FAQs about secondary sources
Why should I begin my research with secondary sources?
Secondary sources on the Jewish press (that is, books and articles written about the Jewish press) provide historical and cultural context that reading the newspapers on their own cannot. Looking in the bibliography of a secondary source is also a great way to find primary sources you may not have found on your own.
I'm researching the historical Jewish press in a specific country and/or time period. How do I find what's already been written?
Using Library of Congress Subject Headings (see more below) is a good way to find books about the Jewish press in a specific time or place. You can also do a keyword search in one of our databases.
Does the Dorot Jewish Division hold directories or bibliographies of Jewish newspapers?
Yes. These are typically limited by date or geographic location. See Suggested Sources to the right for specific examples, and Suggested Subject Headings below for subject headings that contain bibliographies and directories on the Jewish press.
I can only read English, but most of the results of my catalog search are in another language. Can I limit my search to just English-language sources?
Yes. You can limit your search to a specific language in our Research Catalog's Advanced Search. This option only allows you to search for items in one language at a time. If you'd like to see items in, e.g., Spanish and French, begin a search without selecting a specific language and then click on "Refine Search" under the search bar to filter by language, date, or material type.
How do I request books?
In the Research Catalog, many books have a button that says "Request for On-site use." Click on this button to request delivery of a book to our reading room. You will be prompted to log in with your library card.
If the book you want to see doesn't have a request button, you can request it by emailing us at dorotjewish@nypl.org, or by booking an appointment to view them in our reading room. If you don't have a library card, you'll need to apply for one first.
I found a book I want to read. Can I take it home?
Books from NYPL's research collections can only be used in the library. We will be happy to help you reserve a seat to read your book in our reading room.
I found a scholarly book that I want to read, but NYPL does not own it. Can you get it for me?
If NYPL does not hold any copies of the item you need, Interlibrary Services and Document Delivery ("interlibrary loan") will attempt to borrow a copy from another library. See their FAQs here.
I can't come to the library myself. Can I request a scan from a book?
Yes. If you have an up-to-date NYPL card, staff will scan up to one chapter of a book as part of our free Scan & Deliver service. Scans of eligible items may be requested by clicking on the "Request" button in the Research Catalog.
Library of Congress Subject Headings in the Research Catalog
If you are looking for secondary sources about the Jewish press, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) can be helpful. These are standardized terms that cataloguers use to categorize materials in their collections. They typically include multiple levels, with each level becoming more specific or further limiting a search by geography.
It can be difficult to browse by LCSH if you do not already have one in mind. Although all LCSH use standardized words and phrases, these phrases sometimes appear in different combinations, making them difficult to predict. The standardized language used in the LCSH may also not match how you might colloquially refer to a type of publication.
Still, doing a keyword search using your own words can be helpful. Let's say we did a search for "Jewish press united states" and then clicked on an item that looked relevant. Scroll down until you see the "Details" section, which will show you which subject headings the item is catalogued under, as seen in the screenshot below. You can then click on a subject heading to view more items under that category.
See the next tab in this box for examples of subject headings to use.
The below subject headings may contain both secondary sources about Jewish newspapers, and the newspapers themselves. "Periodicals" is a broader term than "newspapers" and can also refer to magazines and other serial publications. When you're browsing this subject heading, be aware that many of the results you see will not be newspapers.
Place names can also be omitted from the below (e.g. Jewish periodicals -- Bibliography). You can also try adding "Bibliography" or "Directory" to any of the subject headings below. I provided a few examples of such headings.
This list is not exhaustive, but many relevant subject headings will fall under the following formats:
Jewish newspapers -- [Place]
e.g. Jewish newspapers -- Poland
e.g. Jewish newspapers -- New York (State) -- New York
Jewish periodicals -- [Place]
e.g. Jewish periodicals -- Africa, North
[Language] newspapers -- [Place]
e.g. Polish newspapers -- Israel
e.g. Ladino newspapers -- Turkey
[Language] periodicals -- [Place]
e.g. Yiddish periodicals -- Brazil
Jews -- [Place] -- Newspapers
e.g. Jews -- Argentina -- Newspapers
e.g. Jews -- New York (State) -- New York -- Newspapers
Jews -- [Place] -- Periodicals
e.g. Jews -- China -- Periodicals
Jews -- [Place] -- Intellectual life
e.g. Jews -- Mexico -- Intellectual life
Jewish periodicals -- [Place] -- Bibliography
e.g. Jewish periodicals -- Romania -- Bibliography
Jews -- [Place] -- Periodicals -- Bibliography
e.g. Jews -- Canada -- Periodicals -- Bibliography
Jewish newspapers -- [Place] -- Directories
e.g. Jewish newspapers -- United States -- Directories
Aguilar F. C. L., reading room, 100th St., 2nd floor
Digital Collections ID: 100741
Selected Sources
- Evreĭska︠i︡a pressa na russkom ︠i︡azyke : Rossi︠i︡a, 1986-1992 : bibliograficheskiĭ spravochnik = Jewish press in Russian : Russia, 1986-1992 : bibliographic registerCall Number: Desk-Slav. Div. 94-1689ISBN: 5860140614Publication Date: 1992In English and Russian
The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s by
This bibliography is a comprehensive collection of the non-English-language labor and radical periodical publications of the United States and Canada, written for and by immigrants. It is intended to supplement existing studies of the role of individual ethnic groups in the North American working classes, by using a broad comparative approach that takes into account the cultures of origin, migration processes, and specific forms of acculturation in the United States and Canada. It represents the collective efforts of thirty scholars from many cultures, with widely varied experiences, styles of annotation, and scholarly traditions, and includes detailed annotations of all bibliographic entries, as well as title, place, and chronological indexes.
Call Number: JFL 87-452ISBN: 0313246386Publication Date: 1987-07-13
Jewish Serials of the World by
As the pioneering work in its field, Jewish Serials of the World brings together a diverse body of literature essential to the study of the Jewish press from 1674 to the present. It identifies pertinent primary source materials and provides comprehensive coverage of the secondary literature in a field where no bibliographical control has ever existed. Arranged for the most part geographically, the citations include descriptions of significant publications of books, pamphlets, theses and articles, as well as jubilee issues of Jewish newspapers and magazines. In addition to internal cross-references, the work also contains subject and author indexes.
Call Number: *PAQ 86-5141ISBN: 0313244936Publication Date: 1986-06-18
Jewish Serials of the World : A Supplement to the Research Bibliography of Secondary Sources by
Jewish journalism history is a growing field of active research, as evidenced by the growing number of new serials devoted to it. Given the geographic extent of the Jewish diaspora, the Jewish press offers valuable primary source materials for any historical study of the Jewish people. The social and intellectual history of the Jews in modern times can similarly be advanced by an examination of the Jewish press of the world. This volume, the first supplement to Jewish Serials of the World: A Research Bibliography, continues and extends the bibliographic coverage to include 3,000 new entries. The new volume's classified arrangement, enhanced by author and subject indexes, provide up-to-date coverage of all pertinent research, including theses and dissertations, on Jewish press and journalism history throughout the world in all languages. This new bibliography is indispensable for libraries supporting academic programs in Jewish Studies and journalism, as well as area studies. Singerman's coverage of the studies and research about the Jewish press is broadly defined, his scope is worldwide, and all pertinent languages are treated. The 3,000 entries are verified and bibliographically complete, and special efforts have been made to analyze hidden sections on the Jewish press buried within larger more expansive studies of related topics. The entries are organized into regional subcategories. Together with the foundation volume, over 6,000 entries are provided, making this an important addition to any libraries with Jewish Studies or journalism collections.
Call Number: *PAM 01-6037ISBN: 9780313306631Publication Date: 2000-11-30- The Joseph Jacobs directory of the Jewish press in America. 2d ed.Call Number: *PAO 74-2426Publication Date: 1972
- Kitve-ʻet ṿe-ʻitonim Yehudiyim bi-Tsefon Afriḳah = Presse périodique juive d'Afrique du nord byCall Number: *PAO 96-1454Publication Date: 1996
- ha-ʻItonut be-Ladino, bibliyografyah : shalosh meʼot ʻitonim byCall Number: *PAQ (Gaon, M. ha-Itonut be-Ladino. 1965)Publication Date: 1965
Bad rabbi : and other strange but true stories from the Yiddish press by
Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird--Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press. An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl--in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
Call Number: JFE 17-10079ISBN: 9780804797610Publication Date: 2017-10-24
Media and Culture in the U. S. Jewish Labor Movement : sweating for democracy in the interwar era by
This book explores the Jewish Left's innovative strategies in maintaining newspapers, radio stations, and educational activities during a moment of crisis in global democracy. In the wake of the First World War, as immigrant workers and radical organizations came under attack, leaders within largely Jewish unions and political parties determined to keep their tradition of social unionism alive. By adapting to an emerging media environment dependent on advertising, turn-of-the-century Yiddish socialism morphed into a new political identity compatible with American liberalism and an expanding consumer society. Through this process, the Jewish working class secured a place within the New Deal coalition they helped to produce. Using a wide array of archival sources, Brian Dolber demonstrates the importance of cultural activity in movement politics, and the need for thoughtful debate about how to structure alternative media in moments of political, economic, and technological change.
Call Number: JFD 17-1465ISBN: 9783319435473Publication Date: 2017-01-09
Why Didn't the Press Shout? American and International Journalism During the Holocaust by
This book brings together contributions by thirty scholars of journalism and history who look at what was reported about the Holocaust in the press of more than a dozen countries and languages. The studies examine the news media in America, England, and the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in the Vatican, in occupied countries like Romania, Hungary, Greece, and Poland, and in Palestine under the British Mandate. By and large, the news media in the Allied countries neglected the story, while those in Nazi-dominated countries treated news related to the Holocaust in a wholly tendentious way. Thus the press, for a variety of reasons, did not cover the Holocaust, one of the central events of the twentieth century. As this book thoroughly demonstrates, it was perhaps the greatest ethical, professional, and political failure of the news media during World War II. If the press had been more responsible, and had informed the public in the West early enough and thoroughly enough, the history of the Holocaust might have been different and millions of victims might have survived. Published in association with Yeshiva University Press.
Call Number: *PXK 03-2934ISBN: 0881257753Publication Date: 2002-09-01
Yiddish in America : essays on Yiddish culture in the Golden Land by
Yiddish is a rich, complex, and multilayered language, and that complexity is reflected in Yiddish culture. In Yiddish in America, Edward S. Shapiro has gathered a collection of lively essays on Yiddish literature, music, film, and journalism in the United States. This accessible volume demonstrates the enduring value of Yiddish culture through its reliance on solidarity, its artistic adaptability, and its balance of secular and religious characteristics. Shapiro also addresses the problems that have arisen when this vibrant language has been misunderstood or stereotyped, in a book that is sure to delight anyone interested in American Jewish culture.
ISBN: 9781589661370Publication Date: 2008-07-15- The Yiddish press : an Americanizing agency. byCall Number: *PAY (Soltes, M. Yiddish press. 1950)Publication Date: 1950
A Century of the Canadian-Jewish Press, 1880s-1980s by Call Number: *PAT 90-811ISBN: 0888879091Publication Date: 1989-01-01- The Hebrew and Jewish press in Europe : select problems in its history byCall Number: *PWG 08-2897ISBN: 9782912590329Publication Date: 2006
Hebrew Popular Journalism by
This book examines the birth and development of Hebrew popular journalism in Ottoman Palestine between 1884 and 1914. It is the first study to explore this form of Hebrew journalism.
Call Number: JFE 19-9182ISBN: 9780367179205Publication Date: 2019-06-08- Jewish Journalism and Printing Houses in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey byCall Number: *PAE 04-214ISBN: 9754281491Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Jewish Literatures and Cultures in Southeastern Europe by
The volume offers an overview of the diverse Jewish experiences in Southeastern Europe from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and the various forms and strategies of their representation in literature, the arts, historiography and philosophy. Southeastern Europe is characterized by a high degree of ethnical, religious and cultural diversity. Jews, whether Sephardim, Ashkenazim or Romaniots - settling there in different periods - experienced divergent life worlds which engendered rich cultural production. Though recent scholarly and popular interest in this heterogeneous region has grown impressively, Jewish cultural production is still an under-researched area. The volume offers an overview of the diverse Jewish experiences in Southeastern Europe from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and the various forms and strategies of their representation in literature, the arts, historiography and philosophy, thus creating a dialogue between Jewish studies, Balkan studies, and current literary and cultural theories.
Call Number: JFE 22-950ISBN: 9783205212881Publication Date: 2021-10-11
The Jewish Press in the Third Reich by
This study throws light on a neglected but very important aspect of Jewish life in the Third Reich - the Jewish press - the sixty-five newspapers and magazines published by the fifty-three publishing houses with a specific German-Jewish readership in mind. These publications appeared until the end of 1938 and provide a valuable insight into the situation of the German Jews under the Nazi regime. They movingly document the efforts of the Jews to cope with the increasing precariousness of their existence in Germany and to find solutions to the growing problems of survival.
Call Number: *PXS 93-1557ISBN: 0854966862Publication Date: 1993-03-03- The Jewish press that was : accounts, evaluations, and memories of Jewish papers in pre-Holocaust Europe byCall Number: *R-JWS PN5650 .I813 1980Publication Date: 1980
The Jewish Victorian : genealogical information from the Jewish newspapers 1861-1870 by Call Number: *PXQ 09-3150ISBN: 1899536728Publication Date: 2004
Making Jews Modern : the Yiddish and Ladino press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires by
On the eve of the 20th century, Jews in the Russian and Ottoman empires were caught up in the major cultural and social transformations that constituted modernity for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewries, respectively. What language should Jews speak or teach their children? Should Jews acculturate, and if so, into what regional or European culture? What did it mean to be Jewish and Russian, Jewish and Ottoman, Jewish and modern? Sarah Abrevaya Stein explores how such questions were formulated and answered within these communities by examining the texts most widely consumed by Jewish readers: popular newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino. Examining the press's role as an agent of historical change, she interrogates a diverse array of verbal and visual texts, including cartoons, photographs, and advertisements. This original and lively study yields new perspectives on the role of print culture in imagining national and transnational communities; Stein's work enriches our sense of cultural life under the rule of multiethnic empires and complicates our understanding of Europe's polyphonic modernities.
Call Number: *PTG 04-238ISBN: 0253343046Publication Date: 2003-12-01- Pages of history : a century of the Australian Jewish Press byCall Number: *PXZ+ 96-3316ISBN: 0646245872Publication Date: 1995
Polish Jews in Israel : Polish-Language Press, Culture, and Politics by
Polish Jews in Israel: Polish-Language Press, Culture, and Politics is an in-depth study of the cultural and intellectual achievements of Polish Jews in Israel, with particular emphasis on the Polish-language press.
Call Number: JFE 21-8612ISBN: 9789004450134Publication Date: 2021-04-22
- Dray hunderṭ yor Yidishe preseṿezn in der ṿelṭ, 1675-1975 byCall Number: *PAV 78-2861Publication Date: 1975Spanish version also held -- see below
- Jevrejska štampa u BiH : 1900-2011 byCall Number: PN5650 .T38 2011ISBN: 9789958584046Publication Date: 2011
- Los judíos y la dictadura : los desaparecidos, el antisemitismo y la resistencia byCall Number: ReCAP 14-7521ISBN: 9789501525878Publication Date: 2013
Prasa żydowska w Warszawie 1823-1939 by Call Number: *PAV 87-3578ISBN: 8301004568Publication Date: 1979- Trescientos años de prensa judia en el mundo 1675-1975 byCall Number: PN5650 .T4918Publication Date: 1975
