Big Apple History . New York Living . The Bintel Brief


	The Jewish Daily Forward building at 173 East Broadway, c. 1900-1910

Nothing like it existed in the homeland. It seemed so American, so up-to-date, and so very needed -- an advice column for the new Jewish immigrants, to help them with their new lives. It was called the Bintel Brief, Yiddish for "bundle of letters."

Often separated from family and bewildered by life in a new country, thousands of Jewish immigrants wrote to the offices of THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD, a Yiddish-language newspaper founded in 1897. The paper's founder and editor, Abraham Cahan, would answer back with practical and sometimes very wise advice. Here are some samples of actual letters and answers:

My dearest friends of the Forward,
I have been jobless for six months now. I have eaten the last shirt on my back and now there is nothing left for me but to end my life . . .

Answer: This is one of hundreds of heartrending pleas for help, cries of need, that we receive daily. The writer of this letter should go first to the Crisis Conference [address given], and they will not let him starve. And further we ask our readers to let us know if someone can create a job for this unemployed man.

Dear Editor, Dear Editor, I am a girl from Galicia [in Poland] and in the shop where I work I sit near a Russian Jew . . . [and] he stated that all Galicians were no good . . . Why should one worker resent another?

Answer: The Galician Jews are just as good and bad as people from other lands. If the Galicians must be ashamed of the foolish and evil ones among them, then the Russians, too, must hide their heads in shame because among them there is such an idiot as the acquaintance of our letter writer.

Dear Editor, For a long time I worked in a shop with a Gentile [non-Jewish] girl . . . and fell in love. But after we had been married for a year . . . I began to notice that whenever one of my Jewish friends comes to the house, she is displeased . . .

Answer: Unfortunately, we often hear of such tragedies, which stem from marriages between people of different worlds. It's possible that if this couple were to move to a Jewish neighborhood, the young man might have more influence on his wife.

Illustration: Courtesy of Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pa.