Yiddish social and political newspaper published in Romania from 12 June 1874 until 5 January 1913. In 1882, its editors concluded an agreement with the Bucharest representatives of the Central Committee for the Colonization of the Land of Israel; in effect, Hayoets (The Counselor) became an organ of the emerging Zionist movement and the chronicler of Romanian Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Hayoets was established with the support of Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, the American consul in Bucharest. Its founder and first editor was Yekhiel-Mikhl Aziel, who was succeeded in 1895 by his son Yoysef Aziel (Azielescu). Originally a weekly with the full name Hayoets lebeys yisroel beromania (Counselor to the House of Israel in Romania), from 1877 Hayoets was issued twice a week, and in 1902–1903 four times a week; its maximum circulation reached 18,000 copies. Throughout its existence, it called itself a commercial newspaper “for the community and the family.” The paper’s Yiddish was strongly Germanized and yet abounded in Hebraisms.
Publication was suspended from December 1885 to July 1887 because Aziel was expelled from Romania. After Aziel’s death in February 1895, his elder son Yosef took over the editorship. He resigned at the end of that year after a family dispute and from 20 December 1895 published another paper, Der vahre hayoets (The True Hayoets). Although the old Hayoets continued to appear until 3 July 1896, Der vahre hayoets became the actual successor of Y.-M. Aziel’s paper and preserved its Zionist orientation.
Hayoets was the most popular Jewish publication in Romania, and it reflected trends in Jewish life there for nearly four decades. Its pages contained discussions about assimilation and Romanian patriotism, the search for ways for Haskalah and tradition to coexist, the struggle for civil rights for Jews, and the growing emigration to America and Palestine.
“Aziel, Yekhiel-Mikhl,” in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, vol. 6, cols. 572–574 (New York, 1965); Volf Tambur, Yidish-prese in Rumenye (Bucharest, 1977), pp. 35–42.
Translated from Russian by I. Michael Aronson