JEWISH JOURNALISM IN THE UNITED STATES
        
                       by: Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

        
             The history of Jewish Journalism in the United States 
        
        presents something of a challenge.1  Traditionally, historians 
        
        like to recount the story of progress:  development onward and 
        
        upward from primitive origins to flourishing contemporary suc-
        
        cess.  The history of Jewish journalism in the US, by contrast, 
        
        represents, at least until recently, a story of marked decay.  
        
        From a period when they were independent, innovative and national 
        
        in scope, American Jewish newspapers declined in quality,  lost 
        
        their independence, and became far more consensus oriented and 
        
        narrowly focused.  Admittedly, recent decades have witnessed some 
        
        great improvements in American Jewish journalism and a new will-
        
        ingness, at least among some newspapers, to tackle sensitive and 
        
        controversial issues.  It is nevertheless worthwhile to under-
        
        stand why the earlier, prolonged decline took place, because the 
        
        reasons shed light on problems that are endemic to American 
        
        Jewish journalism, and I suspect to all minority group journal-
        
        ism; problems that plague the field to this very day.
        
             First, some background.  The oldest Jewish newspaper that we 
        
        know dates to 17th century Amsterdam.  Traditionally, the Gazeta 
        
        de Amsterdam (1675) was considered the first Jewish newspaper; 
        
        recently it has been argued that the paper was only printed by a 
        
        Jew, and that the first paper published for Jews was the Dinshta-
        
        gishe un Fraytagishe Kurant, published in Yiddish in 1686-7.2  I 

        
        cannot resolve this question, but I do want to observe that, from 
        
        the very beginning, Jewish journalism has not been easy to de-
        
        fine:  does a Jewish publisher make a journal Jewish, does a 
        
        Jewish readership make it Jewish, does a Jewish language make it 
        
        Jewish?  I am going to focus today on newspapers that defined 
        
        themselves as Jewish newspapers, but it is worth recalling that 
        
        Jewish journalism might also embrace a broader field, particular-
        
        ly since Jews (indeed a disproportionate number of them) have 
        
        been involved in the field of journalism from its earliest days.  
        
             Why Jews have been so involved in journalism is in itself an 
        
        interesting question.  I do not want to take us too far afield, 
        
        but I suspect that the opportunities found in journalism (espe-
        
        cially  during its period of rapid growth), the fact that it 
        
        offered practitioners a great deal of independence, and the 
        
        comparative advantage that people with cosmopolitan backgrounds, 
        
        like Jews, enjoyed in the field all help to explain the phenome-
        
        non.  Even early on in American history, when the Jewish communi-
        
        ty numbered no more than a few thousand, Jews played a dispropor-
        
        tionate role in journalism.  Their importance in the profession 
        
        has, in the intervening years, in no way diminished.3 
        
             In the United States, the earliest newspaper with a Jewish 
        
        name is Cohen's Gazette and Lottery Register (1814-1830), pub-
        
        lished by Jacob I. Cohen, Jr.  While published by a Jew and read 
        
        by Jews, this was hardly a Jewish newspaper; it was, in essence,  
        
        a gambling sheet.4  A journal of a different sort was published 
        
        in 1823-1825.  Its title was The Jew, and its subtitle explained 

        
        that it was "a defence of Judaism against all Adversaries, and 
        
        particularly against the insidious Attacks of Israel's Advocate," 
        
        which was a missionary journal.   The Jew adumbrates one of the 
        
        major functions of every vernacular Jewish newspaper: to defend 
        
        Jews against their adversaries.   But one can scarcely imagine 
        
        anyone actually reading The Jew for news. The only significant 
        
        news that it printed was a series of scoops about scandals within 
        
        the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews, 
        
        the society dedicated to converting Jews to Christianity.5 Jewish 
        
        news was published in various American newspapers, particularly 
        
        those edited by the distinguished Jewish journalist-politician, 
        
        Mordecai M. Noah.  But like today's New York Times, Noah's dai-
        
        lies were designed for a broad audience.  They never claimed to 
        
        be Jewish newspapers, even if they did devote disproportionate 
        
        attention to Jewish matters.6
        
             Jewish journalism as we know it in the United States dates 
        
        quite specifically to April 1843 and the publication of The 
        
        Occident by Isaac Leeser, chazzan of Cong. Mikveh Israel in 
        
        Philadelphia and the most significant Jewish traditionalist 
        
        religious leader of his day.  Leeser was influenced by a range of 
        
        factors:  the development of national Jewish periodicals in 
        
        Germany, France and England,  the evident need to unify the far-
        
        flung American Jewish community (a need made painfully evident by 
        
        the Damascus Affair of 1840), the emergence of newspapers as 
        
        instruments of Jewish enlightenment, and most immediately by the 
        
        need to respond to a new missionary journal published in New York 

        
        entitled The Jewish Chronicle, not to be confused with the dis-
        
        tinguished London Jewish newspaper (1841- ) of the same name.  
        
        Publicly, Leeser described his journal as an "advocate" for 
        
        Jewish interests (the full title was The Occident and American 
        
        Jewish Advocate), and its announced aim was "diffusion of knowl-
        
        edge on Jewish literature and religion" -- in other words, commu-
        
        nal defense and Jewish education, two principal aims of Jewish 
        
        journalism forever after.7  To carry out these aims, the Occident 
        
        published news from American Jewish communities, and from abroad 
        
        (often reprinted from foreign Jewish publications), as well as 
        
        sermons, editorials, historical articles, book reviews, innova-
        
        tive policy proposals (for schools, Jewish colonies, unity etc.), 
        
        religious philosophy, and controversial (or apologetic) articles 
        
        levelled against missionaries and other enemies of the Jewish 
        
        people.  Leeser admitted into his pages many writers with whom he 
        
        disagreed (sometimes he mentioned the disagreement in an intro-
        
        ductory paragraph), and he published many verbatim documents. 
        
        Especially in his early years, he saw his as the newspaper of 
        
        record for the American Jewish community, and he opened its pages 
        
        to a wide range of contributors, including non-Jews.8
        
             The Occident was a quality production, and it remains a 
        
        magnificent historical source: one of the finest journals that 
        
        the American Jewish community has ever produced.   There were 
        
        nevertheless significant limits to what it was prepared to print.  
        
        "On no account can our pages become the vehicle for violent 
        
        denunciation or unfounded aspersion," Leeser wrote in his intro-

        
        ductory remarks, and he naively urged readers "never to send us 
        
        any thing which may require contradiction or amendment in a 
        
        future number."9  Although he understood that controversy and 
        
        error were unavoidable, he hoped to project an image of Jewish 
        
        consensus -- a projection of the community as he wished it to be, 
        
        rather than the community as it was. In this, I think, he adum-
        
        brated a problem that has long plagued the field:  a tension 
        
        between the Jewish journalist as a reporter of news and the 
        
        Jewish journalist as a shaper of community.  In Leeser's case, 
        
        this explains why he mostly closed his columns to divisive de-
        
        bates over slavery and the Civil War:  he feared that such de-
        
        bates would be harmful to the Jewish community (and perhaps also 
        
        to himself since he personally sympathized with the South and 
        
        supported the idea of compromise for the sake of Union.)   But, 
        
        as the slavery issue demonstrates, self-censorship comes at a 
        
        price:  Jews who sought to debate the hotly-contested issues of 
        
        slavery and union had no regular Jewish forum in which to do so.
        
             The success of the Occident generated a spate of new jour-
        
        nals on the American scene, published in diverse locations, 
        
        including New York, New Orleans, Cincinnati and San Francisco.  
        
        Already by the 1850s one can discern a movement in American 
        
        Jewish journalism parallel to what we know in American journalism 
        
        generally, a movement away from all-embracing national newspapers 
        
        and toward local or regional papers that were more narrow in 
        
        focus and more circumscribed  in their ambitions and aims.  Most 
        
        of these newspapers were weeklies, not monthlies like the Occi-

        
        dent (the Occident itself became a weekly for a brief and unsuc-
        
        cessful period), and they modeled themselves after American 
        
        religious and family newspapers, rather than highbrow magazines.  
        
        As a result their format was different from the Occident's:  they 
        
        looked like newspapers (some were printed on cheap newsprint), 
        
        and they aimed to be much more entertaining than it was; at least 
        
        one of them, for example, published chapters from a serial novel 
        
        each week  on its front page.  I am not able to deal with every 
        
        newspaper from this period,  but let me briefly mention three 
        
        that represent to my mind different directions, or options, for 
        
        American Jewish journalism to follow.  
        
            The first, which was also the first significant Jewish news-
        
        paper to be published in New York, was entitled, the Asmonean. It 
        
        was edited on business principles by a (failed) New York Jewish 
        
        businessman named Robert Lyon, and perhaps for this reason it was 
        
        livelier, bolder,  and much more diverse in its subject-matter 
        
        than other 19th century Jewish newspapers.  The SAsmonean billed 
        
        itself as "a family journal of commerce, politics, religion and 
        
        literature devoted to the interests of the American Israelites," 
        
        and represents a model of American Jewish journalism not seen 
        
        again, at least in English, until our own day:  a journal for 
        
        American Jews but by no means limited to Jewish subject-matter.  
        
        It lasted for nine years (1849-1858), until Lyon's death, but the 
        
        absence of a follow-up suggests that most English-speaking Ameri-
        
        can Jews conceived of Jewish journalism in more restrictive 
        
        terms. Just as they compartmentalized their lives into secular 

        
        and Jewish realms, so too their newspapers.10
        
           A quite different direction was followed by the first Jewish 
        
        newspaper in Cincinnati, now the oldest continuous Jewish news-
        
        paper in the United States:  the Israelite, renamed the American 
        
        Israelite in 1874, and published by the pioneer of American 
        
        Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.  Here we have the first 
        
        example of an American Jewish newspaper committed to advancing a 
        
        particular ideology and unafraid of controversy in defense of 
        
        that ideology.  Wise was blessed with a lively pen and an engag-
        
        ing often biting style, and his newspaper, which was much more 
        
        entertaining than the Occident,  gained a wide national reader-
        
        ship.  So long as Wise was alive, it was recognized as his semi-
        
        official organ representing the Reform Movement in American 
        
        Judaism.11  Although the American Israelite lost this mantle 
        
        after Wise's death and steadily deteriorated into a run-of-the-
        
        mill local newspaper, a pattern had been set.  Thereafter in 
        
        American Jewish life, we have many examples of significant, 
        
        movement-sponsored periodicals.  In the best cases, the idealism, 
        
        energy and commitment that stand behind the movement are reflect-
        
        ed in its journal.  Such was the case, for example, with the 
        
        American Hebrew, the vibrant weekly created in 1879 by religious-
        
        ly traditional young Jews (ages 21-29) hoping to revitalize 
        
        American Jewish life.12 Later, we see this same pattern in such 
        
        journals as the Menorah Journal, the Reconstructionist, Jewish 
        
        Frontier, and in the Boston student newspaper, Genesis II.   
        
             The third model that we have beginning in this period is the 

        
        foreign-language Jewish newspaper.  Several of them appeared even 
        
        before the Civil War,  Sinai and Die Deborah being the most 
        
        famous, and all of them were published in German.  This is not 
        
        the place for a full-scale discussion of the foreign-language 
        
        Jewish press in America.13  Suffice it to say that significant 
        
        Jewish newspapers were published in German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and 
        
        Ladino, and they deserve a separate  analysis.  A whole documen-
        
        tary film, in fact, has been produced just on the Jewish Daily 
        
        Forward   For our purposes, however, let me confine myself to 
        
        four salient points:  (1) Foreign language journals consisted of 
        
        two types:  intellectual (high brow) journals and popular (low 
        
        brow) ones.  The former, like Sinai (in German) and the Di Tsu-
        
        kunft (in Yiddish) addressed immigrant intellectuals, the latter  
        
        like Die Deborah (in German) and  Der Hoyzfraynd (in Yiddish) 
        
        were directed to the masses and especially to women (although it 
        
        was widely recognized that men read these journals as well).  (2) 
        
        Foreign language Jewish newspapers were much less compartmental-
        
        ized than English ones. Like the Asmonean, they presented secular 
        
        and Jewish news as well as features.  One can see this clearly in 
        
        Abraham Cahan's Forward; it remains true even today in the news-
        
        paper produced for Israeli immigrants, Yisrael Shelanu. (3) The 
        
        foreign-language press was much more focused on issues of immi-
        
        gration, Americanization, and developments in the old country 
        
        than the Anglo-Jewish Press.  The Yiddish press, in particular, 
        
        covered developments in Eastern Europe with a depth not seen in 
        
        parallel English language Jewish newspapers.  (4)Finally, foreign 

        
        language Jewish newspapers were often bolder and more critical of 
        
        American and American Jewish life than English-language ones.  
        
        This is especially true of the intellectual journals and the 
        
        Hebrew journals that had a small, well-defined readership and 
        
        editors far less fearful of the journal "falling into the wrong 
        
        hands."  Intellectuals, to be sure, tend to be alienated no 
        
        matter what language they write in, but the secure sense that 
        
        they were being read by a select and sympathetic audience made it 
        
        possible for them to criticize people, institutions, and social 
        
        trends in a way not often found in the parallel English-language 
        
        Jewish publications that were more widely circulated and that 
        
        gentiles sometimes perused as well.

        
             So much, then, for the early decades of American Jewish 
        
        journalism, when so many of the central trends and central ten-
        
        sions that characterize Jewish journalism in this country were 
        
        determined.  Now it is time to move on to the question with which 
        
        I began:  why did the once varied and vibrant world of Jewish 
        
        journalism in the United States deteriorate into the so-called 
        
        "weaklies" that Jewish leaders like Stephen S. Wise used so 
        
        regularly to deride.  Let me suggest three major reasons:
        
             First, the proliferation of local Jewish newspapers, while 
        
        probably unavoidable given the character of American journalism 
        
        generally, changed the focus of Jewish journalism from the kinds 
        
        of national issues that dominated the Occident toward a much 
        
        narrower local-oriented journalism  with a strong component of 

        
        boosterism.  Local Jewish newspapers, especially those outside of 
        
        major population centers,  could not attract the kinds of con-
        
        tributors that a national newspaper could, and their goals became 
        
        proportionately more modest and consensus-oriented.  Primarily, 
        
        they sought to convey information, promote local communal in-
        
        volvement, and if necessary defend Jews against their enemies.  
        
        Only a small number of local newspapers, like New York's American 
        
        Hebrew which, as I mentioned had a larger objective -- to revi-
        
        talize the American Jewish community on a more traditionalist 
        
        basis, or, to take  an example closer to home, Boston's Jewish 
        
        Advocate which under Jacob De Haas had the larger objective of 
        
        promoting Zionism  -- only these ideologically motivated news-
        
        papers  managed to stave off the narrow parochialism that affect-
        
        ed so much of American Jewish journalism in the Twentieth Cen-
        
        tury. Unsurprisingly these were also among the most vibrant and 
        
        significant  Jewish newspapers of their day.  
        
             Second, financial pressures led to the deterioration of 
        
        Jewish newspapers. Most proved unable to break even, especially 
        
        in smaller population centers,  and like it or not they came to 
        
        depend on financial backers. Beginning in the 1940s, in cities 
        
        like Philadelphia, the local Jewish Federation stepped in to 
        
        cover the annual deficit.  Inevitably, this financial dependence 
        
        impacted on the ability of local Jewish newspapers to remain 
        
        independent -- as we say in Hebrew, baal ha-meah, baal ha-deah 
        
        (translated idiomatically, that means "he who pays the piper 
        
        picks the tune").  In Philadelphia, where the subject has been 

        
        studied, criticism of Federation-supported Jewish agencies, and 
        
        even widely-available negative news concerning these agencies 
        
        stopped appearing in the Jewish newspaper (or in some case found 
        
        mention only long after news was widely available elsewhere).14  
        
        In smaller communities, even independent editors found that they 
        
        dared not alienate subscribers or advertisers, so they played it 
        
        safe.  Faced with the choice of having a bland Jewish newspaper 
        
        or no Jewish newspaper, most editors understandably chose the 
        
        former. They justified their journalistic compromises as neces-
        
        sary to keep their local Jewish newspapers alive.
        
             Finally, antisemitism, particularly in the period between 
        
        the wars, had a chilling effect on the Anglo-Jewish press.  As 
        
        fear stalked the Jewish community and conditions for Jews domes-
        
        tically and abroad deteriorated, newspapers became frightened of 
        
        controversy, scandal or of other news that reflected badly on the 
        
        Jewish people, and they worked all the harder to promote an image 
        
        of consensus and sobriety, lest they unintentionally play into 
        
        the hands of Israel's enemies.  While there was no shortage of 
        
        intra-communal controversies or scandals during this era -- 
        
        witness the fierce debates over Zionism, the tactical debates 
        
        over how best to respond to antisemitism, or the many scandals 
        
        connected with Prohibition violations -- these were not by and 
        
        large reflected in the Jewish weeklies.  Even anti-Jewish vio-
        
        lence such as regularly occurred here in Boston only rarely found 
        
        mention in the press.  To write about such violence, Jews feared, 
        
        was to risk stirring up trouble and making the situation worse.  

        
        Once again, then, the press exercised considerable self-censor-
        
        ship.  It did so, I think, with the best of intensions; it be-
        
        lieved that it was serving the larger interests of the Jewish 
        
        people.  The result, however, was a loss of credibility.  Jews 
        
        seeking accurate and reliable Jewish news turned elsewhere.
        
             Where did they turn? For years, many Jews read the Yiddish 
        
        Press or in far fewer cases the Hebrew Press, which as I indicat-
        
        ed felt less constrained than the English-language weeklies; they 
        
        were a much better and more accurate source of news.  Others Jews 
        
        subscribed to national Jewish magazines which then (and by and 
        
        large still today) were much more vibrant than the local weeklies 
        
        and did open their pages to  debate:  one thinks of the Menorah 
        
        Journal, the Reconstructionist, Jewish Frontier, the Contemporary 
        
        Jewish Record Commentary, Midstream and so many others.  The 
        
        number of English-language national Jewish periodicals prolifer-
        
        ated in the twentieth century.  There were a grand total of four 
        
        such periodicals in 1900:   one for "Young People" (Young 
        
        Israel), one for "the Jewish Religious School and Home" (Helpful 
        
        Thoughts), one for Hebrew Union College students and alumni 
        
        (Hebrew Unon College Journal), and one, The Menorah, the official 
        
        organ of B'nai B'rith. Today, by contrast, the American Jewish 
        
        Year Book lists more than sixty such periodicals,  not including 
        
        those for religious schoolchildren, catering to the widest array 
        
        of ideologies and interests. As a result of this exponential 
        
        growth, Jews dissatisfied with local Jewish newspapers, who want 
        
        more serious and in-depth analyses, have in the twentieth-century 

        
        been able to find alternative publications to read.
        
             Finally, I should mention two other sources that American 
        
        Jews began to turn to for reliable news:  First, the Jewish 
        
        Telegraphic Agency, founded in 1917 to provide world Jewry with 
        
        news about the World War from a Jewish point of view.  Its cable 
        
        service, set up in the 1920s, soon became the dominant provider 
        
        of worldwide Jewish news for most American Jewish weeklies, 
        
        improving the quality of their Jewish news.  Yet this development 
        
        also created a certain uniformity of perspective, as almost all 
        
        American Jewish newspapers came to rely on the same source -- 
        
        "the JTA" -- for Jewish news from around the nation and the 
        
        world. Moreover, as a Jewish sponsored agency, the JTA faced some 
        
        of the same tensions that local weeklies faced:  its commitment 
        
        on the one hand to journalistic detachment, and on the other hand 
        
        its very strong attachment to the American Jewish community to 
        
        which it has always been beholden.
        
             Second, the New York Times became increasingly influential 
        
        within the Amercan Jewish community.  Purchased by Adolph Ochs, 
        
        the son-in-law of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, in 1896, it consciously 
        
        paid special attention to news of Jewish interest both because of 
        
        its Jewish ownership and because Jews comprised a substantial 
        
        percentage of its New York readership.  In return, Jews rightly 
        
        or wrongly came to perceive the Times as the ultimate authority 
        
        on substantial news stories of Jewish interest.  The Times, in 
        
        reporting such stories, has always projected an air of objectivi-
        
        ty and detachment that no Jewish newspaper can match.

        
             Recent years, as we all know, have witnessed a considerable 
        
        revolution in the world of American Jewish journalism.  This is 
        
        not the place to analyze this revolution -- especially since so 
        
        many of the revolutionaries are participants in this forum -- but 
        
        I think it is fair to say that Jewish journalism's long downward 
        
        slide has during this time period begun to be reversed.  The 
        
        strong national emphasis on journalistic independence in the wake 
        
        of Vietnam and Watergate have echoed in the halls of Jewish 
        
        journalism, and almost all major American Jewish newspapers have 
        
        been affected by this revolution.  As a result, a new high-quali-
        
        ty national Jewish newspaper, the English-language Forward, has 
        
        been established that sets a new standard in the field, while  
        
        the best local Jewish newspapers have displayed a willingness to 
        
        tackle controversial issues that would just a few years ago have 
        
        been shunned.
        
             Rather than ending on this happy and uplifting note, howev-
        
        er, I want to close by restating in question form three central 
        
        problems that seem to me to have plagued American Jewish journal-
        
        ism over the past century and a half, problems that help to 
        
        account for its decline early in the century, and problems that 
        
        remain on our the agenda today, even as we hope that Jewish 
        
        journalism is improving.
        
             First, what is the mission of Jewish journalism?  Is its 
        
        mission primarily to inform?  to educate?  to defend? to support 
        
        one or another Jewish ideology?  to promote community and conti-
        
        nuity?  And if one insists that its mission embraces all of the 

        
        above, what happens when two or more of them come into conflict?
        
             Second, what are the responsibilities of Jewish journalism?  
        
        Should the "good of the Jewish people" (or the good of the local 
        
        Jewish community) be the highest goal, or should "truth" be the 
        
        highest goal?  What happens when these two come into conflict?
        
             Finally,  what compromises should a Jewish newspaper be 
        
        prepared to make in order to ensure its survival?  Should it seek 
        
        private or communal support?  How much independence should it be 
        
        prepared to sacrifice in return for such support?  Where must it 
        
        forcefully draw the line?
        
             These are not easy questions.   Nor do I pretend that histo-
        
        ry provides us with sure answers to any of them based on past 
        
        experience.  What I do believe is that the quality of Jewish 
        
        journalism depends on our willingness to confront these questions 
        
        honestly -- and to wrestle with them continuously.

                                                   
        
                                                          [ws5.5 "press"]

                                      NOTES
        
        [Earlier versions of this paper were delivered before the Brinn 
        
        Forum at Brandeis University and at the Board Institute of the 
        
        MetroWest Jewish News.]
        
        (1)The  literature on this subject to 1983 is reviewed in  Robert 
        
        Singerman, "The American Jewish Press, 1823-1983: A Bibliographic 
        
        Survey of Research and Studies," American Jewish History 73 (June 
        
        1984), pp.422-444.

        (2)Joel Cahen, "Amsterdam, Cradle of the Jewish Press?"  Proceed-
        
        ings  of the Symposium on the Jewish Press: Why?  Past,  Present, 
        
        Future  (Amsterdam:  Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad, 1985),  pp.17-
        
        23. 

        (3)Jonathan D. Sarna, Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of  Mordecai 
        
        Noah  (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), pp.5-6; Stephen J.  Whit-
        
        field, Voices of Jacob, Hands of Esau: Jews in American Life  and 
        
        Thought  (Hamden,CT: Archon, 1984), pp.180-207; Stephen J.  Whit-
        
        field,  American Space, Jewish Time (Hamden, Ct:  Archon,  1988), 
        
        pp.129-150.

        (4)Extant  numbers of this journal are available in the  American 
        
        Periodical  Series,  reel 93.  On Cohen, see Isaac M.  Fein,  The 
        
        Making of an American Jewish Community:  The History of Baltimore 
        
        Jewry from 1773 to 1920 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication  Socie-
        
        ty, 1971), pp.22-24.

        (5)George L. Berlin, "Solomon Jackson's The Jew: An Early  Ameri-
        
        can Jewish Response to the Missionaries," American Jewish History 
        
        71 (September 1981), pp.10-28.

        (6)On Noah's newspapers, see Sarna, Jacksonian Jew, passim.

        (7)Naomi  W. Cohen describes early American Jewish newspapers  as 
        
        "Pioneers  of American Jewish Defense." See her article  by  that 
        
        title in American Jewish Archives 29 (November 1977), pp.116-150. 

        (8)The best study of Leeser, including his newspaper, is Lance J. 
        
        Sussman's  Isaac Leeser and the Making of American  Judaism  (De-
        
        troit:  Wayne State University Press, 1995).  On the  origins  of 
        
        the Occident, see Jonathan D. Sarna, "The Impact of   Nineteenth-
        
        Centry  Christian Missions on American Jews," in Jewish  Apostacy 
        
        in the Modern World, ed. Todd Endelman (New York: Holmes & Meier, 
        
        1987), pp.242-243.  The journal's first number is reprinted  with 
        
        an  introduction in Abraham J. Karp, Beginnings:  Early  American 
        
        Judaica (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975).

        (9)Occident 1 (April 1843), p.5.

        (10)Cohen,  "Pioneers  of American  Jewish  Defense,"  pp.133-140; 
        
        H.B.Grinstein,  "The 'Asmonean': The First Jewish Weekly  in  New 
        
        York,"  Journal of Jewish Bibliography 1 (1939), pp.67-71;  Henry 
        
        S.  Morais, "Robert Lyon," Eminent Israelites of  the  Nineteenth 
        
        Century (Philadelphia: Edward Stern & Co., 1880), pp.221-222.

        (11)Cohen,  "Pioneers  of American Jewish  Defense,"  pp.140-149; 
        
        Sefton  D.  Temkin, Isaac Mayer Wise (Oxford:  Oxford  University 
        
        Press, 1992), pp.112-124.

        (12)Philip  Cowen,  Memoires of an American Jew  (New  York:  The 
        
        Internatonal  Press,  1932),  pp.40-111;  Charles  Wyszkowski,  A 
        
        Community  in Conflict: American Jewry During the Great  European 
        
        Immigration  (New  York:  University  Press  of  America,  1991), 
        
        pp.xiii-xvii.

        (13)See, inter alia,  Arthur A. Goren's analysis in his  thought-

        
        ful  survey  of  "The Jewish Press" in The Ethnic  Press  in  the 
        
        United  States, ed. Sally M. Miller (New York:  Greenwood  Press, 
        
        1987),  pp.203-228;  Joseph  Gutmann, "Watchman  on  an  American 
        
        Rhine:  New Light on Isaac M. Wise," American Jewish Archives  10 
        
        (October  1958), pp.135-144; Mordecai Soltes, The Yiddish  Press: 
        
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        (14)Maxwell Whiteman, "A Century of Jewish Journalism: The Jewish 
        
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