Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires Norman A. Stillman Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, by Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. 311 pp. + illustrations. $35.00. In this beautifully conceived, meticulously documented, and intriguing comparative study, Sarah Abrevaya Stein examines the role of the vernacular press as a medium of Jewish modernization in the Tsarist and Ottoman Empires during the latter decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. Focusing on two journals in particular, Der Fraynd (published in St. Petersburg and later Warsaw, 1903–13) and El Tiempo (published in Constantinople/Istanbul, 1872–1930), she treats them and other periodicals not merely as sources for the history of their time and place, but as participating agents that actively contributed to, and indeed consciously tried to shape, the changes taking place within the respective societies of their readers. Stein clearly understands that there were different Jewish modernities. She chose these particular case studies, she informs us, because, despite some salient differences, these societies resembled one another in a number of significant respects far more than they did those of their coreligionists in the nation-states of the West. Not only did they both inhabit great autocratic, multi-ethnic empires, but both Jewish societies actually spoke an entirely different language from that of their gentile neighbors. (In North Africa and the Middle East, most Jews spoke Jewish variants, sociolects, of the local language, and in Central and Western Europe, emancipated Jews had long since adopted [End Page 188] the national languages.) However, the respective attitudes of Yiddish speakers and Ladino speakers toward their mother tongues diverged drastically in the modernizing process. For a time, a debate raged in both societies over Jewish vernacular (Yiddish žargon; Ladino, žirgonza) and cultural identity. However, Russian Jews came to see Yiddish as their national language and the badge of their unique cultural identity even when they were attracted to Russian language and culture. Ottoman Jews, on the other hand, looked down upon Ladino even while using it, had no interest in Turkish or the Balkan languages, and were drawn to French as the language of modern civilization. The adoption of French as the lingua franca for the Sephardi/Mizrahi bourgeoisie from Morocco to Iran was due to the successful efforts of the Alliance Israélite Universelle which, imbued with the French mission civilisatrice, established a network of schools throughout the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic countries. Stein has added an important additional perspective to the sociolinguistic transformation of the Jews that was part and parcel of the process of their modernization. Stein's book is divided into three parts, each of which is divided in turn into two chapters, that stand as foils to each other. Part One presents an historical survey of the origins and development of the Yiddish and Ladino presses and how each in its own way created a newspaper culture. While the two principal journals examined in the study, Der Fraynd and El Tiempo, were both avowedly secular in outlook, they attracted a wide readership since the boundary line between most religious and secular Jews during this time period was not clearly delineated. In Part Two ("Imaging Culture"), Stein analyzes some of the major themes that were conveyed to readers of the Yiddish and Ladino press through the combined use of text and illustrative material (photographs and engraved illustrations). Reflecting the social and political ferment of late Tsarist times, the Yiddish press made use of cartoons to express ideals, hopes, frustrations, and anger. She also shows how, following the pogroms, photographs were used to shape and reshape the image of Jewish suffering and victimization. This kind of reportage and iconography was risky enough in the Russian Empire and could lead to a publication being closed down. In the Ottoman Empire, it was not even an option. The articles and images in the Ladino press that Stein chooses to deconstruct deal with what she dubs "The Science of Healthy Living," which in actuality was not merely the promotion of hygiene, good nutrition, and knowledge of...