Reading the news from 1921, as it unfolds

One of the great wonders of the internet is Google Books. It is possible to download for free a huge number of books and publications.  An even larger number of books and publications is available for pay but I figured that I may as well read up as many of the free books that interest me before I start shelling out money to feed my serious reading addiction.

Through Google Books, I have had the opportunity to read  about a year's worth of the journal American Shoemaker, I pored over many issues of  The Garment Worker where articles were written in English, Yiddish, and Italian.  I am particularly fond of The Dry Goods Review. My latest old publication love is The American Hebrew.

I began my reading in the fall issues of 1920 and have gotten up to the early summer of 1921. It has been quite exciting and often deeply stressful reading. WWI had ended just a few years before. While a great deal of Europe was devastated in the post-war years. Jews were hit particularly hard, not just during the war years but in the period after the war. 

It seems that every issue of the magazine documents another pogrom. There was a tiny little article that I haven't been able to clip that talks about the large numbers of Jewish women and children in Poland are suffering from venereal diseases because they had been raped during post-war pogroms. 

Discrimination against Jewish students in Central European universities was the norm. In response, Albert Einstein fought for the creation of Hebrew University.

Stories about the Berlin pogrom and the one the following week in Austria make this anxious reading for me. I know what happens in the next chapter of history, but it isn't always so clear to people living through the events as they happen.

The Balfour declaration was a new document. I read week after week about pogroms in various cities in Palestine.

The war and the pogroms following the war had left tens of thousands of orphans. The magazine organized an effort for American Jews to financially adopt Jewish Eastern European orphans with pledges of $100 each. They began numbering particular orphans and many were adopted with consolidated gifts from children each raising a few dollars.

I was particularly struck by this article about a Jewish Theological Seminary professor who died after being mugged near his home in Queens.

There were appeals like the following one.

You could purchase your Passover goods at Bloomingdales

Acker Merral the famous wine store also sold Passover goods, but at a higher price.

The orphanage that housed my mother's cousins was being built.

 One topic of continuing concern was Henry Ford's publication of an Americanized version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in serial form in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.

Every issue has it's listing of social news. I love reading of the weddings and engagements of people who lived in my neighborhood in 1921.

And then there is this....

It was a kosher camp for boys.  The meaning of some things just changes with history. My brother in law had a grandfather named Adolph.

I have many more issues to read of The American Hebrew. It is completely gripping.