ABSTRACT
The author served on the staff of Commentary magazine from its beginning in 1945 until he left in 1953. He also worked on its predecessor magazine, the Contemporary Jewish Record (CJR), for a year or so. He says a few words about this predecessor journal, as it shaped what was to become the new Commentary and the circle that was to form around the new magazine in a number of ways. The CJR was a bimonthly journal published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The author's path to it was rather indirect and was made possible both by his political activities in college, as a member of the official student Zionist organization Avukah and as the editor of its journal, and by his nascent connections with the group that came to be known as "the New York Intellectuals".
