Building bridges | The Jerusalem Post

I always knew I’d be drawn to The Jerusalem Post, but the impetus for my first visit to the newsroom, in September 1986, was tragedy – a terrorist attack in the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul, where I’d visited a few weeks earlier.

Upon hearing of the attack, I wrote a short reflection and hopped on a bus to deliver it to the editors in Romema.

I introduced myself to an editor, Joanna Yehiel, in the hall, handed her my manuscript and waited breathlessly as she read it on the spot.

“No,” she said as she reached the end. “But thanks for trying.”

My disappointment didn’t last long; the following morning I discovered my article featured prominently on the front page: “Istanbul Jews Had Sense of Security,” the headline blared. I hightailed it back to Romema, where another editor, Jerrold (Yoram) Kessel, laughed and said, “It was a good story.”

He invited me to write more, adding, “If you can get us a story on people who want to bring horse racing to Israel, that would be a scoop!” Who could have predicted that a personal reflection on a bar mitzva I happened to attend in Istanbul would lead to 15 years of a multitude of roles in the newspaper that at the time was the only English-language publication in the land? I never did write about horse racing, but I did write on just about everything else in the decade before I assumed the post of Weekend Magazine editor, then managing editor, and finally a brief stint as editor-in-chief. I never ceased to be humbled by the Post’s multiple audiences – English-speaking Israelis, tourists, diplomats, Jews around the world, and so many others who wanted to keep abreast of Israeli news and opinion.

I live in Chicago now, and like many former journalists, I’ve transitioned into related work that is nonetheless very different. As successive confrontations highlight the sharply divergent paths and priorities that push so many Jews around the world away from Israel – and that lead so many Israelis to ignore or downplay the millions of Jews who don’t live in the country – I like to think that my work in the field of Israel education helps build bridges that aren’t all that different from the bridges we strove to build at the paper when we reported on Israel-Diaspora ties and sought to make Israel comprehensible to our overseas readers.

Today, those bridges are fraught with obstacles, and all sides could benefit from strengthening them. As the Post celebrates its 85th year and continues to reach so many distinct readerships, it has not lost sight of its role in forging ties that bind the Jewish people together and helping to build appreciation for the diverse realities our people face at home and abroad.

The writer was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post in 2000.