“Devoted to the Interests of Jewish Women”: The American Jewess (1895–1899)

Abstract

Abstract The masthead of The American Jewess (1895–99) advertised the magazine as “the only publication in the world devoted to the interests of Jewish women.” While this may have been an overstatement, the impact of The American Jewess, while short-lived, is clear: as the first English-language magazine published by and for American Jewish women, The American Jewess reflected the political, cultural, and economic concerns of middle-class American Jewish women during a period of history marked by fast-paced social change and the exponential expansion of the American Jewish community. This article looks at the complicated history of the magazine, the brainchild of Austrian-born Rosa Sonneschein (1847–1932), a prominent figure in the Jewish communities in St. Louis and Chicago and the one-time wife of radical Reform Rabbi Solomon Hirsch Sonneschein, and the ways in which The American Jewess—in its uneven attitudes toward women’s rights and egalitarianism, in its paradoxical vision of “ideal” American Judaism, and in its failure to anticipate the needs of its rapidly changing and acculturating readership—acts as a microcosm for the ambivalence and uncertainty that characterized the Jewish-American community at the turn of the twentieth century.