By Jacqueline B. Williams, Special to JTNews
Editor’s note: As part of our 80th anniversary, JTNews will publish occasional articles about Washington State’s illustrious Jewish history. We will start with our own paper’s rich past.
In the large eastern cities, Yiddish newspapers flourished in the years before the First World War. Immigrants turned to the papers as a place to read the best of world literature, take part in discussions about controversial issues, and learn of events in the Jewish community. Washington did not have a Yiddish press, but on October 1, 1915, The Jewish Voice, published by Sol Krems, an active member of Seattle’s Jewish community, appeared in Seattle. In that first issue, Krems wrote:
“The Jewish Voice is being published after an urgent need of a mouthpiece, an organ that would enable the Jews of Seattle and the Northwest to become better acquainted with each other…it is here to observe, to criticize and advise….[it]is here to stay.”
The paper also printed notices of social, organizational and congregational events. Many announcements were in Yiddish, for Krems had acquired type with Hebrew characters.
“I remember very well troops of Yiddish players coming to Seattle,” recalled his son, Nathan Krems, who helped his father and later wrote for The Jewish Transcript. “They would come to his printing plant, some I recall, in the traditional actors’ garb of fur trimmed coats and top hats….for him to set up the posters, advance posters, because he had the type.”
With the help of his wife Sarah and later his son, Krems not only decided what would be printed, he set the type and secured advertisements. Nathan Krems says that his mother remembered “standing on a box, pregnant with me…hand feeding the large pages…into the hand press many times at a very late hour…. The streetcars had stopped and…they would walk home.”
It was hard going, and The Jewish Voice closed down in 1919. Though Krems said the paper lasted 10 years, there are no copies of The Jewish Voice after Oct. 24, 1919.
Washington was without a Jewish paper until March 6, 1924, when Herman Horowitz started publishing The Jewish Transcript. There was no mention of a second newspaper.
In his initial edition, Horowitz admitted that he had originally been opposed to a Jewish newspaper, since he believed it would tend to exaggerate the differences between Jews and other Americans. Nevertheless, with the rise in anti-Semitism, he felt that “the Jew must organize not for aggression but for self-protection,” and in order to do so “must have a means of inter-communication.”
In addition to covering the news, the paper reported social and organizational activities, items of interest from smaller cities such as Bellingham, Spokane, and Tacoma, and tried to “develop in the younger generation an ardent interest in Judaism, Jewish history and modern Jewish problems,” Horowitz wrote in the first edition. The editors chose the name Transcript, according to Philip Tworoger, who wrote that they had hoped to emulate The Boston Transcript, “the best edited, cleanest and most influential newspaper in the New England states.”
By the second issue, B’nai B’rith Lodge #503 and the YMHA had voted to make The Jewish Transcript their official organ and to dispense with internal publications. For many years, especially in the ‘30s and early ‘40s, one page of The Jewish Transcript featured “B’nai B’rith News” with its own separate editors (Philip Tworoger and Barney Harvitz) and with the caveat, “[B’nai B’rith is] in no way responsible for anything that appears elsewhere in this publication.”
Tworoger, in addition to editing the “B’nai B’rith News,” wrote “Brainstorms,” a weekly feature in The Jewish Transcript. The arrangement whereby B’nai B’rith contributed some funds to the paper, lasted through the 1960s.
In 1932, Seattle readers could choose between The Jewish Transcript and The Jewish Chronicle. According to Roy Rosenthal, the Chronicle’s president and publisher, people launched a second newspaper because of a belief that The Jewish Transcript seemed to be “so strongly Zionist.”
Rosenthal, editor Stella Sameth, Leslie Stusser and Samuel Powell formed the corporation to publish and distribute the weekly paper. Sameth had written for The Jewish Transcript. Rosenthal edited The University Herald and was co-owner of the Montesano Vidette, one of Washington State’s oldest weeklies. The backers included Alfred Schemanski, Nathan Eckstein, Al Shyman, Fred Fisher, and Otto Grunbaum.
Volume 1, on March 24, 1932, stated the paper’s policy: “The Chronicle has no fight to make on any group or on any individual. We pledge ourselves to treat all on an equal, fair basis. We do not propose to incite quarrels or air personal differences that might arise in our community. No group will dictate what we print or do not print.”
However, “The Jewish Chronicle did not last. It had made its point and lost its money,” said Sameth. On Dec. 30, 1932, Herman A. Horowitz and Roy G. Rosenthal announced the merger of The Chronicle and Jewish Transcript.
“The combination of the two newspapers was effective, chiefly because of our realization that the presence of two Jewish papers in Seattle is a potential threat at communal unity,” wrote Rosenthal in the newly combined Transcript. Both men credited B’nai B’rith members Irving Levitin and Leo A. Meltzer for initiating the merger.
Horowitz stayed as publisher and editor until 1942 when he explained to his readers in the Sept. 7 edition that he had transferred his “entire holdings in the paper to a group of public spirited citizens who henceforth [conducted] the paper as a nonprofit community enterprise.”
An editorial board composed of rabbis and representative laymen administered the community-sponsored newspaper, now called The Transcript. Over the years, various persons, among them Harriet Lipp, Esther Quint, Ruth Rappaport, Frances Posner and Sylvia Caler served as editors.
Around 1950, the “private owners turned over their stock to the Federated Jewish Fund, which assumed responsibility for the paper,” according to a 1964 report of the committee to review The Transcript.
In 1954, a committee headed by Albert Franco, “recommended that The Transcript become more of a newspaper instead of contenting itself with the ‘tonsorial’ reporting of news,” said that same report. Edwin Guthman and Leonard Schroeter drafted specific goals “to which we [The Transcript] should aspire.”
In 1967, the Jewish Federation, which by then owned 76 percent of The Transcript, changed the name back to The Jewish Transcript. Under this new arrangement, Eugene Wasserman assumed duties as editor and general manager, and Sylvia Caler became the women’s editor.
For a brief period, beginning in September 1934, Seattle’s Sephardic community had its own Jewish newspaper, The Progress. Founded by Jacob David Almeleh, a self-made Jewish scholar from Rhodes, The Progress was the official organ of the Shalom Alehem Society. Community leaders, among them Marco Romey and Henry Benezra, supported the paper. The controversial nature of its articles and Almeleh’s outspoken editorials caused its demise after just 13 issues.
Historian Jacqueline Williams is co-author of Family of Strangers: Building a Jewish Community in Washington State. Many of the documents and interviews that made up this article came from the archives of the University of Washington Library.