New York Public Library's Contributions to the American Section of the Historical Jewish Press Project

New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish Division is an unparalleled repository of the rich and comprehensive collection of the American Jewish press in most of the languages spoken by the Jews who made their new home in North America over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes titles in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Ladino, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, Russian, etc. The collection was forming chronologically with the development of the Jewish diaspora in the US and the simultaneous building of NYPL’s all-inclusive serials holdings, along with ongoing preservation and microfilming efforts at the Library. The Dorot Jewish collection is particularly strong in periodicals that were published in New York City.

In 2012 the Manhattan Research Libraries Initiative (MaRLI) partners represented by NYPL, Columbia University and NYU joined efforts and began working together on contributing the most essential Jewish American periodicals to the Historical Jewish Press Project hosted by the National Library of Israel. The NYPL holdings currently constitute a fundamental component of “The Jewish Press in the USA” section, with most of the titles published in New York. 17 titles in English, Yiddish, and Ladino with an astonishing amount of 706,000 pages have been digitized, and 15 out of 17 titles have been made available online;  yet several other periodicals are currently in the process of digitization. The MaRLI consortium’s contribution constitutes almost 25% of the total 2.9 million pages from 413 periodicals available on the website. This impressive fact just underlines how crucial the NYPL’s contribution to the JPress project is! The project is currently in phase four of its progress and the next  phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2021.  

In order to understand the importance of the initiative, it would be helpful to have a brief overview of the history of the American Jewish Press as an essential primary source for the studies of American Jewish life.

In the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, New York City was a point of destination for hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants and represented a vibrant center of intense communal, religious, cultural, and literary life. New York was a dynamic scene for the diversity of Jewish political and social movements. Naturally, Yiddish served as the language of the local press for the newcomers. It related to the immigrants’ needs and traditions and facilitated their entrance to American life.  Between 1881 and the late 1920s, over 2.3 million Jews from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania settled in the US, and approximately 2 million read the Yiddish newspapers. No wonder that at the peak of the popularity of the Yiddish press in the 1910s-1920s NYC alone produced several most important Yiddish dailies, such as Forverts (Forward), Der Tog (The Day), Morgen Zshurnal (The Jewish Morning Journal), Yidishes Tageblat (The Jewish Daily News), Di Varhayt (The Truth), and Frayhayt (Freedom)—six out of a total 11 Yiddish dailies that were published in the US at that time. 

Despite often opposite political views (such as Socialism, Zionism, assimilationism, and their variations), these newspapers were seen as an important forum for many distinguished Jewish intellectuals and writers and presented a stage for innovative trends in the Yiddish literature. The newspapers were a mirror of how the Jewish population reacted to often tragic historical events of the twentieth century, such as the persecutions of Jews, revolutions, the rise of Nazism in Europe, WWI and WWII, the Cold War, etc.  

Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Greece and Balkan countries began to arrive in the US in the 1880s, and by the early 1920s, the Sephardic population in the country reached approximately 30,000 people. Two-thirds of the immigrants resided in New York.  Several weekly newspapers in Judeo Spanish (Ladino) such as Lah Amerikah  (The America), La Vara (The Staff), El Progresso (The Progress), and La Luz (The Light)  were produced in New York City to accommodate the needs of the immigrant community.  

The Anglo-Jewish press in the United States established itself as early as 1843 with the publication of the first American Jewish periodical Occident and American Jewish Advocate (Philadelphia). In the second half of the 19th century, during a period of mass immigration of German-speaking Jews to the US, the circulation of the English-language Jewish press outnumbered the immigrant newspapers in German and Hebrew. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Anglo-Jewish press was a leading voice of the assimilated Jews in the US. However, the striking boost in popularity of the new Yiddish press in the following decades presented a real threat to this monopoly. The English press perceived Yiddish editions as competitors and obstacles to assimilation.

As it happened, in the first half of the 20th century, the Anglo Jewish press in the US gave up its primary role in the Jewish community to Yiddish, even though several important weekly and monthly periodicals were in English such as B’nai B’rith Messenger (Los Angeles), American Hebrew (New York), The Menorah (New York), continued to be published, and attracted the best authors from the American Jewish English-speaking intellectual elite. Only with the decline of the Yiddish press in the second half of the twentieth century and with ongoing assimilation were Jewish periodical editions in the English language gradually able to reclaim their leading role in the American Jewish community, with an expanded range of interests, and achieved high levels of circulations.

All these trends in the history of the Jewish Press in the United States become much more distinctively visible with the development of the Historical Jewish Press project as more and more periodicals’ content appear in open access. The project unveils new possibilities for online research and scholars from around the world welcome this opportunity with gratitude. And they are anticipating more content in free access! Our colleagues from the National Library of Israel have confirmed that access to the site has shown a 30 % increase during the pandemic crises.

The leading role of NYPL in this initiative demonstrates itself in hundreds of thousands of digitized pages, the historical and informational value of the editions, quality of journalism, and diversity of the immigrant press. Below are links to the JPress website and NYPL highlights (in some instances the NYPL holdings were complimented by the holdings from the other libraries, such as the National Library of Israel, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and Spertus Institute in Chicago).
 

Historical Jewish Press (JPress) website is hosted by the National Library of Israel

https://web.nli.org.il/sites/JPress/English/Pages/default.aspx

Yiddish Newspapers in New York Available from NYPL

Forverts (Forward)
Almost from the very beginning of its publication in 1897 Forverts stood out as the most successful and popular Yiddish daily newspaper. It was also rightfully considered among the most widely read foreign-language newspapers in the US in general. Although socialist by its ideology, it was a general interest daily that welcomed the diversity of opinions and adopted a very emphatic and engaging way to communicate with the audience. Its visionary editor Abraham Cahan implemented a high level of editing and skillfully managed the balance between popular taste and literary quality. Many novels and short stories by prominent Yiddish writers such as Itzhak Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade were first published in serialized format in Forverts, and contemporary scholars frequently browse the newspaper nowadays in search of their literary gems:

Der Tog  (The Day) (partially available online)
This publication began in 1914 and was the second most widely read Yiddish newspaper in the US. In contrast to Forverts, it was a liberal and pro-Zionist newspaper and became best known for publishing sophisticated literary works by authors who were often previously rejected by Forverts. Among Der Tog’s authors were Sholem Aleichem, Yehoyesh, Leon Kobrin and others. Der Tog was also the first Yiddish newspaper to employ female editorial staff and writers, such as Anna Margolin and Sarah Smith.

Di Varhayt (The Truth)
Another successful daily newspaper, it was published from 1905-1919 and aligned itself with the socialist and Zionist movements. In 1919 it merged with Der Tog.

Yidishes Tageblat (Jewish Daily News) 
Running from 1885-1928, this was the oldest Yiddish daily newspaper of the conservative and conservative profile that adapted a highly Germanized Yiddish language. In 1928, this newspaper was merged with Der Morgen Zshurnal.

Der Morgen Zshurnal (The Jewish Morning Journal)Established by Jacob Saphirstein and published from 1901-1971, it was the only morning Yiddish newspaper and a strong distinguished voice of conservative Orthodox Jewish immigrants. In 1952 the newspaper merged with Der Tog and changed its name to  Der Tog, Morgen Zshurnal.

Jewish Newspapers in English Available from NYPL
 

The B’nai B’rith Messenger (Los Angeles)
During almost a century of its existence (1897-1995), it was one of the foremost sources of the history of Jewish people in Los Angeles. This bi-monthly and later weekly edition was named after the famous B’nai B’rith Reform synagogue in Los Angeles.

The Asmonean (New York)

“A family journal of commerce, politics, religion, and literature, devoted to the interests of the American Israelites,” it was published weekly in New York by Robert Lyon between 1849-1958. It was one of the early successful editions of communal newspapers in English.

Ladino Newspapers from New York
 

Lah Amerikah (1910-1925) 

Thiswas the first American Ladino periodical. This weekly edition was established by Moshe Gadol, a brilliant immigrant from Bulgaria, who settled in New York. At the peak of its popularity, the circulation of Lah Amerikah reached 1,000 copies. The newspaper encouraged communication between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi community and some sections of the newspaper were published in Yiddish.

El Progresso, La Boz del Pueblo, La Époka de Nu York This was a pro-socialist Sephardi newspaper published in New York in 1915-1920 by Morris Nissim. He started this weekly newspaper under the title El Progress (The Progress), but soon changed it to La Boz del Pueblo (The Voice of the People). In 1919, the newspaper changed its name again to La Epoka de Nu York  (The New York Epoch).

Bibliography:

1. Ben-Ur, Aviva. “In Search of the American Ladino Press: A Bibliographical Survey, 1910–1948.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, vol. 21, 2001, pp. 10–52. 
2. Cohen, Nathan. “The Yiddish Press and Yiddish Literature: A Fertile but Complex Relationship.” Modern Judaism, vol. 28, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–172.
3. Dissentshik, Ido Joseph. “New York’s Two Yiddish Dailies: ‘The Day Morgen Journal and ‘Forward’ – a 1966 Study.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 45e–52e. 
4. Ehrlich, Evelyn. The American Jewish Newspapers Digitization Project. Proceedings of the 50th Annual Conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries (Washington, DC – June 21-24, 2015). 

https://databases.jewishlibraries.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/proceedings2015/EhrlichSlideText2015.pdf   Accessed July 12, 2020.

1. Goren, Arthur. “The Jewish Press in the U.S.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 4e–22e. 
2. Goren, Arthur. “Orthodox Politics, Republican and Jewish: Jacob Saphirstein and the Morgen Zhurnal.” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1981, pp. 63–71.
3. Hoffman, Matthew. “The Red Divide: The Conflict between Communists and Their Opponents in the American Yiddish Press.” American Jewish History, vol. 96, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–31.
4. Madison, Charles A. Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing on American Culture. New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1976.
5. Michels, Tony. “‘Speaking to Moyshe’: The Early Socialist Yiddish Press and Its Readers.” Jewish History, vol. 14, no. 1, 2000, pp. 51–82.
6. Nahshon, Gad. “The Ladino Press in the United States.” Kesher, no. 6, 1989, pp. 53e–57e.
7. Rischin, Moses. The Promised City: New York's Jews 1870-1914. Cambridge, Mass, 1978
8. Soltes, Mordecai. “The Yiddish Press - an Americanizing Agency.” The American Jewish Year Book, vol. 26, 1924, pp. 165–372.