From May, 2009, to April, 2017, I produced the weekly newsletter for Congregation Zichron Eliezer (“CZE,” the synagogue formerly known as Kneseth Israel, or “KI”). It was a labor of love – a weekly exercise in copy-fitting, copy-editing (I often joked that condensing everyone’s announcements to fit on the page was good training for a career on Twitter) and information presentation.

Here are four examples which show how the layout evolved over time. My primary goals were to make the most of the space on the page, and to make it easy for the reader to find the information he/she needed. The masthead and the schedule moved around a bit. The sponsorship panel and the section headings became more streamlined and clean. Classes which repeated every week, with little variation, were removed from the “Torah” announcement space and placed in their own sidebar. I added a 36-hour weather forecast to the footer. Weekly features, like the “Kovaya Makom” announcement, were added (and, in some cases, removed). At some point, the newsletter also expanded to two pages (one sheet, front and back).

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Here are some more sample issues, with special features, all from the last year I worked on the newsletter.

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And here are some holiday editions, with extended schedules and seasonal themes. The four Purim Editions were supplements to the regular newsletter. As you an see, the usual rules didn’t apply on Purim; I only wish I’d had some sulfated castor oil to sprinkle on the faux mimeographs, so they’d smell like the real thing!

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