BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:6275@columbiajewish.org DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251113T203000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251113T203000 DTSTAMP:20250831T153740Z URL:https://www.columbiajewish.org/events/abraham-cahan-and-the-rise-of-th e-american-yiddish-pressmaterial-world-2/ SUMMARY:Abraham Cahan and the Rise of the American Yiddish Press DESCRIPTION:\nwith Abraham Cahan and the Rise of the American Yiddish Press ”\, Ayelet Brinn (Hartford)\nBy the 1890s\, the United States had seen t wo decades of Yiddish newspaper publishing that had proceeded in fits and starts. As there was no strong precedent in Europe or America for a thrivi ng Yiddish newspaper market\, the first American publications in Yiddish f ailed to secure reliable streams of funding or a devoted readership. It wa s only beginning in the 1890s that the Yiddish press really found its foot ing\, transforming over the course of the next two decades \;into a fl ourishing\, 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 consc iousness of his immigrant readership. On the other hand\, his approach to Yiddish newspaper publishing was filtered through his experiences as an av id reader of and writer for the sensational\, human interest-driven Americ an popular press in English. The contradictions between these divergent mo tivations 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 \;immigran ts. Cahan's early career highlights the complex\, often conflicting financ ial and ideological motivations that stood at the heart of the American Yi ddish press\, as well as the often-porous boundaries between American publ ishing markets in various languages at the turn of the twentieth century.& nbsp\; \;\nAyelet Brinn is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies an d History at the University of Hartford\, where she holds the Philip D. Fe ltman Assistant Professorship in Modern \;Jewish \;History and a 2 025-2026 fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Ad vanced 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 worki ng on a project about the Espionage Act and the censorship of the American Yiddish press during World War I.\nREGISTER HERE \;\n\n ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.columbiajewish.org/wp-content/upload s/2025/08/jewishscholarseries2_800x533.png CATEGORIES:Featured Events END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR