Weekly Reader: Jewish Book Month
Published on November 17, 2024.
Happy Jewish Book Month! I would say “to those who celebrate,” but here at the Yiddish Book Center that would be all of us and, I would assume, many of you. Started as Jewish Book Week in 1925 by librarian Fanny Goldstein, whose National Committee for Jewish Book Week eventually became the Jewish Book Council, Jewish Book Month now takes place each year in the month before Hanukkah. This year that means November 24, but we don’t mind starting the festivities a week early. So here are some materials to ponder as we head into this special month.
—Ezra Glinter, Senior Staff Writer and Editor
Celebrations Past
As noted, Jewish Book Month has a long and storied history, and you can find many lectures and programs in our archives celebrating the occasion. Here is just one of them—a lecture opening Jewish Book Month in 1988 by Ruth Wisse about her book Little Love in Big Manhattan and the Yiddish poets Mani Leib and Moyshe-Leyb Halpern.
Start the Presses!
You can’t really celebrate Jewish books without celebrating the people who make them, and that means not just authors but also publishers. Yiddish book publishing history has been marked by complexities and enormous challenges, including government censorship, political upheaval, a geographically fragmented market, state-sponsored repression, and the overwhelming catastrophe of World War II. Nevertheless, some things did go right, and Yiddish book publishing became a viable worldwide enterprise.
Read about the history of Yiddish book publishing
Pushing the Envelope
Most Yiddish books are utilitarian products, and few of them exhibit the hallmarks of fine art publishing like luxury paper, hand-tooled bindings, and the like. And yet, as the vogue for modernist illustrated books spread across early twentieth-century Europe, Jewish artists joined the party, creating Yiddish books of rare beauty and sophistication.
Ink-Stained Fingers
These days, book publishing is mostly a digital process, with editors and designers sitting in offices in front of computer screens. But for most of history—and the history of Yiddish book publishing—that wasn’t the case. In this oral history interview we spoke to Murray Lubin, a former Linotype operator and printer, who got his start in the Yiddish press and remained a hands-on printer for most of his career.
Manual Type
Speaking of old-school printing—here at the Yiddish Book Center we’re proud to steward a collection of type-related materials, including a large assortment of metal and wood letterpress type and other instruments and materials, such as the Yiddish-language Linotype once owned and operated by the Forverts newspaper. In this lecture, Richard S. Herman Endowed senior fellow in bibliography Caleb Sher explores the ins and outs of the Yiddish Book Center’s impressive collection of type and how it plays a role in our new permanent exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture.