Perhaps I was too flip in my answer to a frequent question. People asked how the editors at The Milwaukee Journal dealt with the fact that I observe the Jewish Sabbath in its most traditional ways, which means, among other things, that I don’t work on Friday nights or Saturdays. My standard answer was that it had never been a problem, but I’d find out for sure the day a plane landed nose first at the airport two hours before Friday sunset.
It was 3:21p.m. on Friday, September 6, 1985, when a Midwest Express DC-9 crashed on take-off at Milwaukee Mitchell Airport, killing all31 on board. It was 3 1/2 hours until the start of the Sabbath.
As soon as word got to the newsroom, an editor told me to get set to do rewrite on the main story. That was often my role on big stories; I was (and am) pretty decent at handling a lot of information coming at me.
I told him I was good until 6 o ’clock. He didn’t balk, nor did any of the editors above him.
In some ways, it was hard for me to pull out of such a big story — a major plane crash right here? My adrenaline and reporting style told me to work straight through the night, until the next afternoon’s paper was done. And I’m sure it was harder for my bosses to accept my saying it. When duty calls like that, you aren’t supposed to say no.
I wrote a story for our late afternoon edition (in fact, it won awards that year for deadline work). There were plenty of good people eager to sit down in my place when I left at 6. I called in after sundown on Saturday night, went back to work on the plane crash and stayed with it steadily, along with another reporter, for almost six months.
Every editor involved in that decision is gone from what is now The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but I am still appreciative for their acceptance and understanding. Every boss I have had since then has followed their example. That is one of the central reasons why I am still loyal to the newspaper.
For the first decade that I worked at the paper, I didn’t adhere to the practices of Orthodox Judaism. It’s a long story how and why my wife and I changed our ways, and it’s not necessary to tell it here. But we are good examples of what is known in the American Jewish world as baal teshuvahs — a small but significant wave of people who have become Orthodox as adults.
I admit it’s an odd thing for a newspaper reporter or editor to be, for many reasons.
While there are many Jews in the news business, someone who follows the traditional religious practices to the degree I do is close to unique. I’m doubtful many news organizations would knowingly welcome a person like me — too many schedule and assignment restrictions would probably be the cited reason — even though I think I provide a pretty good piece of evidence that things can be worked out well.
But my religious life does shape some of the important parts of how I do my job. In some cases, this means some constraints for my editors, colleagues and myself. I would argue, on the other hand, that in significant ways, the impact is beneficial.
Scheduling is the best example of the tangible aspects of working out religious/professional issues. Not working from roughly sundown Friday to sundown Saturday means I wouldn’t be a good person to assign to the college football run since the action is almost always on Saturday afternoons. There are plenty of other examples.
Furthermore, I don’t answer the phone on the Sabbath or major holidays, so I can’t be reached by the copy desk for last minute questions on a piece for Sunday. My editors know that means we need to iron things out by Friday afternoon.
I don’t do some other conventional things, like eating out (Milwaukee has only two kosher restaurants). So I’m not much on the lunch scene, either socially or professionally.
But these are practical matters that almost never cause genuine difficulty. If there are 26 hours in a week when I don’t work, that leaves 142 when I’m willing to make the newspaper a priority, and at least 40 when I do my best for my newspaper.
The more interesting side to consider is the intangibles.
The worlds of Orthodox Judaism and news papering have some very different philosophic premises. Journalism’s cardinal tenet of laying out the facts and letting the chips fall where they may is definitely in conflict with Jewish tradition’s strong emphasis on not saying things that unnecessarily harm others, even if they are true. American media often relish the kind of tale-telling Jewish tradition prohibits. The neutral or accepting position that the news media take on a lot of social and lifestyle issues is very different from the strong stand Orthodox Judaism takes on many of the same issues. And the media are the principal avenue for letting torrents of information and thought into our homes and lives while, in my crowd, we work hard to insulate ourselves from the bulk of that torrent.
I have not fully resolved the dilemmas posed by being pulled in these opposing directions. But I do know that balancing my two very different worlds would become quite difficult if I allowed a lot of crossover from one to the other. While no reporter or editor leaves personality and philosophy at home when at work, there is a strong virtue to putting up barriers between the two. For me, that is more important than for most people because my two worlds are so different.
So I operate largely with a mechitza, to use the Hebrew term, a barrier. At work, I am a journalist. I try to do my job in a constructive, conscientious manner. I regard providing readers with fair, solid and useful information in a literate manner as a public service. I try to stay away from stories that are gossipy or tabloidy and I prefer to work on pieces that are issue oriented. All of these things are in line with both my professional and religious standards.
In my newspaper role, I absolutely don’t proselytize. I hardly talk about my personal involvements with most of my colleagues. I don’t even wear a head covering (yarmulke or kippa) at work, although I do everywhere else. With a few exceptions, I don’t get involved in coverage of Jewish issues. (Although this sounds easy, it’s not. For one thing, from both within the newspaper and from the Jewish community, people often ask me to help or advise on news coverage. I walk a line between being uncooperative and not wanting to get into a conflict of interest. Even if I was completely unaware in advance of something appearing in the paper about anything Orthodox-related in town, some people assume I was behind it.)
I firmly do not want to be treated as the house Jew and internal representative for Jewish interests. On the other hand, there are times when I feel compelled to speak up, at least within our ranks. Earlier this year The Los Angeles Times carried a story, played prominently in many papers, including mine, about a small and uninfluential group of Orthodox rabbis who had made offensive remarks about Conservative and Reform Jews. I made it clear to my bosses what I thought of us and much of the news media engaging in superficial, useless conflict building.
The other side of the mechitza is that outside of work, I am very actively involved in the Jewish community of which I am part. A prime example: My wife and I have been key players in the creation of two schools, each of them occasionally controversial and newsworthy. I do accept some restraints due to my job. I stay out of political matters, for example, and I am circumspect about even casual conversations with friends about subjects such as Mideast politics. But I feel I am entitled to my private life, and it’s one heavily colored by my Jewish involvements.
There is seepage from my personal religious world into how I do my job; I argue that it is, on balance, to the benefit of my professional performance. In order to justify my work in religious terms in my own mind, it needs to meet what I hope are pretty high standards. I think I do more meticulous work than I used to do. In indirect ways, my religious involvement has motivated me to write better, I think. And I work harder.
I have never refused to do a story on the grounds that its content conflicts with my religious values. On the other hand, there is a religious component to my thinking about some stories I’d sure prefer to stay away from.
There are unresolved dilemmas for me. In chronological order, I was a journalist before I was an Orthodox Jew. If my Jewish involvement had come first, I doubt I would have gone into secular journalism. But this is what I am, and this is how I support my family. Besides, I still like it. It may be paradoxical, but I am both an old-fashioned kind of Jew and an old-fashioned kind of newspaper person.
Several years ago, I went to Princeton to interview George F. Kennan, the legendary American diplomatic thinker, for The Milwaukee Journal’s Sunday magazine. From Princeton, I drove to Lakewood, N.J., home of the world’s largest yeshiva, a center for advanced study in traditional Jewish knowledge.
In tangible terms, Princeton to Lakewood is an uncolorful 50-mile trip. In intangible terms, it is a trip from a mountain top in one world to a mountain top in another. Each regards itself as existing at the height of the pursuit of wisdom and morality — but each is almost invisible to the other.
Milwaukee is neither Lakewood nor Princeton. But the gap between the culture that venerates Princeton and the culture that venerates Lakewood exists even here. I make a trip across it every time I travel between my neighborhood and the newsroom. I am comfortable making that trip.
Going in either direction, few people are comfortable with that trip. My experience supports the view that newsrooms are not a good place to look for people who are devout. From my perspective, that shows up fairly often in stories that treat the “ultra-Orthodox” (a term I hate) as quaint curiosities or extremists. Too often, these stories are not well grounded.
On some occasions, I am able to provide some grounding for my newspaper when such stories occur. On a more general front and in a more valuable way, my presence means that there is some stripe in our internal culture that runs closer to groups of people — including some non-Jewish faith communities — who otherwise wouldn’t have much presence. These are not roles I relish. But I hope my involvement is constructive.
I wear an unusual pair of hats in my life. As long as I continue to feel that’s what I’m doing in my work as a journalist — something constructive — I intend to keep wearing them both. I intend to wear them carefully, conscientiously, almost always only one at a time. And with my head held up.