20 Questions… for Dovi Safier and Yehuda Geberer

Setting the Jewish history record straight and providing all of those off-the-record details, columnists Dovi Safier and Yehuda Geberer combine their research skills and love of our nation’s past to produce For the Record each week, a highlight for many readers. In their other lives, Dovi is a New York-based business professional, and Yehuda, who lives in Beit Shemesh, is a history lecturer and tour guide.

My ideal work environment

Yehuda: Mornings at home

Dovi: My office, long before the world has awoken and the phone starts buzzing

Deadlines make me

Yehuda: Tense

Dovi: Ask for an extension

The accomplishment I’m proudest of

Yehuda: Getting the column done consistently on a weekly basis

Dovi: Us being awarded eight Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism over the past three years by the AJPA. (I’m not as modest as Yehuda.)

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received

Dovi: The rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva of Far Rockaway, Rav Yechiel Perr ztz”l, once told me, “It’s great to study history, it’s even better to write about it. But the most important thing you can do is to try and make history.” That perspective reshaped the way I approach my work — not just as a historian, but as someone striving to contribute to the ongoing story of Klal Yisrael.