This is appalling news. Sincerely hope the community can step to save its oldest and most vital newspaper

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/08/jewish-chronicle-and-jewish-news-to-be-liquidated-and-staff-laid-off?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&__twitter_impression=true

The JC has been publishing since 1841. In its pages are the entire modern history of Anglo-Jewry, through pogroms, wars and the holocaust, but also bat mitzvahs, weddings and deaths. It is our history. Terribly sad.

As a child, the JC was our connection to the wider Jewish community. They published my U-11 football team’s scores, they printed a picture of me on my bar mitzvah, reading the JC before Shabbat dinner on a Friday marked the passing of the weeks

I was so proud to write for them occasionally when I became a journalist. It meant writing for my parents and grandparents and my community. It felt like an act of love and belonging.

Of course sales have declined sharply in recent years, as with everyone else. But I don’t know what Anglo-Jewry is without the JC.

Those of us who work for national papers that we imagine are irreplaceable should take note.

I have one more piece commissioned for them. An editor kindly emailed to say I didn’t have to write it as I likely wouldn’t be paid. (And that she’d just lost her job.)

Will of course write it anyway, proud to be in the last edition and hopeful a new JC will emerge soon.

But the community must respond. We’ve allowed our newspaper to decline, we’ve stopped buying it. There are plenty of people who can step in and help maintain a good community paper.

Question is do we care enough? Does it matter?

Really hope the answer to that is yes.