Efforts are being made to save the Jewish Tribune after rumours that the Orthodox weekly would be closing after Rosh Hashanah.

This week's issue appeals for help to secure the future of the newspaper, which is published by the UK branch of the Agudas Israel movement.

Alex Strom, a member of the editorial board and a Tribune columnist, said: "It is being published for the time being and I am hopeful it will carry on."

The Tribune - styled "the voice of Anglo-Jewish Orthodoxy" - was founded in 1962 to publish material with a strictly Orthodox worldview. It still carries a few pages in Yiddish.

But in recent years it has faced growing competition from international Orthodox publications such as Hamodia - the weekly newspaper supported by the world Agudas Israel organisation which has a British slip edition - and the glossy magazine Misphacha.

Mr Strom said that local advertising sheets had also deprived the Tribune of revenue. Although Agudas Israel subsidises the newspaper, the current level of losses were unsustainable.