David Twersky

Who is David Twersky?

David Twersky was a journalist, Zionist activist, and peace advocate in Israel and the United States. He was an editor for The Forward and The New York Sun and a leader of the American Jewish Congress.

Twerksy was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, where he grew up in the left-leaning Sholem Aleichem cooperative housing project. He attended the Ramaz School in Manhattan and was active in the Labor Zionist youth movement Habonim. He attended City College of New York. In 1974, Twersky made aliyah and helped to re-establish Kibbutz Gezer.

In Israel, Twersky worked for the Labor Party's international affairs department, where he dealt with the Socialist International. He edited Shdemot, the literary journal of the kibbutz movement, and Spectrum, an English-language political monthly. Twersky served in an artillery unit during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Twersky returned to the U.S. in 1986 and became a full-time journalist. When the Yiddish Forverts started an English-language edition in 1990, he became deputy editor and Washington bureau chief. During his seven years at The Forward, Twersky was responsible for breaking many news stories. One of his best-known stories involved President Bill Clinton's associate Johnnetta B. Cole, who had been suggested as a possible nominee for Secretary of Education, and the fact that she had served on the national committee of the Venceremos Brigade. Another of Twersky's stories brought to light some views of Lani Guinier, a law professor whom Clinton had nominated to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights; those opinions were considered controversial and her nomination was withdrawn.