Jerry Lippman, the indefatigable publisher of the Long Island Jewish World and the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel, who passed away Sept. 1 at age 76, was more than just another Jewish newspaperman.

He was, in many ways, the personification of everything he thought a Jewish weekly should be. He knew the names and faces of every colorful personality around town, the machers and the minyan makers, and they knew him. He was intimate with senators and mayors and nonprofit CEOs.

And yet, behind the smiles and hugs, he unnerved and unsettled an establishment that saw him as a perennial gadfly.

All of that, however, would hardly describe the typical Jewish newspaper publisher when Jerry first came on the scene almost 50 years ago. Back then, Jewish weeklies were, for the most part, milquetoast affairs. Most churned out reliably puffed-up profiles of dinner honorees, touched-up sermons by local rabbis and travelogues of “solidarity missions” to Israel. If they weren’t owned and operated outright by the local Jewish federations, many acted that way anyway.

Lippman was determined to change that. He had no background in journalism or Jewish organizational life. He’d owned a gas station before he launched the Long Island Jewish World with his then wife, Naomi Lippman, in 1976. His distinctive Brooklyn street drawl, full of unintended neologisms, set him apart from the bookish wordsmiths he would lead as an editor in chief.

He recruited talented and ambitious young journalists, expressing a passion for Jewish politics that made them suspect among Jewish leaders unused to their scrutiny. He encouraged his staff to stay with a story, yielding features that ran longer and deeper than anything else........

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