“Women and Men Who are Like Women”: Female Pseudonyms in the Interwar American Yiddish Press

• In Event: Works-in-Progress Group in Jewish Studies

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of men writing under female pseudonyms in the interwar American Yiddish press, and what it reveals about changes and continuities in the relationship of language, gender, and audience in the Yiddish public sphere. Pseudonym use had been a common practice within Yiddish print culture for centuries—with some authors taking on many different fictitious names over the course of their lives, or using separate names for different genres of writing. In nineteenth-century Europe, men who wrote under female pseudonyms often did so out of a sense of shame about writing in Yiddish, as opposed to Hebrew, which was seen by elites as a more literary, highbrow language. In contrast, men writing under female pseudonyms in interwar American Yiddish newspapers asserted that they were doing so not out of a sense of shame, but to increase their chances of publication in newspapers eager to feature women’s voices and attract female readers. The use of female pseudonyms therefore provides a case study to explore the ways in which interactions between American and Jewish culture allowed writers to draw on literary traditions in new ways and forge new understandings of gender. By comparing and contrasting origin stories told by young, male writers employing female pseudonyms in this period with the reminiscences of female journalists, this paper will also highlight the divergence between the rhetoric and reality of the interwar American Yiddish press as an especially hospitable space for women readers and writers alike.

Author

• Ayelet Brinn, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute