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Jan 31 Advice Columns and the Making of the American Yiddish Press7:30pm

Advice Columns and the Making of the American Yiddish Press

Tuesday, January 31st, 2023

07:30 PM - 08:30 PM

Other
Zoom

At the turn of the twentieth century, American Yiddish newspapers overflowed with advice columns offering implicit and explicit guidance
to readers about how to live their lives. From the Forverts’ famous “A Bintel Brief” to more practical advice columns, such as Der Tog’s “Letter Box” column, these publications printed countless letters from
readers asking editors to help them navigate personal tribulations, American political infrastructures, and Jewish communal life.

Editors and publishers introduced these features to entertain newspaper readers and to increase circulation. But these features also
encouraged audiences previously unaccustomed to reading
newspapers to view these publications as central sources for information and guidance about acclimating to American life. Eventually, these interactions spilled off the page, with Yiddish
newspapers hiring staff to correspond or meet with readers eager to receive personal counsel from their favorite papers.

This talk will explore the crucial role of advice columns in the development of the Yiddish press. It will highlight how these columns
shaped the relationships between newspapers and their readers and how central advice columns became to the acclimation process of
new immigrants anxious to learn more about American life.

Ayelet Brinn is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Hartford, where she holds the Philip D. Feltman Professorship in Modern Jewish History. After receiving her PhD in History from the University of
Pennsylvania in 2019, she served as the Rabin-Shvidler Joint Postdoctoral Fellow at
Fordham University and Columbia University, the Ivan and Nina Ross Family Fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and a scholar in residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Her first book, A Revolution in Type: Gender and the
Making of the American Yiddish Press, will be published this fall with New York
University Press.

Contact Information: judaicstudies@uconn.edu
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