Mishpacha

Mishpacha combines a flagship news and features weekly with publications for women, children, and teenagers, as well as literary and other specialized reading.[2] The Hebrew publication is cataloged as a weekly newspaper under the name מִשְׁפָּחָה, transliterated as Mishpaḥah, with the subtitle החדשות של הציבור החרדי, referring to news of the Haredi public.[1] Its flagship coverage encompasses politics, profiles, features, and opinion, while its associated publications extend into parenting, food, fiction, history, science, and Jewish thought.[2]

Institutional independence has been an important part of its position within Haredi media: Mishpacha and Ba-Kehilah have presented themselves as unaffiliated with authorities within the Haredi establishment.[6] In 2012, Mishpacha was described as an independent weekly and the leader in the Haredi newspaper market at that time.[4] Haim Shapiro's review of Yoel Cohen's study places it among the more independent Orthodox and Haredi periodicals and describes it as “more upmarket” than some other publications in that media landscape.[7]

The publication's stated editorial principles include unity across Orthodox Jewish streams, high standards of writing and fact-checking, a global perspective, and attention to human stories.[2] Its combination of communal commitments and broader reporting was expressed in a June 2005 interview by then-deputy editor Yossi Elituv, who said a Haredi newspaper should communicate Haredi values while informing readers about the world.[3]

The publisher's official timeline says the Hebrew weekly began in Jerusalem in 1987, when Eli Paley and Rabbi Moshe Grylak launched it from a walk-up apartment; its initial print run of 8,000 copies sold out within days.[2] A 2012 Mishpacha eulogy gives a different attribution, saying Rabbi Yehudah Paley founded the original Hebrew Mishpachah and first conceived an English edition, without providing a founding year.[8] Its emergence belonged to a broader change in Haredi publishing during the 1980s and 1990s, when independent weeklies introduced more photographs, color, and magazine-style material.[3] Elituv contrasted this development with the early state-era Haredi press, which he described as largely composed of political organs serving party needs alongside religious values.[3]

The English magazine launched for Pesach in 2004, reaching North American communities with a full-color main magazine and a children's magazine.[2] Weekly distribution reached 20,000 that year, and the literary supplement Calligraphy began in Tishrei 2004 as a twice-yearly publication of Jewish fiction.[2] Contributor Yaakov Gerstel later recalled that Orthodox readers had previously relied on newspapers and some short-lived magazines rather than a glossy weekly offering suitable reading material; he characterized the English edition's reception as an “overnight success.”[9]

Family First began as a monthly in August 2005 and became a weekly in September 2006.[2] The children's publication Junior, launched in 2004, was reintroduced as Treeo in 2023.[2] These additions expanded the publication family beyond its main news and features magazine into reading organized around different ages and interests.[2]

A major website redesign in 2018 added an improved interface, searchable archives, subscriber access, and video capabilities.[2] In 2021, the group inaugurated new headquarters in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood, with Rav Menachem Cohen, chairman of the Hebrew rabbinic board, affixing the mezuzah.[10] Editor-in-chief Rabbi Moshe Grylak described its growth from a few people working late into an “international media force.”[10]

The English magazine marked issue 1,000 on February 21, 2024.[11] By the period covered by its current institutional description, Mishpacha's operation included more than a dozen podcasts and a digital archive of more than 1,100 issues.[2]

Family First is a weekly for women covering relationships, parenting, home, health, and the inner life; its publisher presents it as the first Orthodox women's weekly.[2] The wider publication family includes Family Table, Treeo, Calligraphy, Teen, and Pendulum alongside the flagship magazine.[2] Treeo offers serialized fiction, biography, comics, and current events, while Pendulum explores Jewish history, medicine, science, and ideas through Torah and Jewish experience.[2] Family First also serves modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox women.[12]

Women have held substantial editorial and production roles within the organization.[4] In 2012, Mishpacha employed 250 people, more than half of them women, including reporters and graphic designers; a woman was also managing editor of the English edition.[4] Its women's magazine nevertheless appeared without photographs of women.[4]

Investigative reporting has included problems within Haredi institutions and family life.[3][4] In 2005, Elituv cited examinations of discrimination between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the school system, young people dropping out of school, and the treatment of emotionally disabled students.[3] By 2012, reporters were also addressing child abuse and divorce, subjects described at the time as previously untouched in this publishing environment.[4] Managing editor Shoshana Friedman characterized its chosen subjects as “the things people will be talking about around their Shabbat tables.”[4]

Coverage of communal economics has ranged from household expenditure to proposed support for yeshivas.[13][14] In February 2004, Mishpacha reported an order by the Ger Rebbe, Rabbi Arie Alter, requiring followers at Ger educational institutions to return their mobile phones and those of their wives.[13] The order was attributed mainly to economic concerns, including the argument that institutional support payments should not be spent on telephone calls.[13]

A May 2013 article, “Supporting the Torah,” described a proposed fund responding to anticipated reductions in yeshiva budgets and economic sanctions on yeshiva students who did not serve in the IDF.[14] The reported target was $100 million over 18 months, with plans to support yeshivas and students and encourage employment and training for Haredi women in work compatible with Haredi life.[14] These were proposed arrangements and fundraising goals, rather than documented outcomes.[14]

Security and foreign-affairs coverage has included contributions from researchers working on Israeli strategic issues.[15][16] Published comments included those of Dr. Tsilla Herscho on November 18, 2015, Jonathan Rynhold on July 22, 2015, and Dr. Edo Hecht on November 7, 2016.[15] Another article featured Dr. Michael Barak discussing Iran and Hezbollah's efforts involving social-media mentorship between terrorist organizations.[16]

Historical features have also recovered the lives of less-remembered Jewish figures.[5] A 2023 Passover issue published a photograph of Jennie Miller Faggen alongside a story about her support for dozens of European yeshivas before World War II.[5] She donated tens of thousands of dollars to Orthodox educational institutions in the 1920s and hosted rabbis at her 18-room Philadelphia home.[5] Researcher Dovi Safier's three-year reporting effort drew on archives, letters, and a Rolodex of prominent rabbis; many of Faggen's contributions had been forgotten after the institutions she supported were destroyed in the Holocaust.[5]

Glossy supplements and human-interest stories helped Mishpacha set a new standard for competing Haredi publications by 2012.[4] Its development reflected the wider expansion of Haredi reading beyond party news into book reviews, women's magazines, children's supplements, and features celebrating communal values and figures.[3] Such journals also provide material for researchers studying changes in Orthodox and Haredi society.[6]

The publisher's advertising figures place weekly international readership above 250,000, including more than 175,000 readers in the United States and Canada and more than 75,000 in Israel, the United Kingdom, and Europe; these are publisher-supplied figures for advertisers.[17] Reader participation has also influenced content: in her reflection marking issue 1,000, Shoshana Friedman described reader suggestions leading to coverage of people and programs, with feedback helping shape the magazine.[11]

The Hebrew publication has a substantial preserved archive: the available listing covers issues from January 2, 2014, through February 5, 2026, comprising 538 issues and 172,500 pages.[1] This span describes the available archived material, not the publication's full history.[1]

A separate quarterly also called Mishpacha serves the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, covering Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and the Maryland suburbs.[18] Distributed electronically, it provides a forum for research tips, articles, and members' experiences in Jewish family-history research.[18] A founder's retrospective connected its beginnings with the society's organization in 1980, recalling, “We started Mishpacha right away”; approximately 40 people attended the society's organizing meeting on October 15 that year.[19] Its Spring 2014 issue included Y-DNA research, genetic testing and FamilyTreeDNA, an account of a DNA-enabled family reunion described as possible after 700 years, and society programming and library news.[18]

The limits of communal journalism have been a recurring issue around Mishpacha.[3][4] Elituv summarized the Haredi newspaper's task as providing readers “everything he/she needs to know—and simultaneously, to protect him from all that he/she does not need to know.”[3] He described religious review by an individual or committee as a given in Haredi newspapers, characterized it as censorship, and said such papers avoided certain subjects and photographs of women; these were his descriptions of press practice rather than findings about every publication.[3] Mishpacha's sensitive reporting and support for the legitimacy of entering the workforce drew criticism from some traditional Haredi newspapers.[4]

Its longstanding restriction on photographs of women has drawn criticism from feminist groups, which argue that such policies demean women and erase them from public life; editors have defended the practice through Haredi modesty norms.[5] Exceptions have themselves provoked opposition: a November 2016 cover showing Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in negative-exposure profiles overlaid with campaign symbols was criticized by Hamodia for including a woman's image.[5] Contributing editor Sruli Besser said the decision followed “hours of conversation and deliberation with real rabbanim.”[5] Further exceptions included prewar photographs of women in 2021 articles about a New York Jewish nursing home and the Holocaust in Telz, Lithuania.[5]

In 2015, deputy editor Aryeh Erlich introduced a column about Haredi opposition to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount with an Arabic-script appeal generated through Google Translate from Hebrew, rather than intended as an Arabic text for readers.[20] The piece drew an indignant response, and editor Yossi Elituv both defended and distanced himself from it while saying it required an unambiguous clarification.[20] Another political controversy concerned an online roundtable published before the January 6, 2021, Capitol violence: three of its four participants wrote approvingly of members of Congress planning to challenge the presidential election results.[21]