...only monthlies and weeklies but also dailies, several of which were already appearing at the turn of the century. Almost all the Yiddish dailies reflected their own ideological tendency, ranging from Orthodox to Zionist to socialist, and they were, to some extent, intended to advance the interests of these groups and parties and to support their political struggles. (2) Nonetheless, scholars--following the pioneering studies of Robert E. Park and Mordechai Soltes--have largely agreed that Yiddish newspapers in the United States were not merely a tool to advance various ideologies; they were also important agents of acculturation and Americanization for Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. (3)

At the end of World War I, by which time Jewish immigration to the United States had begun its decline, there were five Yiddish dailies in the United States. Each attempted in its own way to deal with all aspects of Jewish immigrant life: politics, culture, social and economic activities, and even family matters. They aspired to help create the profile of the American Jew and to shape the image of Jewish immigrant society. Three important figures in the American Yiddish world--the poet Jacob Glatstein, the journalist and critic Shmuel Niger, and the journalist and editor Hillel Rogof--eloquently (though somewhat nostalgically) recalled these aims in the opening essay to a book marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Yiddish press in the United States: "The Yiddish newspaper gave the immigrant a face. It made him a socialist, a Zionist, or a supporter of diaspora nationalism. But generally it made him a proud American Jew.... The newspaper in Yiddish was the stock market of ideas and of ideals. It shaped Jewish life." (4) Thus, an examination of how the Yiddish press discussed Jewish women, the ways in which it tried to appeal to them and to mold their image, will reveal how it viewed their place and their roles in eastern European Jewish immigrant society in the United States and will also tell us much about their status in that society. In the following pages, I will examine the image of immigrant women in the Yiddish socialist dailies in the United States as they were depicted in four different arenas: the public sphere, the workplace, the world of writing, and the family.

The dailies I will discuss are the two socialist newspapers: Di tsayt, published from August 1920 to April 1922 by the Labor Zionist movement, Poalei Zion; and the much more successful Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward), founded in 1897, which was the most important Yiddish newspaper in the United States and also the most widely circulated foreign-language newspaper in the country. (5) I have chosen to discuss these dailies both because their editors and writers exerted a strong influence on the Jewish public scene, adhering to progressive, liberal views and using the papers to achieve public and political aims, and because, unlike the other Yiddish dailies, they had special pages for women. Since it is impossible to draw a full comparison between these two papers because of Di tsayt's short life, the bulk of material presented is drawn from the Forverts with relevant insights from Di tsayt.

Since they published regular women's pages dealing with a range of issues beyond simple housekeeping and health matters, both socialist dailies viewed the status of Jewish women in the spirit of the progressive ideologies they represented. Yet, the content of the women's pages, and especially their rhetoric, also had a great deal in common with the view of women's status and role prevalent in what was still a rather conservative eastern European Jewish immigrant society." In order to explain this, I shall argue that although the Yiddish press used traditional images of Jewish women as mothers and housewives, its portrayal of them was, in reality, far more complex. My claim is that Yiddish newspapers in the United States, especially the Forverts, regarded eastern European Jewish immigrant women as filling highly important and sophisticated roles in Jewish society. Women were presented as people whose task it was to contribute to modernization and to the advancement of immigrant life in the United States, while at the same time safeguarding traditional values. They were expected to do all this through their functions as women, wives, and mothers, with the help of the materials, ideas, and messages that the newspaper provided.

The period under discussion here is 1918 to 1922, from the end of World War I to the closure of Di tsayt, when the Yiddish press had almost reached its peak in circulation. (7) Eastern European Jewish immigrants had established a significant presence in the United States dating back forty years, and the processes of politicization and the shaping of social structures were well advanced. Although officially the gates of the United States were still open to immigrants, mass immigration had declined dramatically on the eve of the war. By this time, Jewish immigrant society, its self-images and patterns of thought, including those regarding the roles of Jewish women, had already coalesced into a recognizable form.

The Jewish Woman and the Public Sphere

Women, and all the more Jewish women, were prominently represented in the Yiddish socialist dailies. Public struggles waged by women, or in which women played a leading role, were frequently given broad, sympathetic coverage on the news pages. (8) Stories about women on the stage were printed in the theater sections, and the Forvert's well-known feature, "A bintel brief" (a bundle of letters), in which readers wrote in with their questions and problems, often reflected the concerns of a broad, diverse feminine world. However, in addition to writing about women in relation to current events and including letters from female readers, these two papers also devoted regular weekly pages to a serious, fundamental discussion of the world of women in its various aspects--the private and the familial, the public and the economic as well as the psychological and the spiritual. Di tsayt's women's page, which carried the title "In der froyen velt: hoyz virtshaft un mode nayes" ("In the world of women: the household and fashion news"), was printed every Saturday during its first year and later appeared alternately with the page on children's literature. The women's page of the Forverts, titled "Froyen interesn: faktn un meynungen vegn dem leben under lage fun der froy" ("The woman's interests: facts and opinions about the life and lot of the woman"), was a regular feature from the time the paper first began to appear. It soon became recognized as the most important women's page among the Yiddish dailies and was a model for other dailies that were founded later (the veteran dailies Yidishes tageblat and Morgen zshurnal did not publish women's pages). The women's page of the Forverts had a regular structure, which hardly changed over the years. Each week it included a section, "Notitsn fun der froyen-velt" ("Notes from the world of women"), which dealt mainly with women in the public and political spheres. It sometimes included historical sketches about Jewish heroines in the Middle Ages, or about those who participated in the French Revolution who, in addition to waging public struggles, also had to cope with men who objected to their activities. (9) In 1920, it was joined by a section called "Tshikave zakhen vegn froyen" ("Curious matters about women"). In addition to these two regular columns, the women's page also included a sprinkling of articles, some of them popular and others more scholarly, on subjects connected with family life, housekeeping, and raising children. Thus, while an array of articles on "feminine" subjects and family life were printed in all parts of the paper and varied in content, the most consistent features treating women focused on their role in the public arena.

Between 1918 and 1922, the main topic of the Forverts' women's page was the struggle...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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