<aside> <img src="/icons/directional-sign_gray.svg" alt="/icons/directional-sign_gray.svg" width="40px" /> “Mein shpatsir iber Hamilton” / My stroll around Hamilton

Henry Balinson was not just the printer and publisher of his Yiddish newspaper. He was also its main reporter. Every issue of the paper featured Balinson’s signature editorial on the front page, “Mein shpatsir iber Hamilton” (my stroll around Hamilton). The column is an invaluable primary source in which Balinson offers a glimpse into the civic, social, political, and religious dimensions of life for Jews in Hamilton at this time. Today, Balinson’s newspaper and the very type used to print it is a remarkable and rare example of Yiddish tangible cultural heritage.

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Metal type set to recreate the title and editorial headline of Balinson’s newspaper

Proof of title and editorial headline

<aside> <img src="/icons/megaphone_gray.svg" alt="/icons/megaphone_gray.svg" width="40px" /> “Mein shpatsir iber Hamilton”

Henry Balinson truly was the voice of his newspaper, as he wrote and reported the stories himself, typeset and printed the entire paper by hand (with some help from his family), ordered cuts of photographs, recruited local advertisers, and arranged for its distribution throughout the community. The type set above replicates the headline of Balinson’s editorial, “Mein shpatsir iber Hamilton” (My stroll around Hamilton), which was featured on the front page of every issue of Yiddishe Shtime. This type has been waiting nearly a century to find itself set back in this sequence.

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My stroll around Hamilton | Hamilton Jewish News

<aside> 📰 “Mein shpatsir iber Hamilton” by Henry Balinson (Yiddishe Shtime de Hamiltoner, No. 200, May 1, 1943), translated by Shavey (Sheila) Tishler, Hamilton Jewish News (2013)

“A newspaper man has a lot of nerve”

This translation of Balinson’s editorial from the May 1943 issue of Yiddishe Shtime not only offers insight into his Jewish community, but also his personality, values, and influence.

Balinson was a socialist and unionist, with a fervent belief in workers’ rights. In fact, he was among the founders of the Hamilton Chapter of The Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish socialist organization which at the time served as a mutual aid society for workers with an influential voice in the labour movement. Through his newspaper, Balinson strives to mobilize his local community around global issues, particularly the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War. Balinson’s “nerve” as a newspaper man follows in the footsteps of a long tradition of Yiddish printers and labourers more broadly making their voices heard in ideological movements.

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Yiddish victory bonds ad on the front cover of issue no. 200

Yiddish victory bonds ad with English image and text cut on back cover of issue no. 200

<aside> 📰 Yiddishe Shtime de Hamiltoner, issue no. 200 (May 1, 1943)

Balinson’s May 1943 column in the original Yiddish. Through his reporting and the ads on the front and back pages of this issue, Balinson utilizes his small local newspaper as a platform to marshal action in support of the war efforts. In earlier issues, Balinson calls for the boycotting of the German Olympics, runs ads to raise funds for the Red Cross, endorses local political candidates, and even laments the loss of his son Alexander, who died overseas while serving as a Flight Sergeant in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

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“Modern Yiddish literature holds the dubious distinction of being 100 percent acidic: printed on inexpensive, wood-pulp paper, which because of its high acidity, gradually breaks down, turning yellow and brittle and, eventually, crumbling into fragments and dust. Although this is not a uniquely Jewish problem—every library in the world struggles with the Herculean task of conserving books printed after 1850, when pulp paper (as opposed to rag paper) came into widespread use—the problem for Yiddish is particularly severe. Even the best Yiddish publishers were usually shoestring operations, and more often than not they cut costs by using the cheapest paper they could find.” — Aaron Lansky (Yiddish Book Center Founder & President), Outwitting History (2005), p. 290.

<aside> <img src="/icons/folder_gray.svg" alt="/icons/folder_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Physical condition of Balinson’s newspaper today

Nearly one hundred years since being pulled from the press, extant copies of Balinson’s newspaper are now extremely fragile and brittle. As Aaron Lansky, Founder and President of the Yiddish Book Center, explains above, in an excerpt from his memoir, Outwitting History (2005), embrittlement is a threat not only to more ephemeral artifacts like newsprint, but to Yiddish material print culture across the board. Given their niche readership, Yiddish printers were unlikely to use anything but cheap, acidic paper.

The original copies of Yiddishe Shtime will not survive forever. We can, however, take measures to invest in their preservation, such as through digitization, limiting handling, and ensuring they are stored in a climate-controlled environment. With this looming threat of embrittlement in mind, Yiddish was in fact the very first literature to undergo digitization, at the Yiddish Book Center (Lansky, p. 293).

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8-line and 5-line wood type before conservation treatment.

5-line wood type

8-line wood type

<aside> <img src="/icons/row_gray.svg" alt="/icons/row_gray.svg" width="40px" /> 5- and 8-line wood type

This 5- and 8-line Yiddish wood type arrived at Massey College in fragile condition and is now reserved for display purposes only. Although the type still shows some signs of wear such as cracking, it is much improved after some in-house conservation treatment which included cleansing, dusting, and oiling, thanks to the hard work of our volunteer Wood Type Conservation team.

Since type is designed for active use and handling, it wears down over time. Metal type, for instance, is designed to eventually be melted down and recast into new fonts. The rest of the Balinson collection is still gently used for printing projects at the Bibliography Room (see case 4). By reviving this type for active use, we keep the Yiddish pressroom and the trade of letterpress printing alive. Reintroducing this type to the labour of printing is also a tribute to Balinson’s values.

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