The Torah Shall Go Forth Out of Birobidzhan: Satire and the Cold War in the Brazilian Yiddish Press, 1950-1955

• In Event: New Approaches to the Yiddish Press in the Americas

Abstract

This paper examines the Cold War as it was fought in the Brazilian Yiddish press in the first half of the 1950s. It focuses specifically on the role of satire and other forms of literary writing as weapons in the press war between Zionist and Communist Yiddish newspapers in Brazil. While a number of recent studies have considered the importance of the Yiddish press in the contest between Zionists and Communists for political hegemony within various Jewish communities, such as in the interwar United States and in postwar Argentina, these studies have limited themselves to addressing political reporting in Yiddish newspapers, leaving other forms of Yiddish newspaper writing unexamined.

My presentation will explore the significance of other forms of newspaper writing in the fight between Zionists and Communists in the Brazilian Yiddish press during the early 1950s. Through a close reading of two Brazilian Yiddish newspapers, the Labour Zionist Idishe Prese (Jewish Press) and the Communist Unzer Shtime (Our Voice), I will demonstrate that the Cold War was a prominent topic of concern for the Brazilian Yiddish press in the 1950s, manifesting itself both in political coverage of superpower rivalries, and in virulent satirical attacks on their Brazilian Jewish ideological rivals. These attacks went beyond political reporting, and encompassed short fictional pieces, editorials referencing classical Yiddish literature, and political cartoons, which Zionists and Communists alike employed as potent political weapons in their fight against their adversaries within the Brazilian Jewish community.

This paper argues that these other forms of newspaper writing played central roles in the cultural Cold War between Zionists and Communists for hegemony within the Brazilian Jewish community in the first half of the 1950s. My presentation will contribute to the study of the Yiddish press in the postwar Yiddish press in the Americas, broadening scholarly understanding of the formative impact of the Cold War on the postwar Yiddish press, and highlighting the political significance of literary and artistic writing in Yiddish newspapers in Brazil, the Americas, and beyond.

Author

• Michael Rom, Yale University