The following is a research article published in 1997 that I authored.

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From 1940 to 1983 the New York Board of Jewish Education published World Over. A children’s magazine, its purpose was to increase the level of cultural literacy among young members of the Jewish community. Not partisan to any particular sect, the magazine provided readers with a range of features on Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox views. Founded on the concept of kelal yisrael, the community of Israel, World Over was in many ways an extension of the principles on which the New York Kehillah had established the Bureau of Jewish Education in 1910.

The leadership of the New York Kehillah saw the Bureau as a way of formalizing the process of Jewish education; according to the Morgen Journal, an Orthodox Yiddish daily, the Bureau represented “the first systematic attempt to bring order out of the chaos of Jewish education in America.”(1) Although there had been approximately 200,000 Jewish children in the United States in 1900, it was estimated that only 36,000 had received any kind of organized instruction at a given time.(2) Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, founder of the Kehillah of New York, was one of a group of Jewish organizers who believed that ensuring a proper education for children was “crucial to the survival of the Jewish community.”(3) At the same time, the New York Kehillah believed that assimilation and material success required that Jewish education occur not in place of - but rather, in harmony with - public education. In his history of the New York Kehillah movement, Arthur Goren notes that “for the Jewish immigrant and his Americanized mentors, the public school was the great democratic institution, the bridge to the new society.”(4) In recognition of the great time demands that school and extracurricular activities placed upon children, the Bureau of Jewish Education emphasized that any Jewish education must take forms sufficiently interesting and stimulating to hold the attention “even of tired children.”(5) More than 25 years before the establishment of World Over, the Bureau had considered establishing a magazine for youth.

By the time Morris Epstein, Sigmund Laufer, and Ezekiel Schloss established World Over under the auspices of the Bureau in 1940, it had already been 18 years since the dissolution of the New York Kehillah “experiment,” as Goren put it. By the 1940s, it was clear that the Kehillah’s vision of widespread, formalized Jewish education had not been realized. Nonetheless, World Over - with its publication schedule tied to the academic year and its emphasis on capturing the imagination of young readers seemed to embody the Kehillah’s educational principles. The bimonthly magazine conceived of itself as a learning instrument that challenged its students and that reinforced ideas taught at Hebrew school and in the home, but with a decidedly non-academic feel. “We tried to make it fun” said Laufer, Associate Art Director of the magazine [see interview below]. Laufer, Epstein, and Schloss produced most of the text and artwork for the magazine while incorporating stories and essays submitted from both inside and outside the U.S. The annual subscription rate was $1.25 in 1955 and increased to $7.50 by 1983, the magazine’s final year of publication. There were no advertisements, with much of the publication costs offset by contributions from the New York Jewish Board of Education.

The editors of World Over struck a gentle balance between keeping young readers’ attention and maintaining the educational integrity of the magazine. Each 16-page issue included illustrations that complemented the written text, and the magazine featured vivid cover art that was explained in a feature article or a retold biblical story. On the cover the Hebrew date was printed beginning in 1951 (5712) along with the subtitle “A Magazine for Young People.” The magazine’s text was in English, and Hebrew words appeared in bold print with accompanying definitions. Serial stories were an integral part of the magazine, as was “Now You Know,” a feature that profiled a Jewish personality (boxer Benny Leonard, for example) or explained the origins of certain Jewish traditions (why salt is sprinkled on bread). The magazine typically included a section called “People in the News,” which highlighted famous contemporary Jewish figures and their recent achievements and activities. Several cartoons ran in each issue, including “Joey and his Friends,” which illustrated the daily life of a Jewish boy. World Over’s news coverage included major world events (the assassination of President Kennedy or the creation of the United Nations) in addition to items of particular interest to the Jewish community. The last two pages of each issue featured games that tested the reader’s knowledge of Jewish culture and history and a section dedicated to readers’ letters. The back page presented “Highlights of History” or “Legendland” in cartoon form.

World Over stands as an example of what a community can do to generate interest in literacy and education. It is also another demonstration of the interconnectedness of religious education and cultural identity. As Edward Hulmes noted in 1989: “In contrast with the tendency of Western education to break up the content of a social heritage into different kinds of subject matter, the traditional type of Jewish education retained the Jewish social heritage in the undifferentiated form in which it was lived. When the youngster studied Torah, he studied simultaneously everything that had to do with making him a worthy member of the Jewish community.”(6)

An Interview with Sigmund Laufer

In his seventies, Sigmund Laufer is the last living member of the founding editors of World Over. I spoke with him last year in his New York City apartment where he lives surrounded by his and his late wife’s artwork.

How did you become involved with World Over?

In 1947 I was an artist coming to New York from Israel, so I was familiar with things Jewish. I started doing some freelance work for the magazine and very soon they offered me a position as associate art director, reporting to Mr. Schloss. There were three people, Mr. Schloss, Mr. Epstein, and myself who made up the magazine staff.

What was your mission in publishing the magazine?

The magazine was an all-purpose Jewish magazine. It was supplementing what children were learning in an afternoon school. That means general aspects of Jewish knowledge, history, culture, music, art.

What made it possible for this magazine to exist?

One of the many aspects of having a unified Jewish Kehillah was, among others, the chance to publish a children’s magazine. That fell apart eventually because of tremendous antagonism between people who have different ideological ideas of what Judaism is about.

How was it published?

We published from October to May, which was more or less the school year. At one time, I think 1946 or 1947, we published summer issues, which were not very successful. We sent the magazine to summer camps. This worked for a year or two but, we never got any peace of mind. We were working year-round at this point, and it was not worth the effort. So we tried to put out 15, 16 issues from October to May. We were trying to explain central aspects of Judaism to children who didn’t necessarily learn these things in their Hebrew school, afternoon school, or Sunday school. This type of publication enriched their knowledge of things Jewish.

How did you decide what to include in the magazine?

We tried to keep above the fray and not enter into day-to-day political debates. Anything that had greater cultural significance, like the Yiddish movement, would be included. We tried to discuss aspects of Judaism and its history from all over the world. I remember that Morris [Epstein] had on his wall a cartoon-hanging saying, “We are editing a children’s book, fun fun fun.” And of course for us it wasn’t “fun fun fun.” You had to have a critical faculty in order to evaluate what you were putting into this magazine. Children are very leery if they think they are being talked down to. So we made a point of keeping a considerable level of complexity without being too hard to grasp. The magazine appeared every two weeks. We were three people and one secretary, that’s all. It worked very well. We were very close to one another. We knew each other better than our respective spouses. And had a great time doing it.

How did all of the writing get done with only three on staff?

We encouraged contributions from people outside the staff, particularly from individuals who had made a name for themselves. We nurtured outside talent because we couldn’t write it all ourselves. The best pieces were those not written specifically for children. We very often would take something that was good writing and we would simplify some of it with the permission of the author. We tried to have it amusing, not stuffy.

We had people from Israel writing for us. We had a lot of special issues, and we even produced film strips. This very often became important educational material because people wrote to us saying, “Why don’t you give us more of that?” We ourselves learned while we were writing because we had to do research in order to get all the stuff out.

How did you keep the attention of your readers?

We tried photography and illustrations, which gave us the chance to be imaginative. Very often the graphic material was functional. If you describe history and you can have the historical documents reproduced, that makes it more concrete. It plays an important role in any children’s book because children respond to visual images.

Did World Over affect people or groups aside from the children who were targeted?

The Catholic Church subscribed to World Over. They came to us because they wanted to put out a children’s magazine, and they thought ours was very successful. Scholastic Magazine, the largest publisher of children’s magazines and books, was a subscriber, and the director of Scholastic Magazine was very positive about what we were doing. Golden Books, one of the biggest publishers of children’s books in America, also subscribed to our magazine. Protestant groups came to us and were interested and subscribed. All in all we had a large number of non-Jewish subscribers.

Aside from serving its educational purpose, how did World Over affect things in the Jewish community?

There was a change in the character in the Jewish community in the last 50 years. Up to World War II you had a large, worldly Jewish community. That means Conservative and Reform were much more prevalent. As time went on the Reform movement produced a magazine which was for older children. Orthodox Jewry started to publish a magazine called Our World. People who were rigid in their convictions about Orthodox Judaism simply stopped subscribing to our magazine.

Circulation was pretty high outside of New York because people were not as rigid in conforming to stereotypes of the various groups that we had in New York. But it was not so high inside of New York. So slowly there was this rejection from New York Jewry, a falling apart between the groups. But since the financial support came from New York, we couldn’t put out a magazine that simply spoke to the rest of the country; the subscription rates were not enough to pay for that. This was the end of the magazine. In the end they hired two young people, and I worked with them for one or two years. They were very nice young people but they thought that by using modern advertising they would increase circulation. That’s all right for soap, but not for a magazine that has something more substantial to offer. After that the circulation fell to about 30,000 and that was the end of it.

What makes you most proud of your work with World Over?

The circulation reached a top of about 106,000 around 1954 or ‘56. As circulation went up that was a proud moment; there was approval by large groups of people who thought this was a worthwhile venture.

Finally, how did you come up with the title for the magazine?

The title in Hebrew is Olam Umlo’o. That’s as close as it translates. I think it’s biblical. It means the world and its contents, the world in its fullness. In English it makes more sense to call it World Over instead of the world in its fullness. We were trying to encompass all Judaism. Perhaps some of the readers of your journal remember Worm Over and were influenced by it.

As I left Sigmund Laufer’s apartment, I could not help but wonder whether the magazines that replaced World Over were thriving. Could they pack as much learning into so much fun? And if not, what would that say about the Kehillah experiment, kelal yisrael, and the contemporary Jewish community.

NOTES

1. Arthur A. Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment, 1908-1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 99.

2. Chaim Isaac Waxman, America’s Jews in Transition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), p. 52.

3. Goren, p. 86

4. Goren, p. 98

5. Goren, p. 97

6. Edward Hulmes, Education and Cultural Diversity (London: Longman, 1989), p. 54.

BROOKE BALDWIN writes on American culture and children’s literature.

COPYRIGHT 1997 American Jewish Congress
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