Immigrant Popular Culture as Contested Sphere: Yiddish Music Halls, the Yiddish Press, and the Processes of Americanization, 1900-1910

Abstract

In the spring of 1902, a heated discussion broke out in New York's Yiddish-language press over the role of Yiddish music halls and variety entertainment in the immigrant community. Writers for conservative as well as socialist papers expressed their dismay by describing the halls as a plague, a scandal, and a disgrace, and performers and audience members alike as depraved and immoral. As immigrant performers eagerly appropriated this entertainment form and young entertainmentseekers found in music halls a space in which to experience and express American modes of social and sexual behavior, the Yiddish press, particularly, the socialist daily Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward) and its editor, Abraham Cahan, regularly warned its readers of the immoral influence of this institution. Judging music hall entertainment primarily as a social problem rather than a cultural phenomenon, the Yiddish press attacked its social context, the nature of its audience and performers, and the content of the shows. While an overriding concern with the immigrants' moral fabric lay at the heart of this critique, other issues, such as the socialists' concept of the role of art in society and their deep ambivalence, if not opposition, to this expression of the immigrants' Americanization, formed the subtext for their arguments. In particular, the controversial and titillating status of the music halls served the press as a convenient way to increase readership.