JEWISH DAY

JEWISH DAY (Yid. Der Yidishe Tog), U.S. Yiddish daily. Founded in 1914 by a group of New York City intellectuals and businessmen led by Judah *Magnes and Morris Weinberg, The Day aspired from the first to be a nonpartisan, liberal newspaper of high literary and journalistic standards that would enable it to live up to the slogan on its masthead, "The newspaper of the Yiddish intelligentsia." Under the editorship of William Edlin, it assembled a gifted staff that included critic Samuel *Niger; playwright David *Pinski; poet and essayist Aaron *Glanz; and reporters Joel Slonim, Peretz *Hirshbein, and Abraham *Coralnik. Its regular contributors included such outstanding figures as the novelist Joseph *Opatoshu and the poet *Yehoash. The Day reached a peak circulation of 81,000 in 1916. Thereafter, in common with the rest of the Yiddish press, and despite its absorption of Louis Miller's Die Warheit in 1919, its circulation declined. Throughout the 1930s, the paper was ridden by feuding between a politically conservative faction led by editor Samuel *Margoshes and a left-wing element headed by the Yiddish journalist and author B.Z. *Goldberg. The conflict contributed to a bitter six-month strike in 1941 that almost led to the Day's extinction. However, the paper survived to merge with the *Jewish Morning Journal in 1953. In 1970 the circulation of the combined Day-Morning Journal was estimated at 50,000. In 1971 the paper ceased publication.

bibliography:

J. Chaikin, Yidishe Bleter in Amerike (1946), index; J. Teller, Strangers and Natives (1968), 32–36.

[Hillel Halkin]