The creation of a Jewish cartoon space in the New York and Warsaw Yiddish press, 1884-1939

From the 1880's until the Second World War, New York and Warsaw were the magnets for the largest Jewish migration in history and the crucible of a new mass culture in Yiddish. Most significant as a purveyor of Jewish media and agent of modernization was the Yiddish press, which brought the changing world directly into Jewish homes and hands, both within the greater metropolis and beyond. Satire was the order of the day in this volatile new media, packaged for the first time in parodic holiday supplements, humor columns, joke pages, and---most popular of all---cartoons and caricatures.Visual parody in Jewish culture was coterminous with modernity. Heretofore, drawing without a religious connotation was a communal taboo. Since the 13 th century, moreover, visual parody had been the domain of vicious anti-Jewish caricature which, by the 18th and 19th centuries, had become socially and racially oriented. Antisemitic caricatures were by now standard fare in the satirical presses of both Europe and America. The cartoonists of the Yiddish press, therefore, were not only engaged in a radical subversion of Jewish tradition but also in a graphic reassessment of pre-existing Jewish caricature. Contextualized within the comfort of their own language and in their own press, Yiddish cartoonists drew their own taxonomy of cartoon Jews that were not mired in a one-dimensional stereotype, creating an alternative picture gallery that mirrored the diversity of the Jewish world.As visual parody became a standard feature of the Yiddish press, specialized cartoon genres began to appear produced by a new class of professional cartoonists: harsh political and social commentary, raucous visual parodies, and celebrity spoofs all presented in one panel to multi-panel comic strips. Most popular were holiday-related cartoons, which were among the first to appear in both the Old and New World press. This use of traditional material in cartoon form, ranging from Biblical quotation to sacred objects, from law to lore, helped fashion a multi-layered Jewish cartoon space that catered to different audiences at one and the same time.This dissertation traces the creation of cartoon media within the Yiddish humor press in New York and Warsaw. It also analyzes how and why cartoonists infused this media with Jewish content. A reflection of the anxieties and destabilization of mass migration and modernization, the cartoons of the Yiddish press also anchored their audiences within the familiar world of Jewish texts and traditions.Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2008.School code: 0315