Lah Amerikah

Lah Ameriḳah (The America) (front page, April 19, 1912)

New York: 1912

Lah Ameriḳah (The America) was the first Ladino periodical published in the United States. This weekly edition was established by Moshe Gadol (1874–1941), a brilliant Sephardic Jew from Bulgaria, who came to the United States in 1910. A successful businessman in his native country and proficient in 11 languages, Gadol didn’t originally intend to stay in the U.S., but he changed his mind when he realized how alienated and poor the Ladino-speaking community was in the United States. He convinced the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) to establish the Oriental Bureau to support the needs of 50,000 immigrants from the Balkan countries, most of whom spoke Ladino rather than Yiddish. Thirty-five thousand of them lived in New York alone. Gadol envisioned the Ladino press in the city as a vehicle to change the plight of the Ladino speakers and to foster communication between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. 

Lah Ameriḳah , published from 1910 to 1925, became Gadol’s crowning achievement. While it started small, at 70 copies per issue in 1910, circulation reached 1,000 copies at the peak of its popularity in 1915. The newspaper included English/Ladino/Yiddish glossaries, and certain sections were published in Yiddish.

Though the daily life of the Sephardi Jews was at the center of the newspaper’s interests, it responded immediately to global events, such as the tragedy of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, which shocked the entire Jewish community in the United States and beyond. Usually published with very few illustrations and of a smaller size, this issue’s front page on April 19, 1912, featured a dramatic drawing of the sinking Titanic by Samuel Zagat (1890–1964), a well-known cartoonist who emigrated from Lithuania as a young child. Zagat made his name as an illustrator for the major New York-based Yiddish newspapers, such as Di ṿahrhayṭ (Truth) and Forṿerṭs. This drawing shows a serious side of the artist and represents his rare involvement with the Ladino press in New York, thus underscoring the interconnections between Ladino and Yiddish publications at that time.