An article on the front page of the Jewish World’s March 17, 2006, issue announced a change of ownership at the perdurable newspaper of Minnesota’s Jewish community. The headline read: “American Jewish World sold to local group; Rabbi Marc Liebhaber retires.”
I worked for the late Rabbi Liebhaber for many years, then formed a company, Minnesota Jewish Media LLC, to buy the assets of his company, AJW Publishing Inc. Liebhaber became the newspaper’s publisher in 1980; he died in 2014 at the age of 97.
So, this issue of the paper marks 20 years since we bought out Rabbi Liebhaber and I became the publisher and editor of the American Jewish World. My editorial in the March 17, 2006, issue was titled “Jewish World 5.0” and reflected my surprise at discovering that I was only the fifth publisher of the newspaper that was approaching 100 years of continuous publication. (Last year marked my 30-year tenure at the paper — I started as a staff writer in 1995 and worked my way up.)
The editorial paid tribute to the visionary Rabbi Samuel N. Deinard, a native of Lithuania, who arrived in Minneapolis in 1901 to serve as the rabbi of Temple Sharei Tov (which later became Temple Israel). As I wrote 20 years ago, Deinard was a Zionist and scholar of Hebrew literature, and “a bridge builder who believed that a newspaper would serve to bring about a union of the various groups [in the Twin Cities] by expressing the interests of the total Jewish community,” as Rabbi Albert I. Gordon noted in his 1949 book Jews in Transition.
In addition to a tip of the hat to Dr. Deinard, I expressed appreciation to my partners in Minnesota Jewish Media, who believed in independent Jewish journalism and “put their money where their mouth is.” Sadly, three of the original 10 investors in this journalistic enterprise have passed away. My partners were not looking to get rich quick with an investment in an Anglo-Jewish newspaper. In fact, there has been a thinning out in this niche of the publishing industry going back to the 2008 Great Recession. Fortunately, before the pandemic led to a further economic contraction, the newspaper went from biweekly to monthly publication, which allowed for significant reductions in expenses. Still, it’s a struggle to keep a small business afloat.
I think that we have fulfilled our stated mission at the outset, that the Jewish World would serve as a “catalyst for Jewish unity and cultural vitality.” We have worked hard to create a periodical that’s entertaining and edifying.
And at the same time, in publishing a serious newspaper that grapples with topical issues, we have ruffled some feathers. A few readers have canceled their subscriptions over certain editorial content or opinions expressed in these pages. However, most of you have stuck with us. One reader recently left some critical voicemail messages about my editorials dealing with the current president and my reflections after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. He gainsaid my views; then he recently renewed his subscription.
The past two years have been especially difficult, as far as navigating the issue of Israel prosecuting a horrific war in Gaza. As I’ve noted in editorials, there is great concern among our coreligionists about the course Israel has pursued: the massive destruction and great carnage in Gaza, along with violent attacks by messianic Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. The depredations amount to ethnic cleansing, which is a euphemism for the dispossession of a people.
The longtime repression of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation and the perpetration of war crimes in Gaza have cast a pall over Judaism. On this point, Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch, chancellor emeritus of Jewish Theological Seminary of the Conservative movement, wrote last year: “The unremitting violence against helpless Palestinians in Gaza and their wholly innocent coreligionists on the West Bank will saddle Jews with a repulsive religion riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions. The messianism driving the current government of Israel is sadly out of kilter with traditional Judaism — and an utter moral abomination.”
Sadly, many members of our clergy and secular leadership have failed to even acknowledge the angst that American Jews are feeling about the course Israel has taken.
And now the Israeli leadership has dragged the United States into a war with Iran, as per the recent admission of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who declared on March 2, according to a report in The Guardian: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
U.S. officials have offered various rationales for the preemptive war on Iran; but it seems that the Israeli premier has finally found a softheaded U.S. president that he can bend to his will.
We’re not mourning the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other leaders of the bloodthirsty clerical regime that has murdered thousands of Iranians protesting in the streets. At the same time, we have little trust in President Trump and his gaggle of incompetent and corrupt lackeys. The nascent war on Iran, a conflict based on shifting grounds, grinds on with mounting casualties. Where is this conflict headed?
Perhaps, if Trump and his immigration enforcement thugs had won the Battle of Minneapolis in January, they wouldn’t be attacking Iran now. Or is everything we see playing out intended as a distraction from the burgeoning scandal related to the late notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who was a close friend of Trump for many years?
Other nations have criminally charged individuals involved with Epstein; in the U.S., Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s consort and procurer serving a 20-year prison sentence, was given a prison upgrade in August 2025. Her move to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas came after her conversations with Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer and now the deputy attorney general. Maxwell is angling for a presidential pardon or commutation of sentence, which seems to be an action in the realm of possibility with a president lacking a moral compass.
If the ascension of Trump to the presidency (twice!) was presented as the plot of a novel, critics would complain that it requires too great a suspension of disbelief on the part of readers. Yet this is our grim reality as U.S. citizens. We will have much to talk about when we gather around our seder tables. Hopefully, our discussions will generate more light than heat.
The editors and staff of the Jewish World wish all of our readers a happy and meaningful Passover.
Mordecai Specktor / editor [at] ajwnews [dot] com
(American Jewish World, March 2026)
