Looking to the future as we celebrate our 180 years

Above all, we try to celebrate the vibrancy and range of British Jewish life

The front page of the JC’s first issue in 1841 informed its readers: “We knew that the existence among us of an organ of mutual communication was a desideratum of such magnitude that the person supplying it would be entitled to the thanks of his brethren.” One hundred and eighty years later, the JC has not always been thanked for its reporting. But as the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world — and older than almost all of Fleet Street — the phrase our readers use more than any other is that we are “part of what it means to be a British Jew”. We are well aware of the privilege that gives us, and the duty it places on us, to be fair, to be interesting, to be accurate and to be necessary. But perhaps above all, it is the JC’s determination always to speak out when we believe it matters that has characterised the paper throughout its history, from our support for our fellow Jews facing first pogroms and then the Nazis, to our willingness to highlight issues in our own community and, of course, to confront those beyond our community who threaten us. There are perhaps two main threads that run through the paper’s history. Above all, we try to celebrate the vibrancy and range of Jewish life. Across our 180 years, that has taken extraordinary turns — who would have predicted the global success, for example, of Limmud when it began with a few dozen people in 1980? — and it has been our joy to report on it. But we have also had to cover the constantly mutating virus of antisemitism, as Lord Sacks described it. Those two threads are diametrically opposed but also somehow intertwined, and our role has been to reflect that. As we look to the future, we say thank you to our readers and advertisers — and we hope you relish the next stage of the JC’s life as much as

we do.