The Publication and Dissemination of the Yehoash Bible, 1922–1942

The Russian-American poet and translator Yehoash intended for his Yiddish translation of the Hebrew Bible to make the "Book of Books" accessible to Yiddish speakers everywhere. Despite the cultural import of the work, and hundreds if not thousands of devoted readers from across North America and overseas, publishing the Yehoash Bible was no easy feat. After the Bible's initial serialization in the Yiddish daily Der Tog in the 1920s, the work of publishing the Bible in book form was mostly carried out by the poet's family. Furthermore, the culmination of the Yehoash Bible's publication (in a Hebrew-Yiddish bilingual edition) coincided with the Great Depression, a waning of Yiddishism, and the destruction of the majority of Yiddish-speaking Jewry in Eastern Europe. This essay finds that over the twenty-year period following the Bible translation's initial appearance in Der Tog, the emphases of promotional and fundraising materials for the Yehoash Bible reveal a subtle but clear progression from a cultural-nationalist and nominally secular orientation to a more traditional and explicitly Zionist one. Ultimately, the publication and dissemination of the Yehoash Bible may also be utilized as one case study for the evolving priorities and challenges of North American Jewry during the interwar period.