A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York

Not Just a Bundle of Letters

Dear Mr. Editor,

I have been in the country only two months, and I find myself in such terrible circumstances that I need your advice.

So begin many of the letters submitted to the Bintel Brief. In 1897, Abraham Cahan founded the Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish newspaper based on the Lower East Side of New York…