To the Reader

In 1982, two younger scholars succeeded Henry Feingold as the new editors of American Jewish History. Marc Lee Raphael, now the Nathan and Sophia Gumenick Professor of Judaic Studies and the chair of the Department of Religion at the College of William and Mary, and Jeffrey Gurock, the Libby Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, became the journal's editor and associate editor, respectively. For twenty years, they steadfastly recruited scholarly articles, edited and refined them, and saw them into print. They inherited a tradition of first-rate editing established by Isidore Meyer and carried forward by Nathan Kaganoff, Melvin Urofsky, and Henry Feingold. Professors Raphael and Gurock more than upheld that trust.

In their two decades wearing the official American Jewish History editors' visors, Raphael and Gurock read through and winnowed more than 2,000 submitted articles. Loyal editorial board members helped them ratify decisions about which articles would finally be published, but the final choice and the burden of copyediting each essay accepted for publication resided with Marc Raphael. For most of the past twenty years, the two editors performed their labors with no reward other than the satisfaction of a job well done. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, the staff of the American Jewish Historical Society, and every reader of this journal over the past twenty years, we want to congratulate Marc Lee Raphael and Jeffrey Gurock for their achievement and thank them for maintaining the standards of scholarship in our field. We are grateful that we shall continue to benefit from their expertise and judgment, for they have graciously accepted appointment to the journal's editorial board.

Now, the editor's visor passes to Eli Faber of John Jay College of The City University of New York, and the associate editor's to Rafael Medoff of the State University of New York at Purchase. We wish them the best of luck and many happy years at the helm.