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NEXTBOOK FEATURE
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Piracy, Politics, and Product Placement: Hasidic Book and Magazine Publishing Today
Zachary M. Baker, curator of Judaica and Hebraica collections, Stanford University Library
About a year ago, a two-volume children's edition of the Pirkei Avot—The Ethics of the Fathers—appeared in large type, with drawings that are clearly for the student, mainly the elementary school market. The cover of this two-volume set knocked my socks off, because it included a picture of four or five boys, you see they are Hasidic boys because of their peyes, and what's on the table? It's not your typical Roman Vishniac image; there are candy bars. The candy bars are Elite chocolate from Israel, which probably contributed a little bit to the publication of this book. This is my surmise, none of this is fieldwork.
The talk I will be giving really focuses on advertisements. What one finds now is a range of products, and the presentation in full color, not only of the kind of services that are intrinsic to a Hasidic community, like services for where you can buy your streiml and trousseau. But also this guy will lease you a car, and this fellow will mow your lawn or prune your trees. In Der Shtern, there's a cover story about the history and achievements of the Coca-Cola company. They tell you in Yiddish, even about the Classic Coke/New Coke affair. It doesn't say this feature is brought to you by the Coca-Cola Company, but my hunch is that an enterprising distributor got in touch and said, 'Will you run this picture?'
When I was telling all this to a colleague at the Library of Congress, he said, 'What's the big deal? Seventy-five, one hundred years ago, Yiddish newspapers were running ads for Crisco and Uneeda biscuits.' But these are not publications being read by immigrants. The editors are not publishing with an agenda of Americanization. Their motives are to use Yiddish to make as much information available so readers won't be tempted to read in English. A feature in Yiddish about the do-not-call registry fascinated me: they have telephones, people bug them, and they need to get this information about their readers. The material world of the early 21st century is something that even this community of bearded, be-streimled elders can't avoid—and aren't even trying. But what they are resisting is Anglicization.
More from the AJS Conference:
American Jews and Marriage Counseling, 1920-1945
"Based on a True Story": Popular Imaginings among American Jews of Gender
in Ultra-Orthodox Society
Bi'ur Hametz and the Ancient Semitic Magic
Confronting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Jewish Studies Classroom"
Gefilte Fish and Beautiful Shoes: Soviet Jews Describe the Ideal Jewish Woman
Jewish Identity at Work
Lekhu ve-nelekhah (Come Ye and Let Us Walk): The Jewish Students of
Kazimir Malevich
Money in Jewish Eyes: Object of Desire or Derision?
Mothers' Dreams, Daughters' Choices: Envisioning Mothers of Ba'alot Teshuvah
and their Daughters
The "Normal" Mysticism of Jewish Meal Rituals
The Rise of the Ladino Theater in the Ottoman Empire
About the Conference
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