Representations of Women and Womanhood in Yiddish Illustrated Magazines

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

Abstract

My paper looks to Yiddish illustrated magazines as a source for the history of Jewish women in interwar Poland. The visual turn in Yiddish print media commenced in 1923 with the launch of ILUSTRIRTE VOKH, a lavishly illustrated weekly published in Warsaw that quickly inspired imitators. ILUSTRIRTE VOKH and its competitors depicted the thick Jewish culture of interwar Poland—photo spreads of Hasidic rabbis could be found alongside portraits of secular Jewish cultural figures—yet also informed readers of cultural trends in Western Europe and North America. Topics relating to women receive particular attention in these magazines, many of which were explicitly marketed to female readers. My paper focuses on DI VOKH and DI PANORAME, two short-lived women-oriented illustrated magazines published in 1930s Warsaw. In richly illustrated articles, these magazines presented the latest trends in women’s fashion, invited readers to write in with their views on abortion, debated etiquette (should, for instance, women wear pants?), and presented a model of womanhood oriented around youth, beauty, and sexual adventurousness. Together, DI VOKH and DI PANORAME crafted a distinctly modern type of Jewish woman, one visually consistent with the image of the Modern Girl that emerged as a global phenomenon in the interwar period yet nevertheless rooted in Polish-Jewish culture.

Author

• Samuel Glauber, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev