Long Walk With Lipsky

Normally, if you worry that a newspaper column you write may not appear, that’s because you’re afraid the newspaper won’t like it. It doesn’t often happen that you’re afraid the newspaper may not appear either.As I write this, no one knows if the Sun will continue publishing or not. I hope it does. Not so much for my own sake — to tell the truth, it’s wearying to write a column week after week.I’d miss the income, but it might be nice not to have to wake up one morning every week with that “Oh, no, it’s Monday again” feeling. I might even take the day off and go to the beach.But New York and America need the Sun more than I do. It doesn’t bode well for a city or country in which such a good paper can’t survive.I was in on the Sun’s birth earlier than most people. In fact, I was in on the earliest stage of pregnancy. Late one afternoon in the mid-1990s, I dropped by the office of the Forward, the New York Jewish weekly that Seth Lipsky was then editor-in-chief of.I was its Israel correspondent back then, in New York for a visit. It was closing time and Seth was about to go home. “Walk me to the subway,” he said.The Forward was on East 33rd Street and Seth lived in Brooklyn. I walked him to the 33rd & Park Avenue station.“Let’s walk a little further. I’ll take the train from 28th Street,” he said.We walked to 28th Street, and as we did, he began to tell me about an idea he had. It was for a high-quality, intellectual, daily New York newspaper with conservative views that would compete successfully with the New York Times.“I’ll walk you to 23rd Street,” I said when we got to 28th. I wanted to hear more.He talked and I listened — from 23rd to Union Square, and from Union Square to Astor Place, and from Astor Place to Bleecker Street, and from Bleecker Street to Spring Street. Each time it was only to the next station. Now and then I made some comment of a skeptical nature. It sounded like a wonderful idea. I was one of those people who finished the New York Times in 15 minutes — whatever I thought worth reading in it, anyway — and felt out of sorts when I was done. But I didn’t believe it was possible. “You’ll never pull it off,” I said to Seth.By the time we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, I was no longer so sure. He had it all figured out, all the facts and figures. The new paper would sell for such-and-such a price, and be distributed on X number of newsstands, and have so-and-so many readers, and sell Y number of advertising pages, and be a going concern.When we reached Seth’s home, an hour-and-a-half after setting out for the nearest subway station, I was almost convinced. And when, several years later, the Sun started up, I was delighted to find myself writing for it — and even more delighted when it turned out to be precisely the paper that Seth had envisioned it as being: Urbane, intelligently written, cogently argued, and always a tonic for spirits craving better nourishment than the clichés of the day — most of them, indeed, the New York Times-ish clichés of liberalism, but sometimes those of the other end of the stick, too.I can’t say that, living in Israel, I’ve read the Sun as much as I’ve written for it, but then again, I’ve written for it very regularly. Over the past six years, I haven’t missed more than a column or two a year. This hasn’t been just a matter of diligence. It also has involved a certain sense of responsibility.Where else in the American press could I have published, week after week, the pieces I was writing? What other daily paper in America took the kind of interest in Israel that the Sun did and was so consistently supportive of it? To miss even a week’s opportunity to take advantage of this seemed to me sinful.I don’t mean that I’ve used these pages to propagandize on Israel’s behalf. I wouldn’t have lasted long in the Sun if I had. I’ve tried to tell the truth as I’ve seen it, and that truth has not always been flattering to Israel.But even when being most critical, I’ve tried never to forget that such criticism has its context — which is that Israel, for all its faults, stands for something humanly just and right against the fanaticism of those who would like to destroy it and the hostility or indifference of those who think it would be no great loss to the world if the would-be destroyers succeeded.But it would be a great loss, perhaps even greater than any of us can imagine. Israel is today — as it has been since its inception — a litmus test of one’s moral seriousness. The person who does not understand the importance of its existence understands nothing about good and evil.Only in the Sun could I have written column after column from such a point of view. I’ve been grateful for the chance to do so. I hope I’ll going on having it. But even if I don’t, the past six years of the Sun will always be a bright spot in the history of American journalism. If he ever asked me to do it again, I’d walk with Seth Lipsky even further.Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

Long Walk With Lipsky

Long Walk With Lipsky

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