Five Towns Jewish Times
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The Five Towns Jewish Times is a weekly newspaper serving the Jewish communities of the Five Towns in southwestern Nassau County, New York, and the greater New York area, covering the area's large and growing Orthodox Jewish community. It is also distributed out of state and is growing rapidly in popularity.
Every Thursday, the Five Towns Jewish Times is distributed on newsstands and in synagogues and community centers throughout the 5 Towns, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and Jewish communities across the North Shore and South Shore of Long Island. The current print run each week is 20,000 papers. The paper is distributed for free in the Five Towns and on Long Island and sold for $1.00 in the five boroughs of New York City and to weekly subscribers.
The Five Towns of Nassau County (Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett) is a suburban enclave bordering the New York City neighborhood of Far Rockaway, Queens, and approximately ten minutes Southeast of John F. Kennedy International Airport. The community is largely centered around the Long Island Rail Road, which carries a significant percentage of Five Towns residents to and from New York City on a daily basis. Many Five Towns residents are Orthodox Jewish professionals, entrepreneurs, esteemed members of academia, and charismatic religious leaders.
[edit] Publisher
Larry (Arye Leib) Gordon was born and raised in Crown Heights, and has been a resident of Lawrence in the Five Towns since 1992. Larry is a veteran journalist, writing stories on Jewish life and related issues for thirty years. He is also the acknowledged creator of modern Jewish radio.
This distinction is due, for Larry, in 1977, pioneered the first weekday morning Jewish music and news program on FM radio—91.1 WFMU at New Jersey’s Upsala College. Larry’s program, the “Hebrew and Jewish program,” and the format he created, is the direct, originating predecessor of the JM in the AM radio show hosted by Nachum Segal.
Larry’s interest in journalism is inspired by his father, Nison Gordon, a”h, who traveled from Poland when he was 18-years-old to report on life in New York City as the American correspondent for a Polish newspaper. Larry’s father’s became a well know Yiddish writer, writing for “The Day,” “The Day Morning Journal,” and "The Algemeiner Journal," during a career that spanned over 45 years.
Larry’s own foray in newspaper reporting began in 2000. In response to an effort by the Lawrence municipality to limit the establishment and growth of local Orthodox shuls, Larry wrote a series of articles for the local "Nassau Herald," which resulted in an abrupt policy reversal.
Recognizing the necessity for an unfettered Orthodox Jewish voice in the Five Towns (the Herald’s editor was fired for printing Larry’s articles and his subsequent articles were refused), Larry established the 5 Towns Jewish Times, what was then a thin newspaper published twice a month. Today, the 5 Towns Jewish Times is published 50 times each year.
The ultimate vision for the 5 Towns Jewish Times is the fluid juxtaposition of print, broadcast, and online media to provide one reliable resource for information, news, advocacy, fundraising, and promoting achdus within and throughout all the disparate Jewish communities of the United States and the world.
