Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
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JTA at 100

What do the following have in common?

Ukraine in 1917.

Jerusalem in 1967.

The Suez Canal in 1973.

President Roosevelt in 1941.

Elie Wiesel in 2016.

David Ben Gurion in 1948.

Battlefields.

Peace treaties.

Kosher kitchens.

Destroyed synagogues.

Monumental Chabad centers.

Judaic studies classrooms.

What do they have in common? JTA has been to all of these locales and covered all of these people and reported on all of these types of places in the past 100 years.

The global news service of the Jewish people has linked Jews in a way that no other medium, leader or event has, over the past century.

We are proud of JTA. We are proud to be a subscriber to JTA for the last century. We are buoyed by the fact that JTA has found a way to survive and thrive in a news environment radically different from that of 1917.

We remember the great correspondents of JTA for the fact that their talents could have taken them to more famous and more remunerative fields, but they stuck with JTA because they wanted to stick with the Jewish people, its welfare and its destiny.

Frankly, we have no problem still referring to JTA as the “Jewish Telegraphic Agency” even though it stopped using telegraph transmission of the news . . . who knows how long ago, and even though it changed and shortened its name to the simple “JTA” years ago. We like “Jewish Telegraphic Agency” because the term ties us, and it, to the Jewish past, the remembrance of which is an indispensable precondition to a viable Jewish future.

JTA is sometimes accused of being too much to the left, or to the right, or to the middle, or to . . . whatever viewpoint one does not like. No doubt, over an entire century, bias has crept into JTA reporting from time to time. But the overwhelming impress of JTA has been its willingness to tell the story as it is — and to go where the story is, no matter the danger or expense.

All this might be easy to take for granted when one sees that mere three-letter insignia at the opening of a story — “JTA” — but this indeed is what stands behind it: courage, resourcefulness, commitment and investment.

There is not a lot in Jewish life that lasts 100 years. There is not a lot in the history of organizations or, for that matter, in the history of nations that lasts 100 years. JTA is among that very elite group.

JTA deserves to be honored, as it will be in New York in April, for its one-century mark. That century has seen the very best and the very worst in Jewish life, but through it all there has been a constant: the commitment to get the news to the Jewish people.

JTA, we thank you.

We bless you on the prospect of your next century.

Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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