Journalism

Apropos of Ellen's comment about "what makes Thanksgiving so meaningful for some American Jews" in her prior post, I thought I'd share an excerpt from an article published in The American Jewess in November 1896.

Summer? Summer is the time that you eat sticky popsicles, ride your bike to the beach, and watch fireworks, right? Oh wait, I think summer is the time that you have to plan six months in advance to find a single weekend that you can go away with your friends because everyone is off traveling. Yes, even this year, with gas prices sky-high. And we are not without good company. Jewish women have made it their business to see the world for hundreds of years.

As a new crop of college graduates ponder their uncertain futures and decide whether to go directly to work (if they can find work in this uncertain economy) or bum around for a while in search of inspiration, I thought it would be fun to find out what passed for "backpacking through Europe" in the turn-of-the-20th-century world of The American Jewess.

It's June. Wedding season is officially upon us, and with it, a return to our feature on The American Jewess after a brief hiatus.

By Rebecca Honig Friedman, cross-posted on Jewess. This would have been an appropriate post for last week when we celebrated Yom Ha'azmaut and commemorated Yom Hazikaron but ...

A regular column in The American Jewess, "The Woman Who Talks" (a more politically correct way to say The Yenta?) was a place "for the ventilation of all subjects pertaining to woman: social, domestic, religious, literary, political, philanthropic, and so on-ad infinituz," according to its first installment.

Some of the articles we're finding in our look at The American Jewess archives seem surprisingly contemporary (19th century language aside), yet a closer look reveals the more subtle points of contrast between how we approach particular issues now vs. then.

Besides this piece being interesting as a documentary description of late 19th century life in London, it's fascinating for the writer's clear invocation of class issues, though that seems more a natural by-product of her own upper-class biases than a deliberate attempt to raise an explicit discussion about socioeconomic divisions between Jews.

Cross-posted on Jewess. The beginning seems like a good place to begin our exploration of The American Jewess archives. The first issue of TAJ, from April 1895, proves to be varied in its area of coverage, likely reflecting the varied interests and education of its intended readers. And that 19th century language sure is something!

Today marks the 113th anniversary -- centennial + bat mitzvah! -- of the launch issue of The American Jewess, the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women.

Rather than stay fixated on last year’s “war against Christmas,” dust-up, the New York Times this holiday season has been running a veritable flood of articles suggesting that, when it comes to Christmas: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. No less than seven articles have put forward the argument that even those who might have good reason to distance themselves from Christmas tend to be happier (and less curmudgeonly) when they simply embrace the holiday that everyone loves.