2/9/16

NCJW Pamphlet Greets Immigrant Women on the Docks of Ellis Island


The National Council of Jewish Women (established 1893) distributed these pamphlets, containing Hebrew, Yiddish and English, to vulnerable immigrant women arriving in Ellis Island. I am struck by the pamphlet wording- and the promise that the COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN will find out the truth for you. I wonder how I might feel as a woman at the docks, receiving this cryptic warning, and whether I'd be encouraged by this pamphlet to visit if in need.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

How exactly were they verifying if an immigrant "was not found to be virtuous?" Same protocol as the mishnah or what are we talking about here?

Unknown said...

I'm surprised and intrigued that the pamphlet actually contains Hebrew. I thought Hebrew wasn't used as much.

Unknown said...

As a point of clarification: there's not actually Hebrew in this pamphlet friends. The aramaic characters that we think of as Hebrew are the script for how Yiddish is written, and the "Warnung" is the German. One of the hints about the Yiddish instead of the Hebrew is in the right side where it says ווילקאמען - Wilkommen, effectively a transliteration. You can often tell with Yiddish because of the presence of extra ayins and alefs for vowels.

With respect to the content of the pamphlet, I agree—how strange it is that they would try to "find out the truth" about people, and I wonder if they ever did try to get non virtuous women deported or not.

It is ON!

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