It was my lucky day in February 1989, when at the ceremony of opening the Solomon Mikhoels Jewish Center in Moscow, which was perceived then as an important event of the perestroika period, I met Harold Ostroff, general manager of the Forward Association. This was the moment when the New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts (Forward) entered in my life, though as a staffer of the Moscow Yiddish literary monthly Sovetish Heymland I already knew something about this newspaper. To make a long story short, later in the same year, in November, my first article appeared on the pages of the Forverts. In May 1990 I came to New York as a guest of the Forverts and the Workmen’s Circle. At the time, they were still vibrant organizations, with a relatively strong constituency of Socialist-minded, mostly elderly, immigrant and American-born Yiddish speakers. It was memorable to meet Mordechai Shtrigler, the editor-in-chief, and Yosl (Joseph) Mlotek, the associate editor, in whose section of the newspaper my pieces first appeared.