About three years ago, the National Library of Israel released its digital newspaper archive. This collection has consolidated Jewish newspapers and periodicals from across the global Jewish diaspora from the 18th century to the late 20th century. As a researcher, the search function has become an invaluable tool for gaining all kinds of useful historical information at a moments notice.
This collection has alerted me to some fascinating glimpses into how different elements of the global Jewish community created and consumed media. One really cool example is how the press of the highly traditional Yishuv ha-Yashan in Jerusalem published serial novels. Havatzelet was a weekly paper that was published in Jerusalem for the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Jerusalem as its primary audience. The paper ran from around 1870 until 1910. During its first decade the paper used most of its space on publishing articles on topics in Torah study along with a little news. Overtime the news section grew and the Torah articles began to be augmented with more features pieces on all manner of topics. By 1890s, the paper started publishing serial novels.
The first of these novels to catch my eye was called ha-Acharon be-Mishpachto or "The Last of His Family." It was published in 30 instalments in the year 1896. (I was researching some events from that year and one of the chapters of the novel caught my eye.) I indexed all the instalments about two years ago, and I figured I could publish it here for anyone who would be interested in such a thing.
Based on the attribution of the story within the newspaper, it appears that this novel originally appeared in a Jewish paper called Der Israelit from Mainz, Germany. The story was anonymously translated from German into Hebrew and reprinted in Havatzelet. I have not read through the entire thing and I do not currently have plans to do so. But I did read some small sections, and it seems very much like a Romance of some kind set in very Victorian environment with large estates and palaces with servants. Anyone who does feel interested in reading it is welcome to reach out to me with the TLDR.
Here is the index of the installments in Havatzelet on the NLI's website.
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