“HEBREW PRINTING IN AMERICA, 1735-1926” <<The Yosef Goldman Collection.>> Containing c. 1,009 titles built over many decades of careful, intelligent and assiduous pursuit.

<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline; font-size: medium;">Hebrew Printing in America By Ari Kinsberg (c) 2018</span></strong></p> <p></p> <p>The Yosef Goldman Collection of Hebrew Printing in America (HPA) is a veritable treasure of the Jewish experience in the New World. This singular library consists of over one thousand Hebrew books, pamphlets and miscellaneous ephemera published in North America between 1735 and 1926. It is the remarkable product of a three-decades-long sedulous and tenacious bibliophilist mission to reconstruct a major but long forsaken component of the Jewish literary legacy. HPA is unparalleled in terms of scope, completeness and individual rarities. There is no collection of early American Hebrew imprints that is even remotely as rich as HPA anywhere in the world, either in private or institutional hands.</p> <p></p> <p>With imprints from across the continent, including the earliest Hebrew works in various locales, HPA documents a fascinating untold chapter--actually many chapters--of Hebrew typography and bibliography. It is, however, much more than that. This exceptional collection presents to the world a practically ungleaned repository teeming with both historical and other data about the American Jewish community. Some of these materials were known but not fully studied and still have much to reveal about previously written chapters of history; other materials promise to provide gateways to completely uncharted paths of research. HPA has proven that it is impossible to tell the full and accurate story of <i>any </i>subject regarding American Jewry without recourse to American Hebrew books. The best way to illustrate the breadth and wealth of HPA is to retell that story as seen through the pages of its holdings.</p> <p></p> <p>(All bracketed numbers in this essay refer to holdings in the current HPA lot. “America” will generally refer to the United States or the areas it would ultimately comprise.)</p> <p></p> <p><span>Beginnings (1654-1830s)</span></p> <p><span></span></p> <p>The first Jews in America, hapless refugees from Dutch Brazil, landed in 1654 in what is today known as New York. Shortly thereafter a Jewish community took root in Newport and the following century saw Jewish settlement extending to Philadelphia, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, and Lancaster. On the eve of the eighteenth century, there were an estimated 1,600 Jews, representing an infinitesimal 0.03% of the general population and spread out over 800,000 square miles. Small numbers, wide geographic dispersion and the absence of organized immigration under the direction and guidance of well established communities in Europe did not bode well for American Jewry. It was poorly organized, basic communal infrastructure was often lacking and not even one ordained rabbi settled in an American community. Hebraic culture--either of the traditional rabbinic variety or the nascent Enlightenment type emerging in Europe--was almost unknown. For early American Jews, the use of Hebrew, with few exceptions, was synonymous with basic ritual needs.</p> <p></p> <p><span>A Century of American Christian Hebraism (1730s-1830s)</span></p> <p></p> <p>This isn’t to say that there was no advanced Hebrew learning during the Colonial and Early Republic periods. Aside from a few Jewish individuals at home in Hebrew texts, there was an active Christian Hebraist movement, represented for example by college Hebrew courses. Already in 1735 Judah Monis, a Hebrew lecturer at Harvard College, published a pioneering Hebrew grammar [#171]. His work, the first book with extensive Hebrew text printed in the New World, was followed over the next century by other Hebrew grammars, including those authored by Stephen Sewall (Monis’s successor and the first chair of Hebrew in an American college) [#172], John Smith (professor at Dartmouth) [#173, #174], James Patriot Wilson [#175], Joseph Frey (first Hebrew instructor at the University of Michigan) [#177], Martin Ruter [#178], Moses Stuart (professor at Andover) [#181, #189], James (Joshua) Seixas [#183] and finally Isaac Nordheimer in 1838 [#186]. Also published in this period were various Hebrew lexicons by Edward Robinson (discoverer of the site of Masada) and others [#179, #180, #181, #184, #185], a Hebrew Psalter in 1809 (the first printing of any part of the Bible in Hebrew) [#1], two Hebrew Bibles (one complete and one incomplete [#3, #4, #5] and a Hebrew translation of the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly in 1825 (the first Hebrew-only book published in America) [#1061]. These Christian Hebraist publications represented the overwhelming majority of imprints during the inaugural century of American Hebrew publishing.</p> <p></p> <p>It is tempting to ignore Christian Hebraist printing as separate from contemporary American Jewish history and as irrelevant to future historical course of the community. It is important to note though that some contributors to this literature were themselves Jews. In a few cases they were Jews-turned-Christians, such as Monis (who likely adopted Christianity to secure his Harvard job), Seixas (son of Shearith Israel’s famed Rev. Gershom Seixas) and Frey; Jonathan Horowitz, initiator of the first complete Hebrew Bible [#3, #4], may have also converted. More significantly, rounding out the Christian Hebraist century were H. Henry [#187] and Nordheimer [#186], both unconverted Jews. Nothing is known about Henry, but Nordheimer earned a reputation as a prodigy during his five years in the Pressburg yeshiva of the Chasam Sofer and was awarded a PhD at Munich before immigrating to America. Whereas Monis converted to Christianity to get his job at Harvard (and he never did rise to professor), Nordheimer remained an identifying Jew while a professor of Semitics at New York University and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary and New Haven Theological Seminary!</p> <p></p> <p>It is true that Christian Hebraism and missionary activity to the Jews often overlapped and this angle deserves further exploration. This convergence is evident in various works from this period [#177, #181], including a Hebrew translation of the Shorter Catechism [#1061]--the publisher “offered [it] to the remnant of Israel.” But Hebraism also provided Jews and Christians with a common language, as it were, and it played a role in laying the foundation for an America that would in the future become the most tolerant land of the Jews.</p> <p></p> <p>Finally, one learns from the prefaces in these early publications much about the technical and financial obstacles that plagued Hebrew authors and printers--and would continue to haunt them in later periods too. Echoes of the exact same complaints reverberate up to the very last books in HPA printed in the 1920s: the rarity of complete sets of Hebrew types, the difficulties of working with the types and vowel points, a lack of typesetters, distances too great for authors to review galley proofs and correct errors, and most importantly, a consumer market that was too small to support the publication of most manuscripts.</p> <p></p> <p><span>Jewish Communal Printing (1820s-1850s)</span></p> <p></p> <p>Nordheimer already appeared above in the story about early Christian Hebraism because while he remained an unwavering member of New York’s Jewish community, his Hebraism manifested on the stage of Christian Hebraism and his works were aimed at (and eagerly consulted by) a non-Jewish audience. But it was also by this point that American Jewry had proved that it was on a forward trajectory in population, organizational life, religious diversity--and on the map of Hebrew typography. Nordheimer, one of the last of the early “Christian Hebraists,” was at the same time part of a new wave of Jewish immigration reaching American shores that enabled the emergence of Jewish Hebrew printing.</p> <p></p> <p>In the 1820s Solomon Henry Jackson opened a print shop in New York and became the first to cater to the needs of the local Jewish community as well as the first Jewish printer of Hebrew books. It is unfortunate that very little is known about his early life. He immigrated from London <i>ca</i>. 1787, settled in the rural Poconos and married the daughter of John Miller, a Presbyterian minister. Following her death he moved to New York, raised their five sons as Jews and was very active in the local community, especially in education. Most important were his activities as a printer and it is evident from his publications that he aimed to provide his American coreligionists with the basic texts necessary to propagate Jewish life. He issued the first Hebrew prayer book in 1826 [#34], as well as other Jewish “firsts,” including the first Hebrew textbook for Jewish children [#264]. He also attempted unsuccessfully to publish an interlinear Hebrew-English Bible. Jackson set a number of general precedents for this second stage of American Hebrew printing: most works served basic religious needs (prayer books [#34, #35], haggadot, ephemeral prayer services, Bibles, elementary Hebrew textbooks [#264, #267], calendars [other Jackson imprints: #187]). He also set a standard that remained <i>de rigueur </i>for much of the nineteenth century, <i>i.e.</i>, inclusion in these basic texts of an English (or German) translation.</p> <p></p> <p>The leading figure of American Judaism in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was Isaac Leeser. By profession a local minister in Sephardic synagogues in Philadelphia, his legacy is that of a national leader who strengthened American Jewish life from every angle and ensured its survival during that formative period. Most aspects of Leeser’s activities somehow involved printing. He published a litany of “firsts” for American Jews, including a six-volume Hebrew-English Sephardic prayer book in 1837-1838 (the first complete yearly liturgy) [#36] and a one-volume Ashkenazi prayer book a decade later [#37]. He was also the first Jew (anywhere) to publish an English translation of the Pentateuch in 1845 [#7] and then the entire Bible in 1853 [#12, #13]. He also published a Hebrew reader for school children [#265, #275, #279] and he co-published the first vocalized and cantilated Hebrew Bible on American soil [#9].</p> <p></p> <p>One of the striking features of Hebrew printing by American Jews from the very beginning was that their works very frequently bore an American influence (or were a response to a specific immediate local need). In the Old World one might not be able to tell based on content alone where a book was published, but American imprints often contained some element that revealed their American provenance. Jackson boasted in his prayer book [#34] that “the American Hebrew type wherewith the work is executed, is of the handsomest face in the world … The paper is of American manufacture.” He wasn’t just a proud American though, he was an optimistic one. He explained in the preface that he removed the Prayer for Martyrs because “the liberality of mankind assur[es] us it will no more be revived.” Naturally, he also emended the Prayer for Kings to reflect “our republican institutions.” The following year in 1827 he published a funerary guide and service specifically for the use of the New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel [#35]. Leeser’s works also bear the marks of his American environment. His Sephardic prayer book even notes a liturgical variant that was limited to Philadelphia [#36].</p> <p></p> <p>Increasing population numbers in this period made it financially feasible to print basic texts locally rather than import European editions. The growing community also meant that more printed items were required at more frequent intervals (<i>e.g.</i>, for synagogue dedications [#1086]) and also that local tastes and expectations could only be served by local publishers and printers. For the next five decades Hebrew printers in New York [<i>e.g.</i>, #15, #40, #41, #46, #48, #131, #132, #133, #134, #267] and then also Philadelphia [<i>e.g.</i>, #61, #137, #272, #1086], Baltimore [<i>e.g.</i>, #54, #57, #278, #280, #281], Cincinnati [<i>e.g.</i>, #53, #59, #268, #273] and St. Louis [#283] continued to print the basic Hebrew texts mentioned above, as well as other works, to serve local communal needs.</p> <p></p> <p><span>Early Jewish Hebraism: Precursors (1850-1870s)</span></p> <p></p> <p>The pace of Jewish immigration to America picked up in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and its population grew from 15,000 in 1840 to 50,000 in 1850, 150,000 in 1860 and 200,000 in 1870. In this period the country became home to its first ordained rabbis, communal leaders began calling for an American rabbinical seminary, and a periodical press with strong theological, literary and polemical components flourished.</p> <p></p> <p>Jewish presses continued to churn out the hitherto published basic texts, but some of these editions reflected new changes in the community, especially the synagogue landscape. As more and more Jews arrived from Central Europe, the printer Henry Frank issued in 1852 a prayer book for them based on the celebrated Heidenheim text and without a translation [#38]. He followed with the first Ashkenazi holiday prayer books in 1854 [#40, #43]. The rapidly growing Reform movement in particular fueled the publication of liturgical volumes and it almost seemed like every rabbi edited a new prayer book to suit his particular shade of Reform theology (or his congregation’s needs). HPA is rich with these volumes [#41, #45, #48, #49, #51, #53, #54, #58, #59, #61, #62, #63, #68, #72, #76, #77, #79, #80, #82, #83, #84, #85, #86, #88, #90, #91, #119, #120, #121], including the first Reform prayer book for general use (by Leo Merzbacher of New York’s Temple Emanuel) [#41-vol. 2], the first prayer books aimed at uniting all American Jews under a Reform “minhag America” or “American rite” (by Isaac Mayer Wise) [#44, #53], a true first edition of the of the radical Reform <i>Olat Tamid </i>(by David Einhorn) [#45] and many others. Haggadot also continued to proliferate in America and among HPA’s holdings from this period are the first Reform haggadah [#137] and various illustrated editions [#128, #129, #133, #139] that show their evolution. The first to contain Passover illustrations appeared in 1857 [#128] and not to be missed is the final product of this chain, with original illustrations (based on midrash but also reflecting the contemporary American environment and influences) [#138]. Synagogues and other institutions in this period also printed pamphlets with prayers for special occasions, such as the consecration of new buildings by New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital in 1855 [#1085] and Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel in 1860 [#1086]. These pamphlets are quite rare and contain original content too. The Mikveh Israel exemplar includes an original Hebrew poem whose acrostic identifies its composer as Sabato Morais, the congregation’s scholarly Italian rabbi and a fine Hebraist.</p> <p></p> <p>Mid-century also witnessed the appearance of a few advanced Hebrew books--pointing to the presence of Hebrew authors and more importantly, readers too. In 1850 the first (Jewish) Hebrew-only book appeared: Ben Ze’ev’s classic Hebrew translation of Ben Sirah (Ecclesiasticus) with a new German translation by Isaac Mayer [#1014], an Alsatian or Bavarian native who settled in America after the failed 1848 revolutions and served as a rabbi in Cincinnati, Rochester and Hartford. The printer of the volume, Henry Frank, was himself a new immigrant from Sulzbach and was the first Hebrew printer who brought with him from Europe experience in the craft. Upon retiring, his son Leib Hayyim took over and later yet the Franks’ printing plates were subsequently sold and resold from printer to printer, until they finally came into the possession of Hebrew Publishing Company in the twentieth century. HPA includes many early and rare imprints by the Franks [#15, #38, #40, #43, #46, #50, #56, #60, #128, #129, #131, #132, #133, #134, #135, #136, #274, #277, #283, #1014, #1016], as well as those of their successors [#139, #140, #142, #147, #150].</p> <p></p> <p>Another decade would pass until Joshua Falk published in 1860 his <i>Avnei Yehoshua</i> [#688], a commentary on Tractate Avot of the Mishnah and the first complete original Hebrew book in America. The colophon recognized this fact (“I give thanks that it was my good fortune to be the typesetter of this scholarly book, the first of its kind in America”) and the father of Jewish bibliography, Moritz Steinschneider, noted at the time that “this volume [is] a fine example of Hebrew typography.” Falk, a Polish-born rabbi, wanted to show the world that American Jews too “toiled” in Jewish scholarship. Also in this period the ancient mystical text <i>Sefer Yetzirah </i>was published for the first time ever with an English translation [#1016], along with introductions to the Talmud [#1017, #1018] and notes on the medieval Hovot ha-Levavot [#1019].</p> <p></p> <p>Tensions between Orthodox and Reform Judaism escalated in America in these years and important primary sources are to be found in HPA. In 1872 R. Nachum Streisand, who had earlier in Europe published the work of R. Akiva Eiger (his wife’s grandfather), now issued a pamphlet to argue that women were religiously proscripted from singing in a San Francisco synagogue choir [#1091]. Streisand included a response from the permissive rabbi, Henry Vidaver, who advised him “to abide by the great law in the philosophy of America: Mind Your own Business.” Vidaver himself was a well known Hebrew author. Earlier he edited the first ever abridged Hebrew Bible [#15] and even before that, was the earliest known American to contribute to the European Hebrew press (he kept European Jews informed about the Civil War). </p> <p></p> <p>Aaron Zevi Friedman, a Polish-born ritual slaughterer who immigrated to America in 1848, published <i>Tuv Ta’am </i>[#1092] in 1875. His intention was mainly to defend ritual slaughter against charges leveled by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but he also included a section on the kashruth of birds native to America and a responsum by R. Jacob Ettlinger of Altona on false teeth and kashruth. Intra-Orthodox polemics made their way into the work as well. A great <i>halachic </i>debate that raged across the Jewish world from Jerusalem to Europe to New York dealt with the permissibility of bleeding animals prior to slaughter. Friedman, who was involved in this debate, included in <i>Tuv Ta’am </i>two responsa on the subject that R. Joseph Saul Nathanson of Lemberg had sent to New York.</p> <p></p> <p>The apogee of this period was marked by the publication in the 1870s of America’s first Hebrew periodical, <i>ha-Tzofe ba-Aretz ha-Hadasha</i> (The Observer in the New World) [#897]. This weekly newspaper was modeled in form and content on the maskilic newspapers that only started to appear in Eastern Europe in the 1850s and it compared favorably to them. It included Jewish and general current events of local, national and international interest (including the “latest news from the telegraph”), essays, poetry, history, biography, discussions of contemporary Jewish law and advertisements (for kosher foods, ritual items, Hebrew book dealers, wives looking for husbands who abandoned them, etc.). There is much information on contemporary Jewish life in America, particularly the rapidly growing East European immigrant community. This is the first concrete evidence of the emergence of a circle of Hebraists rather than a few individual writers and readers. Many of the contributors were known figures, but others are otherwise completely unknown to the historical record. One learned debate in <i>ha-Tzofe </i>that spanned five months threshed out whether it was permitted for American Jews to consume milk produced by gentiles. The famed R. Zevi Hirsch Kalischer of Prussia weighed in with a lengthy letter in the newspaper directed specifically to one of the American disputants, Zevi Hirsch Edelman of New York. Were it not for Edelman’s contributions to this debate, history would have forgotten him. Nothing is known about him, except that he was learned in rabbinic texts, could write in fine Hebrew and was addressed by Kalischer with honorifics reserved for scholars. Contrary to popular misconception, not all immigrants were uneducated and non-observant.</p> <p></p> <p><span>Jewish Hebraism: Full Blown Movement(s) (1880s and Beyond)</span></p> <p></p> <p>Original Hebrew works of Jewish authorship appeared in America only rarely in the 1850s to 1870s, then less intermittently in the 1880s and 1890s and finally became a regular staple with the new century. This trend of course followed the growth of the community, especially during the so-called era of mass immigration from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1924 (the population jumped from about 250,000 to 3.6 million). All literary fields were represented in this Hebrew publishing explosion, but the one that is perhaps most interesting for studying the immigrant community is <i>derash </i>(sermonics/homiletics). No genre of traditional literature mirrors the Jewish people of each generation and locale better than <i>derash</i> and its value to the historian can’t be exaggerated.</p> <p></p> <p>The individual most responsible for incorporating the sermon into the fabric of American Jewish life was Isaac Leeser. When he set out in 1837 to publish an anthology of his sermons, the first work of its type, no publisher would undertake the project and he had to self-publish it [#687]. (Leeser preached in English, but some of his printed sermons contain selections in Hebrew type.)</p> <p></p> <p>A few odd Hebrew <i>derash</i> volumes appeared in the 1870s and 1880s, but the first with actual Hebrew sermons was a periodical [#693] containing two sermons that R. Jacob Joseph, America’s first chief rabbi, delivered in New York shortly after his arrival in 1888. One of his goals was to improve kashruth supervision and indeed scattered references in the two sermons indicate his concern that it was deficient in America. Only one number of this periodical appeared, a portend of his ultimate failure in America.</p> <p></p> <p>Although the largest concentration of immigrant Jews was in New York, they also settled in cities and town across the country and rabbis there too published <i>derash</i>. Bezalel Yevnin, a rabbi in New York, Chicago and Milwaukee, published six sermons in 1892 with polemics against the three greatest threats to immigrant Orthodoxy: Reform Judaism, anarchism and assimilation [#695]. In 1900 Havah Rachel Hacohen published a volume of miscellaneous writings of her deceased husband, a Minneapolis rabbi. It included his sermons and was the first Hebrew volume printed in the city [#707]. </p> <p></p> <p>Perhaps the most popular immigrant preacher of the period was Zevi Hirsch Masliansky. His reputation as a captivating preacher was already well established in Europe, but he recognized that American conditions called for a different form of sermonics: “not all that I preached on the other side of the ocean is appropriate to be preached here. There is an in important rule in preaching: not just what is appropriate for its time, but also what is appropriate for its place” [#733]. Many rabbis and preachers tailored their sermons for American Jews and HPA contains numerous sermons that refer to specifically to American Jewish conditions and general American current events (<i>e.g.</i>, the Spanish-American War [#1116]).</p> <p></p> <p>R. Eliyahu Kochin of Pittsburgh was brutally honest in his <i>derash </i>works and he refused to follow the “accepted evil custom in this land which says that he who lies the most by bluffing, as it is called, is to be praised” [#784]. Many immigrant rabbis commented that they put aside their manuscripts of Talmudic novellae and instead published <i>derash</i> because American Jews were not interested in halacha and instead needed spiritual exhortation. In addition to actual sermons, these rabbis published general <i>mussar </i>essays (ethical and religious exhortations) [<i>e.g.</i>, #724, #730, #744, #749, #764, #863, #882, #1028], aggadic commentaries [<i>e.g.</i>, #696, #832], commentaries on Ethics of the Fathers [#658, #697, #698, #737, #752, #754, #758, #771, #792, #838, #865, #887, #890], a five-volume edition of <i>Ein Ya’akov </i>(a sixteenth-century aggadah anthology) with an English translation [#825] and a five-volume Hebrew translation of the Zohar with source citations and a commentary [#873]. They also issued volumes designed to be used as source material for preachers [<i>e.g.</i>, #718, #884, #891, #1198].</p> <p></p> <p>The role of traditional <i>derash</i> in America is best summed up by Schmaryohu Leib Hurwitz, a New York rabbi with a Habad background who published numerous volumes to raise the religious level of American Jewry [#379, #387, #667, #672, #680, #891]. In one volume of sermons he observed [#801], “If in all generations and eras his value was great, how much more so is the value of the preacher and the sermon in this generation and in this land of ours, America—thousands of Israel would have forgotten their connection to Orthodox Judaism had they not come to listen to contemporary preachers. In New York alone, hundreds and thousands—these numbers should increase—of our brethren from the children of Israel who have immigrated hither from all the lands of the earth come to our synagogues to hear the living word of our Judaism.”</p> <p></p> <p>These observations should not, however, detract from the traditional learning that did take root despite impediments on American soil. In 1887 R. Abraham Alperstein of Chicago published a volume of the Jerusalem Talmud with his commentaries [#568]. The first volume of rabbinics printed in America, it was also the first tractate of the Talmud published in the land. Alperstein published a second edition only three years later with an additional commentary and also an updated preface that referred to his congregation’s members as “wild boars” [#569]. In 1903 R. Joseph Elijah Fried of New York published the first volume of responsa in America [#590]. In this volume and in others by his colleagues, there are many discussions of topics relevant to local conditions and that document the day-to-day immigrant experience: tenement buildings (building <i>sukkot</i> on fire escapes and erecting <i>eruvin </i>for apartment buildings with many residents), machine-made matzah for Passover [#592], ritual baths with modern plumbing and electricity [#595, #631], ritual slaughterers and unions [#814, #1122], autopsies [#617], orthography of English names in Hebrew legal documents [#595, #624], urban <i>eruvin </i>[#634, #1103, #1136], selling synagogue buildings to churches [#626], converting churches into synagogues [#1117], using grape juice for ritual purposes to comply with Prohibition laws [#1177], post-circumcision suction techniques [#1117], etc.</p> <p></p> <p>The first rabbinic journal appeared in 1903 [#591] as part of an effort to to address the waning of religious observance and the lack of unity among religious authorities in America. Among its contents are essays on Jewish law and there is a focus on issues dealing with modern technology and other matters of contemporary concern (<i>e.g.</i>, electricity on festivals, hot tap water and bicycle riding on the Sabbath, the baking process of the Manischewitz matzah factory, yeshivot in America, kosher restaurants, the decline of Judaism in America, purchasing bread on Saturday night from bakers who work on the Sabbath and the composition of agate). It was followed by many other rabbinic journals [#607, #611, #619, #671]. The first complete Talmud was published in one volume in 1913 [#614] and then in 1919 a standard eighteen-volume edition with traditional standard layout and commentaries [#635]. Yeshivat Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York also published individual tractates for student use [#637].</p> <p></p> <p>Laymen well-versed in traditional learning immigrated to America as well, but they remain unknown to the historical record because they did not occupy rabbinic positions. Ezekiel Preisser (immigrated to New York in 1884) didn’t serve in any official religious capacity, yet he delivered daily <i>mussar</i> lectures. In 1909 he agitated for the establishment of a <i>daf yomi </i>(“page-a-day”) program whereby study of the Talmud could be completed in seven-year cycles [#734].  This was fifteen years before R. Meir Shapiro initiated his famous <i>daf yomi </i>program that continues until the present. Ordinary Jews committed to traditional learning lived not only in New York, but it cities and towns across the country. Subscriptions lists in HPA holdings attest to the presence of Hebrew readers in Coney Island (Brooklyn) [#873] and Elizabeth (NJ) [#607], as well as Coatsville, PA [#230], Corsicana, TX [#1162], South Bend, IA [#805, #835] and numerous other locales.</p> <p></p> <p>East European immigrants published educational works for their children that had never appeared before in America, <i>e.g.</i>, the first Talmud textbook in 1882 [#288]. Later they published additional works to introduce students to the Talmud [#384, #388], as well as guides to ritual law [#302, #308, #333, #379]. Modernized schools under the influence of Zionism and the Hebrew renaissance favored new educational books in Hebrew (readers, Jewish history, periodicals, plays, etc.) and they taught in Hebrew using the “natural method” (<i>ivrit be-ivrit</i>) [#301, #302, #327, #357, #386, #389, #396]. Some volumes were reprints of European works, but many were new publications authored in America. One reader published in 1915 contains stories that revolved around the life of a New York Jewish family and among the illustrations is one of children playing baseball [#372]. Student journals and yearbooks in Hebrew proved that boys and girls in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Portland (Oregon) could master the language [#311, #377, #390, #393, #394, #395, #401]. The members of Pirchei Zion, a Hebrew society for children with two branches in New York and three in Bayonne, NJ, published its own journal [#342]. America’s youngest Hebrew author, ten-year-old Reuven Avinoam Grossman of Chicago, published a Hebrew pamphlet with his poetry, fiction, biblical commentary and an elegy for Herzl [#352]. Education guides for teachers appeared in Hebrew [#349]. Other immigrants favored Yiddish as the educational medium [<i>e.g.</i>, #322] and English texts also continued to be used in Reform circles and by others too [#305, #306, #307]. Joseph Magil issued many editions of classical texts with an interlinear Yiddish translation [#20, #97, #315] or English translation [#23, #104, #169].</p> <p></p> <p>After small steps, the Hebrew periodical press also blossomed in this period. In 1881 the Society of the Friends of the Hebrew Language, the first American society to promote Hebrew, launched a monthly journal titled <i>Hameasseph</i> [#898]. It shared its name with the famous journal published a century earlier in Berlin, but it was much less successful--only one issue appeared. It was, however, followed by a few other periodicals later that decade [#899, #900, #901] and then many more in the following decades [<i>e.g.</i>, #904, #908, #909, #911, #917, #918, #920, #922]. Literary, rabbinic, scholarly, cultural, Zionist and other journals appeared at various frequencies and the first daily newspaper was launched in 1909 [#920]. One of the noteworthy features of American Hebrew culture is that it served as a neutral space where all Jews could participate together: Zionists, socialists and Yiddishists; Orthodox, Conservative and Reform; and academics, rabbis and lay people. This is especially evident in Hebrew periodicals that would often serve as a platform for contributors of diverse backgrounds.</p> <p></p> <p>It is impossible in the space allotted here to review fully the entire scope and breadth of literary subjects documented by HPA in this period. In quick passing one should note some of the other subjects in the collection that haven’t been mentioned in this essay thus far.</p> <p></p> <p><i>Drama, Fiction, Humor,