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Hebrew Press in the World

  

Order Background

It was in Western Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century that the Hebrew press arose, initially in periodical form. From the beginning of the nineteenth century it gradually spread to Austria, Galicia and Russia, and the first daily newspapers were founded in Russia. The late 1850s saw not only the spread of the Hebrew press to Eastern Europe, where the great masses of Hebrew readers lived but also a parallel decline in the periodicals of the West. The centre of gravity shifted to Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and finally to Palestine. The first waves of emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States in the 1870s led to the establishment of Hebrew periodicals in America. Smaller centres of Hebrew journalism were set up by Eastern European immigrants in England, South Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In all of these countries, the rise and decline of the Hebrew press reflects the attitude of the local Jews to Hebrew: the closer their ties to the language of their adopted country, the less their interest in a Hebrew press. The virtual disappearance of the Hebrew press in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars (first in Bolshevik Russia, later in Poland) exemplifies the process of decline. The opposite trend is illustrated by Palestine - later Israel - where it flourished and became the heart and centre of Hebrew journalism, starting in the 1860s in Jerusalem, then in Jaffa and later in Tel Aviv, and reaching world primacy after the First World War. The Second World War meant the end of the Hebrew press in Eastern Europe; while elsewhere (e.g. the U.S.A., South Africa) small islands still survive. A truly flourishing Hebrew Press, periodical as well as daily of every kind and for every taste, is today to be found only in the State of Israel.

At one time, Hebrew-language journals formed a very small proportion of all Jewish journals. However, Hebrew journalism made steady progress after the middle of the nineteenth century, and by the outbreak of the Second World War it was fourth in order of importance, the first three places being taken by English, German, and Yiddish journalism.

G. Kressel