Yiddish: Women's Participation in Eastern European Yiddish Press (1862-1903)
The development of the Yiddish press in the 1860s allowed Jewish women to move from the domestic into the public sphere and to be part of public discussion about communities’ affairs, to acquire knowledge of other Jewish towns and world events, and to express themselves publicly in their own language understood by all. They wrote letters to the editor, stories and articles, and opinion pieces and practical instructions. Women writers in the second generation suggested four possibilities for women: holding onto the familiar traditional identity, whose boundaries were determined by society; being indifferent to the paths their lives followed and thus losing any sense of identity or losing their minds; accepting bourgeois values despite uneasiness; or constantly fighting for an equal status in society and taking full responsibility for their lives.
1881 – 1903: Beginnings and Expectations
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1903 – 1914: Disappointments and Despair
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Writers of the First Generation
Correspondents to the Yiddishes Folks-Blat
Khana Roznberg (Zinkov), October 14, 1883.
Rozalye Gershonovits) (Vilna), September 1884.
Froy M.M. (Shedlitz), 1884.
Froy Sara Goldin) (Okne), 1885
Literature
Bath, Malke. "Isroel der Protsentnik oder Yankenyu" (Isroel the Percentnik or Yankenyu). Dos Haylige Land, Zitomir/Berdichev, 1891.
Lerner, Maria. "Odesser Bilder" (Pictures from Odessa). Bilage zum Yudishen Folks-Blat, 5-10, St. Petersburg, 1890.
Izabela. "Nishtoysgehalten" (Nothing retained). Di Yudishe Biblyotek, Warshaw 1891.
Broches, Rokhel. "Ich Libke" (I Libke). Der Fraynd, St. Petersburg, “October 17 and 22, 1903.
Broches, Rokhel. “Di Zogerin” (The female prayer leader). Der Fraynd, December 1, 1904.
Broches, Rokhel. “By di Nayterke” (Inside the seamstresses’ sweatshop). Der Fraynd, November 19, 1904.
Broches, Rokhel. “Farvogelte” (Wanderer). Der Fraynd, June 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20, 1903.
Feignberg, Rokhel. "Di Kinderyorn" (Childhood years). Dos Lebn (St. Petersburg), February-November 1905.
Feignberg, Rokhel. “Vi azoy mir zenen gevorn sotyalitkes” (How we became socialists), Der Fraynd, March 14, 15, 20, 26, April 10, 1906.
Feignberg, Rokhel. “Oyf Troybn” (About Grapes). Der Fraynd, July 28, 30, August 1, 1906.
Feignberg, Rokhel. “Shvache Neshomes” (Weak souls). Der Fraynd, June 4, 5, 6, 1908.
Feignberg, Rokhel. “Frumke.” Der Fraynd, August 22, 1908.
Feignberg, Rokhel. “Miryam vasser” (Miriam’s water). Airopeishe Literature, 31, 32 (1910).
Serdatsky, Yente. "Kto Tam: Ver is Dort?" Lebn un Vissenshafy, 2, 1911.
Feiner, Shmuel. “The Modern Jewish Woman: A Test Case in the Relationship between Haskalah and Modernity” (Hebrew). In Sexuality and the Family in History, edited by Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni, 253–303. Jerusalem: 1998.
Kirzhnits, A. Di yidishe prese in der gevezener Rusisher imperye, 1823–1916 (The Yiddish press in the former Russian Empire, 1823–1916) (Yiddish). Moscow-Cracow-Minsk: 1930.
Orchan, Nurit. Staking a Claim: Women Writing in the Yiddish Press in Tsarist Russia. Jerusalem, 2013. [Hebrew]
Parush, Iris. Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth Century Eastern European Jewish Society. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.
Stampfer, Shaul. “Gender Differentiation and Education of the Jewish Woman in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe.” Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies 7 (1992).
Stanislawski, Michael. For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Werses, Shmuel. “Women’s Voices in the Yiddish Weekly Kol Mevasser” (Hebrew). In “Hakitsah, Ami”: Haskalah Literature in the Era of Modernization, 321–350. Jerusalem: 2001. Article first appeared in Khulyot 4 (Summer 1997): 53–82.
Zalkin, Mordechai. The Dawning: The Jewish Haskalah in the Russian Empire in the 19th Century (Hebrew). Jerusalem: 2000.
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