The Organ of the Jewish People: The Yidishes Tageblat and Uncharted Conservative Yiddish Culture in America

Abstract:The article examines the history of the first sustainable Yiddish daily in the world, Yidishes tageblat (Jewish Daily News), published in New York between 1885 and 1928). The history of the Tageblat exposes two lacunas in the existing scholarship about Yiddish culture in America. First, there are almost no English-language studies about Orthodox Yiddish newspapers. Second, whereas many historians have accepted and repeated a characterization of the Tageblat as an “Orthodox” paper, in reality it exhibited mildly traditional views that catered to many immigrants’ aching for homey Yiddishkayt, which did not necessitate rigorous observance of Jewish law. The newspaper’s conservatism was anchored in the concept of klal-yisroel (the Jewish people as a whole) rather than specific precepts. The article examines various writers/editors in the paper and shows how they were far not only from Orthodoxy, but sometimes even from traditionalism. This topic also illuminates the paucity of studies about conservative as well as lowbrow American Yiddish culture, especially in comparison to the plethora of studies about radical (socialist, communist, etc.) Yiddish culture. Finally, the article analyzes the difficulty to isolate and define the Tageblat’s kind of traditionalism as a historical phenomenon.