October 2, 2007
Radio and the Jews
As a resident of Atlanta, I spent countless hours each week sitting in traffic listening to the radio.
And I’m often chagrined at how much radio influences my thinking on current events. I find myself engaged with a radio program in a way that’s different from newspapers and magazines. The sound of the broadcaster’s voice — and their point of view on world events — stays with me for quite a while. The effect is subtle but unmistakable.
I suspect David S. Siegel and Susan Siegel would say a lot of people are like me. The couple recently finished writing “Radio and the Jews
David Siegel, writing in the book’s ‘personal note,’ says he has had a life-long obsession with old-time radio and as the recent immigration debates raged on the airwaves, “the proverbial light bulb began to glow.”
“It brought back thoughts of earlier times in American history when both pro and anti-immigration forces used radio to pursue their political agendas,” he writes.
The book includes material on early radio programs such as The Rise of the Goldbergs, a series from the 1920s about a Jewish family assimilating into American society.
In addition, the Siegels discuss the radio careers of demagogues such as Father Charles Coughlin and the less well-known Gerald L.K. Smith. An audio CD comes with the book and includes several selections from early radio broadcasts.
And while the book does discuss Jewish humor, Jewish assimilation, anti-Semitism and the images of Jews in American popular culture, the major thrust of the Siegels’ research focuses on a narrow area: how Jews were portrayed on network radio during the 1920s to the 1950s.
So, you won’t find a lot in here about the Yiddish radio programs that enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity thanks to their being re-broadcast on National Public Radio. The Siegels note that the Yiddish programs were mostly regional, not on the networks that broadcast to large, diverse audiences. And, because many of the programs were in Yiddish, most non-Jews did not listen to them and therefore the programs did little to affect America’s image of Jews.
For those of you who would be interested in more information about Yiddish radio, you can find plenty at the Yiddish Radio Project’s Web site at www.yiddishradioproject.org.
Happy listening!
Related Posts
No related posts.