Isaiah Tishby, Új Kelet (New East), and the Cultural Mediation of Zionism in Transylvania (1920–1930)

This article investigates the spread of Zionism in the Jewish communities of Transylvania devoting special attention to the cultural mediation of the Jewish newspaper, Új Kelet (New East). Considering representative issues of the Jewish daily, Új Kelet, within 10 years of its inception (from the 1920s), will allow me to describe its key role as the foremost communications outlet for the promotion of Zionist ideas and activities in Transylvania. I will further trace the impact of this newspaper on the life and writings of Isaiah Tishby (1908–1992), one of the preeminent scholars of Kabbalah in the twentieth century, who was exposed to the Jewish daily in his youth and became indelibly transformed by it after its precipitous launch in 1918 on the heels of World War I.