Censorship, Female Labor, and the American Yiddish Press

During World War I, the United States government passed legislation aimed at censoring and surveilling foreign-language newspapers, including the Espionage Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among other restrictions,foreign-language newspapers were required to submit translations of any war-related content, very broadly defined, with a team of censors at the US Post Office for their approval before publication. These restrictions created dire consequences for foreign language newspapers, whose staffs faced potential jail times and heavy fines, in addition to the added expense of hiring translators. But in the context of the Yiddish press, these restrictions ironically offered an inroad for women to enter the male-dominated field of American Yiddish journalism. Due to Jewish educational patterns in the Russian Empire, women often had more facility with languages than men. Using the career of Communist journalist Rokhl Holtman as a case study, this paper will grapple with the complexities of women who were afforded new career opportunities by restrictive, xenophobic legislation.