Discourses of the Body in Advertisements Printed in the Jewish Press in the Polish Lands between 1880 and 1918

• In Event: Yiddish Discourses of Body, Gender, and Sexuality (1880–1939)

Abstract

The paper seeks to present, analyze, and compare press advertisements that were published in the Jewish press in the Polish lands between 1880 and 1918. The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries brought an abundance of social, political, economic and cultural changes that considerably impacted elements of discourses surrounding the Jewish body – both female and male. The press began to grow in importance and popularity around this time, and the Jewish press was not an exception. Due to the fact that many Jews living in the Polish lands were often at least trilingual – press advertisements in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew could be found in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German-language Jewish journals printed in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. With the development of capitalism, the importance of press advertisements began to rise as well. The paper will be focused on advertisements that reflect discourses on the body. A comparison of advertisements published in different Jewish periodicals printed in the Polish lands may present a picture of the Jewish body at the time. Discourses on body are also much influenced by the state policy. The fact that Poland was at the time partitioned between three different regimes provides an interesting perspective and the Jewish press, thanks to its translingual and transcultural features, offers a more entangled image of discourses on body in the fin-de-siècle Central Europe, which the paper aims to present.

Author

• Zuzanna Kołodziejska-Smagała, Taube Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wroclaw