it was at its suspension the oldest continuously circulated English-language Jewish newspaper in the United States. It was founded under the direction of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, who sent his executive secretary Jacob de Haas to Boston to establish it, and it became a leading voice for American Zionism in the 1910s while also serving as the primary Jewish newspaper for Greater Boston, eastern Massachusetts and much of New England. For most of the twentieth century it was run by Alexander Brin, who published it for sixty-three years. Its archives, recognized for their early warnings about Hitler and their record of the movement toward the establishment of Israel, are now preserved through NewsBank and ProQuest.

Founding in 1902 and the Herzl Connection

The Advocate's origins are told in two complementary ways by its historians, and both begin in 1902. A visual history of the paper prepared at Northeastern University records that it was founded in 1902 as a monthly periodical for Mount Sinai Hospital, one of the first Jewish hospitals in Boston, and was then acquired by Jacob de Haas. The paper's own institutional history emphasizes the Zionist commission behind it: Herzl, who had founded the Vienna newspaper Die Welt and convened the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, sent de Haas, his executive secretary, to Boston to start a newspaper that would inculcate Judaism into the community and advance the cause of re-establishing the Jewish faith and a Jewish state. Under de Haas the paper went through numerous name changes; before May 28, 1909, it was briefly known as The Jewish Home Journal and then as The Boston Advocate, before settling into the name it would carry for more than a century, The Jewish Advocate. It has been owned by only two families since its founding.

Jacob de Haas and the Zionist Mission

Jacob de Haas brought an international Zionist pedigree to a Boston community paper. He had edited The Jewish World in London from 1892 to 1900 before Herzl sent him to America, and he edited the Advocate in Boston, with his editorship dated 1908 to 1918 in bibliographies of his work. Originally founded as a local news periodical, the Advocate became, in the Northeastern history's words, a leading voice in the push for American Zionism around the 1910s, and it continued to support the movement until its closure. When Louis D. Brandeis became president of the Zionist Organization of America, de Haas left Boston to become the organization's national executive director at Brandeis's invitation — and the paper he left behind retained close ties to Brandeis's circle, supporting his appointment as the first Jewish justice on the United States Supreme Court and, nearly thirty years later, playing a leading role in support of the establishment of Brandeis University.

Alexander Brin's Sixty-Three Years

In 1917 de Haas sold and transferred the newspaper to Alexander Brin, who ran and greatly expanded the Advocate for sixty-three years, until his death in 1980. Brin came to the paper as a national reporter for the former Boston Traveler daily who had become well known through his coverage of the Leo Frank case in Atlanta, Georgia. His longevity gave the Advocate unusual continuity: one publisher presided from the First World War through the founding of Israel to the end of the 1970s. The paper marked its own milestones grandly — a silver jubilee edition edited by Brin appeared on March 17, 1927, a 216-page folio reviewing the progress of New England Jewry — and his family remained involved in its journalism, with Joseph G. Brin writing as managing editor on the functions of the Anglo-Jewish press. The Advocate under Brin was the primary Jewish newspaper for the Greater Boston and eastern Massachusetts metropolitan area and for much of New England, with subscribers reported in all fifty states and fourteen foreign countries.

Home on Boston's Newspaper Row

The paper operated out of the former Boston Post building in downtown Boston, at 15 School Street, overlooking what in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was known as newspaper row. The old daily's building retained, in its cellars four stories underground, the pulleys-and-lifts equipment of its publishing presses. The address placed the Advocate physically at the center of Boston journalism even though its subject was one community. Northeastern's visual history of the paper traces its development through five key Boston buildings, from its hospital and Zionist beginnings to that downtown home — a geography that mirrors its role between the Jewish neighborhoods it served and the civic Boston it addressed. The organization remained at that office, and remains an active nonprofit, even after print publication was suspended.

Warnings About Hitler and the Road to Israel

ProQuest, which digitized the Advocate for its Historical Newspapers collection, describes the paper as a unique resource for researchers for its early recognition of the danger Hitler's rise to power posed for Jewish people, and for the efforts organizations took to support Jewish refugees. Before the Second World War, the Advocate warned of Hitler and the danger his rise posed; after the war, it was a key communication channel for the movements leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Scholarship on Boston Jewry likewise uses the paper to study the community's response to Nazism between 1933 and 1939. This was the founding mission fulfilled: a paper created to advance the re-establishment of a Jewish state reported, week by week, both the catastrophe in Europe and the diplomacy that produced Israel, for readers whose families were directly affected by both.

Later Publishers: Weisberg, Hyatt and Korff

After Brin's death in 1980, Joseph G. Weisberg ran the paper from 1980 to 1984 and Bernard J. Hyatt from 1984 to 1990. Rabbi Y. A. Korff then took over and published the Advocate until 2020, overseeing its transition into the digital realm. Through those decades the paper remained a weekly, available in print and online, chronicling Boston's synagogues, schools, agencies and families, as well as national and international Jewish news. Its community record-keeping produced resources that outlasted any single issue: databases of Advocate obituaries and wedding announcements, maintained through JewishGen, are standard tools for genealogists tracing Boston Jewish families, and its own archives and website were essential sources for the Northeastern visual history of the paper.

Suspension in September 2020

The end, when it came, was announced as a hiatus rather than a death. In its September 25, 2020 issue, the Jewish Advocate announced that it would suspend publication, citing the decline of advertising revenue and, in the COVID-19 pandemic, its virtual disappearance, which had not been sufficiently offset by contributions and organizational support from communal organizations and the federation. The announcement said the paper had done everything in its power to continue as long as possible. It also said plans were being developed to launch a digital edition focused on advocacy for Jews, the Jewish community and Israel, allowing the Advocate to continue the mission envisioned by Herzl, and it left open the possibility of resuming publication. The organization and its website remained active, and the Jewish Advocate remains an active 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. The suspension drew national notice — the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Poynter Institute both recorded it — as the pandemic claimed a series of major Jewish newspapers, among them the Canadian Jewish News and, in a move to online-only publication, the New York Jewish Week.

The Archive and Its Preservation

Uniquely among the era's casualties, the Advocate arranged for its own memory. At suspension it reached an agreement with NewsBank to add its complete archives to that company's digital catalogue and make them available to the public through the Jewish Advocate website. ProQuest had already digitized long runs of the paper — its historical collection covers the Boston Advocate and Jewish Advocate from 1905 to 1990 — as one of the three important American Jewish newspapers in its historical program, presenting it as an essential information source for Jewish homes throughout New England and a record of the evolution of religion over a hundred years. For historians, the result is that a paper which began as a hospital monthly and a Zionist mission now survives as one of the most accessible complete records of any American Jewish community.

Legacy

The Jewish Advocate's 118 years joined two stories that are usually told separately: the local story of Boston Jewry — its hospitals, synagogues, schools and suburbs — and the international story of Zionism from Herzl's congresses to the State of Israel. It was founded by the movement's founder, edited by his secretary, and published for most of a century by one Boston family; it warned early about Hitler, supported Brandeis on his road to the Supreme Court and the university that bears his name, and outlasted every other English-language Jewish newspaper in continuous American circulation. Its suspension in 2020 was reported across the Jewish world precisely because that combination — local indispensability and historic longevity — had no real parallel.

At a Glance

The Jewish Advocate was published weekly in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1902 to September 25, 2020. It was established under Theodor Herzl's direction by Jacob de Haas, appeared briefly as The Jewish Home Journal and The Boston Advocate before 1909, was sold to Alexander Brin in 1917 and published by him until 1980, then by Joseph G. Weisberg, Bernard J. Hyatt and Rabbi Y. A. Korff. Its offices were at 15 School Street in the former Boston Post building, and at suspension it was the oldest continuously circulated English-language Jewish newspaper in the United States.