Resistance, Growth, and Self-Critique in the Jewish Newspaper Press, 1881-1889

In this paper, I directly engage with the Jewish newspaper press in London from 1881-1889 to explore the ways it resists anti-Semitic discourse often found in the mainstream British press while simultaneously growing itself, despite seemingly constant internal and external conflicts. My main objective for this project was to juxtapose our present-day landscape, where fake news often feels inescapable, with London’s 19^th-century East End through the use of creative formatting, firsthand research, and palimpsest. Along with contemporary concerns, I also aimed to move the spotlight onto the wide web of editors, writers, and readers that created the 19^th-century Jewish newspaper press, a network I knew little about before this project. In engaging directly with articles and correspondences from the Jewish World and its counterpart the Jewish Standard I was captivated by a narrative of resistance, growth, and even self-critique that I had never heard before. These newspapers struggled against anti-Semitic discourse found in other medias and even in imaginative literature while also navigating the changing currents of the press in the form of the New Journalism and facing their own constraints in areas like gender. Their story may help us engage with issues like fake news, anti-Semitism, sexism, and anti-immigration rhetoric while also finding hope in their resistance.