Der Beobachter an der Weichsel — Dostrzegacz Nadwiślański (The Vistula Observer, in German and Polish) was the first ^[1] Jewish newspaper. It was a weekly printed in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, between December 3, 1823 and November 29, 1824, 44 issues in total, with a circulation of 150 copies. ^{[2] [3]}

Launched by Polish Jewish writer, head of the Warsaw rabbinical seminary, and assimilation activist Anthony Eisenbaum [ pl], the paper was printed in two languages: Polish and German, the latter in Hebrew script. To this end, during the centenary celebration of the Yiddish press, Nahum Sokolow smugly noted that as early as 1686 a group of Polish Jews in Amsterdam printed a semi-weekly in a likewise way, i.e., in German in Hebrew script, "so that the centenary of the Yiddish press should have been celebrated more than a century ago". ^[1] Other researchers claim that the language was heavily Germanized Yiddish to the point of being described as German. ^[3] A.Haffka wrote that the newspaper was not very well accepted, because it was written not in Yiddish, but rather in German. ^[4] Others disliked the assimilationist character of the newspaper. ^[2]

The page layout of the divided into two columns by language with basically identical content. The paper was run single-handedly by Eisenbaum himself. ^[3]

The next Jewish newspaper in Russian Empire, Ha-Melitz, this time in Hebrew, appeared nearly 40 years later. ^[1]

References

Further reading

(As cited by Magda Opalski, with minor corrections)

• Majer Bałaban [ Meir Balaban ], “Nasi poprzednicy i nauczyciele: Prasa polsko-żydowska w XIX-tym wieku,” Nasz przegląd 263 (18 September 1938)
• Marian Fuks, "Prasa żydowska w Warszawie", 1823–1939, Warsaw, 1979, pp. 21–40
• Aleksander Hafftka, “Prasa zydowska w Polsce (do 1918)”, in: Zydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, vol. 2, pp. 148–161, Warsaw, 1932
• Jacob Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in Varshe, vol. 1, pp. 290–291, New York, 1947