Happy 50th anniversary to Moment! Fifty years is a long time, but in another sense, if you count from 1910—the year our Yiddish namesake Der Moment was born—we go back 115 years. Either way, it’s an incredible achievement for an independent publication to last this long, let alone flourish and grow. It’s a time for celebration and reflection.
First, the reflection: In 1910, ten bearded men gathered in a Polish forest to pose for a photograph. All members of Der Moment’s first editorial board, they had big dreams for their new independent daily newspaper, which would go on to crusade for Jewish causes in Warsaw and educate Jews throughout Eastern Europe. Despite these editors’ serious countenances (those being photographed had to stay expressionless for a long exposure), they could not have imagined the fate that would befall them and the rest of Europe’s Jews a mere 29 years later. Few if any of these men would survive the Holocaust.
In 1975, a different group of editors gathered in Boston to produce the first issue of Moment. I don’t have a photo of them posing together, but I’m holding that very issue in my hands right now.
The cofounders, Editor Leonard “Leibel” Fein and Literary Editor Elie Wiesel, along with Associate Editor William Novak and Managing Editor Carol Kur, likewise had big dreams for their publication. Even all these decades later, Leibel’s passion for Moment leaps from the page in his introductory column, aptly titled “Beginnings.” He declares that Moment, above all else, will be “an invitation to take Jewish possibilities seriously (but not somberly), an invitation to inquiry, to learning, to literature, to Jewish life richly conceived.” Moment, he vows, will “encourage debate and help raise the quality of the community.” Elie’s voice, which I still remember so well, likewise sings in his column, “Remembering,” which appears on the inside back cover, a bookend to Leibel’s soaring introduction. “Let us remember all of them—all the six million,” Elie urges Moment readers, commemorating all who “were condemned by the executioner not for what they had done but for what they were: Jews.”
In Moment’s pages, the internal debates and external challenges of the Jewish people, and of the wider world, are reflected. We lean into complexity, for as our sages have long known, there are no simple answers.
In the ensuing 50 years, there have been great and talented editors, contributors and staff, including the mighty Hershel Shanks, who topped the masthead of the magazine from 1987 to 2004. Since then I’ve run Moment, with the help of a brilliant team, many of them like family by now. During my time at the helm, publishing has been transformed—and our labor multiplied. We’re no longer just producing print issues but countless stories for the web, newsletters, virtual and live public affairs programs, videos, multimedia projects, social media, even books.
And the world, of course, is broken in new ways that my various predecessors could not have foreseen.
Magazines are like mirrors—we need them to see ourselves. In Moment’s pages, the internal debates and external challenges of the Jewish people, and of the wider world, are reflected. In Moment, we dig deep into stories, books and culture. We also freely inquire into essential big questions, exploring them from many points of view. Questions such as: Who are we? What does it mean to be a Jew? What does it mean to be pro-Israel? Who are we as Jews in America? What is democracy, and how does it dance with Judaism? What makes Judaism unique? What do Judaism and Jewish culture bring to the world? We lean into complexity, for as our sages have long known, there are no simple answers.
As a place to envision Jewish possibilities, Moment is more important than ever. It is a place to find and to be our highest selves—something we desperately need at a time when the discourse gravitates toward the lowest common denominator. Just as important, Moment also remains a place for remembering—the context that comes with historical perspective that is so lacking today.
I think of Moment as the continuation of the 3,000-year-old Jewish quest to articulate what we have been, who we are now, and what we can be. That quest is both particular and universal: We care deeply about the Jewish journey but we do not forget the plight of others. At the same time, we grapple with the temptation (by ourselves and others) toward Jewish exceptionalism. This can lead to great accomplishments but also to hatred and danger.
Years ago, Elie told me that what he loved most about Moment was the way it illuminates the tumult of Jewish thought. As the years have gone by, I have come to understand that my passion is the tumult, the creative flow, the exciting moments when wisdom surfaces. I want us to ride the river of tumult on rafts fashioned from the bulrushes of reason, compassion, joy and respect, learning as we go.
Every issue of Moment plunges straight into this river. I cannot speak for others, but I know my 20-plus year immersion in Moment has made me a much better person. Gradually, I have worked through many of my own prejudices and filled in numerous blind spots—with more to go. My knowledge of Judaism and what it means to be a Jewish human has deepened, for which I am deeply grateful.
Now, about that birthday party. Stay tuned for a special 50th anniversary May/June issue of Moment, exactly a half-century since the launch of the magazine’s first issue, and a year-long celebration including live and virtual festivities.
There’s much to anticipate. And, as always, there’s much for Moment and the Moment community to navigate. Time to get on those rafts and start paddling!
