Voice of love

                                    Jeanne and Joseph Samuels have been running the Jewish Herald-Voice in Houston for more than 35 years now and the fire to keep on going still burns strongly in their hearts.
  Jeanne, who is a sprightly 84-year-old great grandmother, and Joe, who is eight years her senior, bought the Jewish community weekly newspaper in 1973.
  Lately, the couple's daughter Vicki and her son, Michael C. Duke, have begun to play a bigger role in the running of the newspaper.
  Jeanne and Joe, however, are not taking things easy although they have been working without drawing a salary for the past few years.
  While she interviewed me for a news article, Joe was busy on the line with someone who was running for political office.
  "We (the newspaper) are barely breaking even. Joe's military pension and our social security benefits are enough to pay our bills," Jeanne told me when I was at the Jewish Herald-Voice on Wednesday (Oct 24) as part of my Daniel Pearl Fellowship programme.
                                   The Jewish Herald-Voice, which sells at US$1, has a circulation of about 6,000 but is read by about 65% of the 45,000-odd Jewish community in Houston.
  Jeanne said the newspaper was open to "all faces of the Jewish community in Houston" - be they orthodox, ultra or otherwise.
   When asked what was the biggest challenge facing the community in the United States, she confided that anti-Semitism was on the rise in universities throughout the country.
  This is mainly due to the negative perception of Israel among foreign students, especially those from the Middle East.
  As for the challenges facing her newspaper, which will turn 100 next year (it was first set up in 1908), she said it was to make it relevant to the younger Jewish community as most of its readers were the older generation.
  I came away from my day at the Jewish Herald-Voice highly impressed by its operation, which I felt was built on the family values of love and respect for everyone.
  Jeanne actually told me that some of the newspaper's employees have been working there for almost 30 years.
  But what left a bigger impression on me was the love and respect that Jeanne and Joe have for each other. They have been married for 64 years now and it seems that their feelings for other keeps growing stronger with each passing day.
  It was just a wonderful thing being with these two wonderful people, who met while in college.
  While the lady of the manor said the "Herald-Voice binds the Jewish community together", I feel the love that Jeanne and Joe have for each other has rubbed off on the newspaper.
  I do believe this is the reason why the thousands of words in the Jewish Herald-Voice have worked their magic to bring a message of love, wich has indeed brought together the Jewish community in Houston.

Pixs from top:

Jeanne and Joseph built these paste-up tables on their own, when they bought the Jewish Herald-Voice;

The wall at Jeanne's cubicle if filled with family photographs;

The happy couple

  JOSEPH RAJ

Comments

[guyanagirl]

What a great story, Joseph! I felt really touched reading it because it sort of reminds me of my own newspaper.
But it is so very obvious that this couple has put their life and love into the publication and that is what keeps it alive.
Their story is certainly worth an interview and a middle page spread in a leading newspaper.

[Luis Botello]

Hi Joseph,
I wonder if you could post any pictures. Your use of personal accounts to tell the story of a communty is great.
thanks for sharing with us your experiences.
Best,
Luis