Welcome to Ask the Archivist, where Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist for the last 21 years, hunts down some mystery from our 125-year history. We can’t promise we’ll find exactly what you seek.

When Gella Schweid Fishman was a little girl, she once accompanied her grandfather to shul on Tisha B’Av and saw something on the wall that changed her life: a poster encouraging parents to enroll ...

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Growing up, Aaron Bendich would spend lots of time with his grandfather Max in the North Bronx, in a house “filled to the brim” with records, videotapes and CDs. Among ...

The Zulu and the Zayda. Zayda means grandfather in Yiddish, and a pixyish, diminutive grandpa (Menasha Skulnik) is the hero of this “play with music” set in Johannesburg. This Zayda speaks three ...