cost measures to reduce losses. According to the editor, the paper had been facing the "real threat" of having to close and the Press Gazette reported its situation as "facing a grave closure threat". Jonathan Goldstein, chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, organised a consortium of 20 individuals, families and charitable trusts to make donations to The Kessler Foundation to enable its continued support of the newspaper. Alan Jacobs, founder of Jacobs Capital, became the new chairman. In February 2020, The Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News announced plans to merge, subject to raising the necessary finance to support the merger. Combined, they print more than 40,000 copies weekly. On 8 April 2020, The Jewish Chronicle went into liquidiation, and both papers announced their intentions to close, due to the coronavirus pandemic. In April 2020, when the Chronicle faced closure due to financial problems during the Covid pandemic, threats to the paper's survival were met by sadness and some jubilation, with journalists Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman expressing sorrow, and some Labour supporters welcoming its demise and speculating that libel payouts were impacting on its finances. The Kessler Trust launched a bid to buy the two papers, giving editorial control to the senior staff of the News. However, a £2.5 million counter-offer, supported by the editor, was accepted by the liquidiators and trust in what The Guardian described as a brief but messy takeover bid. The consortium was led by Robbie Gibb and included John Woodcock, broadcasters Jonathan Sacerdoti and John Ware and Jonathan Kandel, former Charity Commission chairman William Shawcross, Rabbi Jonathan Hughes, Investec’s corporate and institutional banking chief operating officer Robert Swerling, managing partner at EMK Capital Mark Joseph, and Tom Boltman, head of strategic initiatives at Kovrr, with support from anonymous philanthropists. The consortium said it was running the paper as a community asset not for profit, and that they would set up a trust to ensure its editorial independence. The News was then taken out of liquidation. Editorial position Under the ownership of Asher Myers and Israel Davis, from 1878, the paper was hostile to Zionism, in line with the official positions of the religious and lay leaders of the community. After Leopold Greenberg had taken over the paper in 1906, it became strongly Zionist and it was made into "a firm and influential champion of Zionism". The JC supported the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the publication of