Yiddish Press Exhibit Covers Life of North American Jewry

One of the most absorbing chapters in the history of the cultural development of North American Jewry is that describing the growth and mutations of the Yiddish press on this continent.

For there is scarcely a phase in the life of the American Jewish immigrant and his children which the Yiddish press has not touched upon in the brief sixty-four years of its existence. In that short space of time the American Yiddish press has made astonishingly rapid strides from its simple beginnings in 1870, when the first known Yiddish daily appeared, to its potent, influential present.

The dimensions of these strides will be apparent even to the uninitiated visitor at 149 Second avenue, where the Yiddish Culture Society has placed on view the first exhibit of the American Yiddish press ever to be arranged. Some 600 examples have been collected from publishers’ files and private archives and have been arranged to show the ramifications and diversity of the Yiddish language press here since its very inception.

LEAPS MARK PROGRESS

Like every press in its beginnings, the Yiddish press here was somewhat naive in its approach to the reader, yet at the same time dogmatic, telling him how to live, how to vote, how to spell and what to think. But whereas the English press, for example, required centuries to reach its present stage, the American Yiddish press has reached the heights of modernity by leaps and bounds, by learning well and rapidly what there was to be learned about modern newspaper publishing. Yiddish newspapers published in North America compare more favorably with their English-language contemporaries, covering as they do not only their special field of Jewish news but also the general news of all the world. And in addition, they supply their readers daily with articles, fiction and poetry.

PIONEERS WERE HARDY MEN

The first publishers and editors of Yiddish newspapers here, I. K, Buchner, Zvi Hirsch Bernstein (uncle of Herman Bernstein, first editor of the Day and present editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin), Kasriel Hirsch Sarahsohn-must have been intrepid men to face the prediction that within a generation or two at the most Yiddish as a cultural implement would have disappeared from this continent. Today, in the third generation, their successors can point to a combined circulation which seems to indicate that one of every four Jewish souls on this continent reads a Yiddish publication.

DIVERSIFIED INTERESTS

The Yiddish Culture Society’s collection is not limited to news dailies and weeklies. There are on view hundreds of dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies and erratic publications arranged to show the many channels of interest prevailing among American Jewry.

There are the specialized trade and professional magazines (only one of which is now published in Yiddish), literary, art and music publications, health and science magazines and many others, including local issues.

The sections devoted to the religious, political and organizational magazines are large and bear witness that religion, Zionism, Socialism, Communism and Anarchism as manifested among Ameriby its own particular pressman Jewry were all shaped each It might be interesting to note that Dos Yiddische Licht, an orthodox newspaper published in New York for many years, never permitted the word “Gott” to be spellen out in its pages, but used the letter “giml” instead.

MEXICO INCLUDED

In view of the fact that American immigrant Jewry is famous for its neglect and lack of reverence for cultural data, comparatively little of which has been preserved among us, the Yiddish Culture Society’s collection is indeed impressive. It is not limited to publications which appeared in the great centers where many Jews reside, but covers smaller communities and a host of other places, including Mexico.

‘MAY WELL BE PROUD’

The Yiddish Culture Society’s exhibit proves conclusively that on the whole the Yiddish press, which is largely the contributions the East European Jew to American Jewish life, is one of which every American Jew may well be proud, even though he had never seen a Yiddish newspaper. From it one can read the life of all Jews, here, past and present, in all its phases and involutions. It bears evidence of work sincerely done out of a desire for progress and the spreading of culture, both Jewish and universal. The Jewish press has nurtured most of the best Yiddish writers, whether novelists, poets or journalists, and has enriched the Yiddish language and Yiddish literature.

The exhibit, originally scheduled to run a month, has been extended to July 15.