Abraham Cahan and the Rise of the American Yiddish Press

with Abraham Cahan and the Rise of the American Yiddish Press”, Ayelet Brinn (Hartford)

By the 1890s, the United States had seen two decades of Yiddish newspaper publishing that had proceeded in fits and starts. As there was no strong precedent in Europe or America for a thriving Yiddish newspaper market, the first American publications in Yiddish failed to secure reliable streams of funding or a devoted readership. It was only beginning in the 1890s that the Yiddish press really found its footing, transforming over the course of the next two decades into a flourishing, competitive market of options. Using the early career of long-term Jewish Daily Forward editor Abraham Cahan as a case study, this talk will explore how the American Yiddish press grew from unpromising origins into the diverse, successful publication market that it eventually became. On the one hand, Cahan was an early leader in the Jewish labor movement, and as such, deeply dedicated to creating politically-potent publications that would awaken the class consciousness of his immigrant readership. On the other hand, his approach to Yiddish newspaper publishing was filtered through his experiences as an avid reader of and writer for the sensational, human interest-driven American popular press in English. The contradictions between these divergent motivations and influences made Cahan a prime target for criticism from his rivals, but also transformed him and the newspaper he edited into crucial, vital lifelines for generations of American Jewish immigrants. Cahan’s early career highlights the complex, often conflicting financial and ideological motivations that stood at the heart of the American Yiddish press, as well as the often-porous boundaries between American publishing markets in various languages at the turn of the twentieth century.  

Ayelet Brinn is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Hartford, where she holds the Philip D. Feltman Assistant Professorship in Modern Jewish History and a 2025-2026 fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies.  Her first book, A REVOLUTION IN TYPE: GENDER AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN YIDDISH PRESS, was released in the fall of 2023 with New York University Press. She is currently working on a project about the Espionage Act and the censorship of the American Yiddish press during World War I.

REGISTER HERE