Passover is a time of miracles and redemption so it is perhaps fitting that a Pesach that began with news of the liquidation of the Jewish Chronicle could end with the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper being rescued. In a statement issued today, the JC revealed that its owner, a charity called the Kessler Foundation, has ‘submitted an offer to the proposed liquidators of both the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News for the assets of both titles’.
A merger of the JC and the JN had been on the cards before the liquidation and the papers are ‘hopeful that the Kessler Foundation will be successful in its bid which will see the Jewish community served by a single merged newspaper which will benefit from all the existing protections which guard its independence’.
If the rescue mission succeeds, JN editor Richard Ferrer will take over as editor of the merged publication while JC editor Stephen Pollard will become editor-at-large and focus on writing for the title. Pollard, who wrote recently about his leukaemia diagnosis, and Ferrer have steered their respective papers through some of the most testing times for British Jews since the war. It fell to the JC and the JN to raise the alarm about anti-Semitism in the Labour party and keep raising it until the mainstream media paid attention. Their papers were lifelines for a small community confronted, on one side, by an opposition leader 84 per cent of them considered ‘a threat specifically to British Jews’ and, on the other, by an increase in street-level anti-Semitism, including physical assaults.
When the liquidation news dropped on the eve of Passover, I argued here that it was essential to save the JC because it is a living memoir of Jewish and world history that has made important contributions to Britain’s past and present. You need not be a believer in Judaism or any other religion to understand how miraculous it is for a Jewish institution to have survived the past 180 years. B’ezrat HaShem the Jewish Chronicle will live to see another 180 years.
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