What It Is
Abraham Cahan, our founding editor, portrayed in silhouette by Samuel Zagatt, the Forward’s first known illustrator, who worked for the paper from 1919 until his death in 1964. Cahan’s image is inked on a simple cardboard square that I imagine cost the Forverts zilch, and featuews his familiar round wire-rim glasses, walrus mustache and papillon bowtie.
Why I Love It
I love this picture’s economy, and its depiction of Cahan as a well-dressed and well-groomed immigrant visionary. History remembers Cahan as a citified, intellectual knickerbocker. But behind that slightly starchy collar was a lifetime of hard work.
By the time Cahan launched the Forward, he was already an accomplished journalist, having edited the Arbeiter Tsaytung, or Worker's Newspaper, one of the earliest Yiddish socialist newspapers. By the time Zagatt sat down to sketch him, Cahan had used the Forverts to meaningfully change American culture, including through the publication of his own fiction and the advice column known as the Bintel Brief.
What It Makes Me Think About
Zagatt’s silhouette of Cahan reflects back to me a sense of the unknowable. The cryptic inky outline asks me to keep turning the historical legend of Cahan over and over. What don’t we know? What don’t we want to know?
Al dos guts/Best,
