Whether the lower estimate or the higher is nearer the truth, it is clear that there were already in New York a large number of Jews, and that a considerable portion of them were from Russia. A rare little volume in rabbinical Hebrew, entitled _Emek Rephaim_, against the heresy of the Reform Jews, which was published by the author, Elijah Holzman, a shochet from Courland, in New York, in 1868, is a good indication that there were already here at that time a sufficient number of readers of that language to warrant the publication of a work of that nature. As only the intellectual aristocracy among the Jews of the Slavic countries reads Hebrew and a large majority of the Russian-Jewish immigrants of that period belonged to the poorest and most ignorant classes, the belief in the existence of a Hebrew reading public, even if it proved to be a mistaken one, implies the presence of a large number of Russians. The first attempts to establish periodicals for this public soon followed. Hirsch Bernstein (b. in Wladislavov or Neustadt-Schirwint, government of Suwalki, 1846; d. in Tannersville, New York, 1907) arrived in New York in 1870, and in the same year established the first Judaeo-German or Yiddish paper, and also the first periodical publication in the Neo-Hebraic language in the United States. The Yiddish publication, called “The Post,” had a brief existence; but the second, _ha-Zofeh be’ Erez ha-Hadashah_, of which Mordecai ben David Jalomstein (b. in Suwalki, 1835; a. 1871; d. in New York, 1897) was editor for most of the time, appeared weekly for more than five years. His brother-in-law, Kasriel H. ♦Sarasohn (b. in Paiser, Russian-Poland, 1835; d. in New York, 1905), who arrived in the United States in 1866, and settled in New York, founded there, in 1874, the weekly “Jewish Gazette,” which, with its daily edition, the _Jewish Daily News_ (established 1886), later became the most prosperous Jewish periodical publications in any country. Jalomstein was the principal contributor to these publications for about twenty years. Another Yiddish weekly, the _Israelitische Presse_, was founded in Chicago in 1879, by Nachman Baer Ettelson and S. L. Marcus. It had a Hebrew supplement, and existed for several years. The Jewish press in general will be treated in a later chapter; but it deserves to be mentioned here that some of the best representative Jewish papers of the country, like the _American Hebrew_ of New York and the _Jewish Exponent_ of Philadelphia (both founded in 1879) and the _Jewish Advance_ of Chicago (founded 1878; existed about four years) contributed to place the Jews of the country in the proper condition for the reception of the large number of persecuted Jews which were soon to arrive. Illustration: Kasriel H. Sarasohn. PART VI. THE THIRD OR RUSSIAN PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION. CHAPTER XXIX.