The Book as a Combat Weapon: Intellectuals, Patronage, and Institutions in the Establishment of the Argentine Jewish Publishing Field, 1920-1980

ALEJANDRO DUJOVNE

UCLA Center for Jewish Studies - Pe´rush: An Online journal of Jewish Scholarship and Interpretation

Universidad de California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Lugar: Los Angeles, Estados Unidos; Año: 2010 vol. 2 p. 1 - 11

This paper argues that, unlike the commercial type publishing houses that usually dominate national publishing markets, Argentine Jewish publishing endeavors were primarily thought of as means of political and cultural action. The number of Jewish publishing houses and Jewish books published in Buenos Aires during the twentieth century as well as the prominent place that the city held within the transnational geography of Jewish culture the first two decades after the Shoah, show the importance of the printed word in its Jewish life. The paper explores the relative independence from the market rules through the analysis of the objectives, funding sources, editors´ trajectories, and institutional support or private character of the four most relevant publishing endeavors that published books between 1920 and 1980.  These four endeavors are: The Yiddish language Dos Poylishe Yidntum (1946-1966) and Musterverk fun der Yiddisher Literatur (1957-1984) and the Spanish language Editorial Israel (1938-1969) and Editorial Candelabro (1953-1972).