As Y2K loomed, the newly redesigned Jewish Exponent edition of Feb. 11, 1999, devoted significant coverage to the death of Jordan’s King Hussein, discussing his importance in a news story, an editorial and an op-ed.
The news story focused on how Hussein’s death left a void in the Middle East.
“Without King Hussein and Prince Hassan [Hussein’s brother], Jordan loses the two most forward-thinking Jordanians on the issue of peace,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Filling this gap will be tough.”
In addition, the Exponent opined on how Hussein went from being a mortal enemy of Israel to a friend, detailing how Hussein had thrown in with the Egyptians in 1967 and lost half his kingdom.
But the editorial noted how Hussein accepted Israeli support three years later in suppressing a Palestinian overthrow attempt, then stayed out of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and signed the first post-Oslo Arab peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
And columnist Leonard Fein noted that flags were flying at half-mast in Israel to honor Hussein, who became a “master of delicate balances.”
Closer to home, the Exponent explored the decline of Jewish-owned businesses in the perpetually bedraggled town of Chester.
Alex Brown discussed the closing of his 53-year-old Chester Arms Pharmacy.
Chester “used to be a place where Jews could succeed, but now it’s turned into an absolute graveyard,” he said. “The business area was predominantly Jewish prior to World War II and thereafter, but now it’s practically nonexistent.”
Leon Flanzer, who operated a deli there from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s, said Jewish merchants arrived in Chester – then a town teeming with machine shops, steel mills, manufacturing plants and a Ford Motor Co. distribution plant – in the 1920s. He said 75% or more of the stores on Main Street were Jewish-owned when he opened the deli.
Meantime, the paper’s Arts & Entertainment section leads off with a profile of Seth Green, the Overbrook-raised actor who, at the time, had a role in the popular “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and also was voicing a character in the animated “Family Guy.”
The article revealed that Green had known his career path since childhood.
“I want to be an actor-writer-producer-director and comic book artist,” he said before his bar mitzvah at Beth David Reform Congregation.
Mission accomplished.
