This exhibition is organized by the Forward in collaboration with the Museum at Eldridge Street, and hosted by the University of Pittsburgh Library System and Jewish Studies.

Hillman Library First Floor Through April 2023!

Founded in 1897 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Jewish Daily Forward rapidly grew, becoming the most widely read Jewish news source anywhere. By the 1920s, this Yiddish-language daily had more readers than the New York Times. With rigorous reporting, incisive editorials and powerful commentary, the Forward chronicled the events that affected immigrants eager to earn their place in American life. This was the paper read by congregants from its neighborhood’s many synagogues, by families squeezing into tenement apartments, by sweatshop workers and pushcart vendors. Its articles were debated on park benches and at local haunts like the Garden Cafeteria and the Royal Café, its discarded pages then used to wrap fish for Friday night Sabbath eve dinners. The Forward’s ideals have been held dear for generations of readers, not just on the Lower East Side but across the country and around the world.

Pressed looks into the vast Forward archive to present a selection of metal plates that were used to print photographs in the paper from the 1920s to the 1960s. They are accompanied by prints made just for this exhibition. These prints have rendered the images with greater clarity than they had as dotted, halftone prints in the newspaper. The Forward pages on which some of these images appeared are also displayed. These pages are enlarged and reproduced from microfilm and photographs because printed copies of the newspaper have not been preserved at the Forward or in any other archive, although they occasionally do
pop up at auction or in private collections.

Together these images of strikes and activists, Yiddish theater stars and baseball players, daily life and historic moments, present the depth and breadth of this singular publication, its audience and Jewish life in America and around the world.

More than 120 years after its founding, now as a digital-only publication in English and Yiddish, the Forward remains the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet. It maintains its fierce independence, continuing to present outstanding reporting for a better-informed, more deeply engaged American Jewish community. Its informative and enlightening content expresses its enduring commitments to social justice, to a greater understanding of Yiddish and Jewish culture, a resilient democracy and the welfare of the Jewish people worldwide.

Visit the Forward at forward.com, or click here for the Forward's past programming. Interested in using the Forward's archive, click here. View a virtual talk about the exhibit for Untapped New York here. Visit the Museum at Eldridge Street here.

The exhibition, for those seeking to enhance their Pittsburgh PRESSED experience, by traveling to NYC-can use this free app, a digital mapping program,  https://www.urbanarchive.nyc/, and can follow in the footsteps of the PRESSED exhibition on location.