JTA — When Jeffrey Klein traveled to the Soviet Union to report a long feature on Jewish refuseniks, his first stop was a sparsely attended synagogue in Moscow. Before he left, he wanted to make a donation.

“I ask in Yiddish, then in Hebrew, where the synagogue’s charity box is,” he wrote in the July 1978 issue of Mother Jones magazine. “‘Tzedaka,’ I repeat. ‘Rubles for poor families.’”

Following the March 13 death of Klein, the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of progressive magazine Mother Jones at 77, the most prominent obituaries made scant mention of his Judaism. He rarely wrote about his own Jewish identity.

But his sons Jacob and Jonah said Jewish values underlay his journalism. And, as in the article on Jews who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union, Judaism occasionally surfaced in his articles.

“He really saw, I think, a through line between our history of being oppressed by corrupt rulers, and his desire to investigate and take down corruption in corporate America and in Washington,” Jacob Klein said.

Jonah Klein said, “I think it was, you know, just deep in his bones to question authority, to look out for the powerless, and to be skeptical of authority.”

Klein was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1948 to the descendants of Hungarian Jews. After graduating Columbia University, he moved to the Bay Area, where he co-founded Mother Jones in 1976, when he was 28.

About two years later, he traveled to Moscow for his deeply........

© The Times of Israel