A Century of Yiddish Poetry
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All of Us? Marginalizing Dissent in Toronto's Jewish Community
ALL OF US? MARGINALIZING DISSENT IN TORONTO'S JEWISH COMMUNITY AMY SARAH KATZ A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO April, 2015 © Amy Sarah Katz, 2015 ABSTRACT Mainstream Jewish institutions like the Canadian Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B'nai Brith Canada largely communicate the impression of community-wide support for Israeli government policies and actions to the broader society. When Jewish individuals and groups in Toronto who do not uniformly support Israeli government policy and actions attempt to make their voices heard as Jews they can encounter discursive techniques used by institutions and more broadly to marginalize their points of view. These discursive techniques are not limited to Jewish institutions or to the Jewish community, but, rather, can be characteristic of some processes that serve to 'naturalize' specific ideas and marginalize others. I use elements of Critical Discourse Analysis to explore recent public communications reflecting responses to dissenting Toronto Jews and narratives to identify some of these discursive techniques. I also explore how aspects of selected mainstream Jewish Canadian histories can serve to marginalize present-day dissent. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my parents, Sheila and Morton Katz, for your humour and for sharing your stories. Thank you to my sister, Jenny Katz, for being you, for inspiring me to try harder, and for making me and so many other people believe some version of coherence is possible. Thank you to my committee Patrick Taylor, Ester Reiter and Michael Ornstein for your insight, kindness and generosity. -
Yiddish Culture in the West
Judah YIDDISH CULTURE Waten IN THE WEST The facts about the decline, often overlooked, of Yiddish culture in the West. Q FTEN when anti-Soviet propagandists assert that today Yiddish culture is in a serious plight in the Soviet Union and that soon the Soviet Jews will be without a literature and language, they appear to try to leave the impression that conversely in the West, the Yiddish language and literature are flourishing. Actually the reverse is true; Yiddish literature is at a very low ebb in the U.S.A. and is virtually extinct in Britain, but in the Soviet Union there is still considerable creative activity in the Yiddish language. As Dr. Nahum Goldmann said at the recent meeting of the World Jewish Congress, the Soviet Jewish community is “culturally one of the most creative” (Melbourne Herald, August 1, 1966). Yiddish, a younger language than Hebrew which goes back to antiquity, was derived from Middle High German between the 10th and 12th centuries, and after the Jewish migration eastward to Poland and Russia was mostly spoken in Eastern Europe where it was enriched by new words and word formations. Modern Yiddish literature was born in the mid-19th century in Czarist Russia in which lived nearly 50 per cent of the total Jewish population of the world at that time. Yiddish cultural expression grew up in the Pale of Settlement, the vast ghetto set up in 1835 by Nicholas I, in parts of white Russia and the Ukraine in which most of the Jews were compelled to live. -
Veidlinger on Cassedy, 'To the Other Shore'
H-Judaic Veidlinger on Cassedy, 'To the Other Shore' Review published on Wednesday, September 1, 1999 Steven Cassedy. To the Other Shore. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. xxiii + 197 pp. $47.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-02975-7. Reviewed by Jeffrey Veidlinger (Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington) Published on H-Judaic (September, 1999) Much has been written on the generation of Jewish immigrants who fled Russia for America between 1880 and 1920. One need look no further than the numbers alone to account for this group's ubiquity in Jewish historiography. In 1880, the Jewish population of the United States numbered approximately 230,000. By 1930 that number had increased to 4,400,000. Of the estimated 2,885,000 Jewish immigrants who reached the shores of the United States between 1881 and 1930, 1,749,000 hailed from Russia. If the numbers alone fail to impress sufficiently, one can also cite the cultural and intellectual influence that this generation has had on the American landscape. One need only think of David Sarnoff, Louis B. Mayer, Emma Goldman and Abraham Cahan to remember the impact of these immigrants. Even more striking is the influence of their children: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Irving Howe, Lionel Trilling, Irving Kristol and Alfred Kazin, to name but a few. Steven Cassedy's To The Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came To America is the most recent attempt to explore the radical ideas and agitational politicking that came with these immigrants. Cassedy's innovation--and a significant one at that--is to highlight the role that distinctly Russian forms of political awareness played in both the identity and thought of the Russian Jewish Intellectuals. -
Problems of Jewish Culture
University of Central Florida STARS PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements 1-1-1950 Problems of Jewish culture Morris U. Schappes Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Schappes, Morris U., "Problems of Jewish culture" (1950). PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements. 338. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/338 Problems of JEWISH CULTURE by M ORRIS U . SCHAP PES Price lO¢ A Publication of the SCHOOL OF JEWISH STUDIES ABOUT THE AUTHOR MORRIS U. SCHAPPES, the author of this pamphlet, was a mem ber of the English Department at City College, New York, from 1928 to 1941. A leading authority on Jewish history and culture, he has edited The Letters of Emma Lazarus, and Emma Lazarus: Selec tions From Her Prose and Poetry. He is presendy an editor of Jewish Life, and a member of the Board of Directors and a teacher at the School of Jewish Studies. His numerous articles, essays and reviews have appeared in the publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, Journal of Negro History, Jewish Life, Masses & Mainstream, American Literature, The Worker, American Hebrew, and the Chicago Jewish Forum. The text of this pamphlet is reprinted from an article which ap peared in the March, 1950, issue of Masses & Mainstream. -
Special Edition – Religion and Popular Culture in Canada (2009) Yiddish and Its Increasing Presence in the Realms of Performance, Translation and Scholarship
This is an electronic copy of an article published in: Margolis, R. (2009). Culture in motion: Yiddish in Canadian Jewish life. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 21 (spec. ed.). Available online at: http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art%28se%29-Yiddish.html Culture in Motion: Yiddish in Canadian Jewish Life Rebecca Margolis University of Ottawa Résumé Le vingtième siècle a vu la transformation du Yiddish au Canada: la langue s'est déplacée d’un vernaculaire immigrant, à une langue de haute culture, à une langue d'héritage et à une composante de la culture populaire juive. Cette transformation correspond à un changement de sa vie institutionnelle, notamment de la publication, la littérature, l'éducation et le théâtre et la musique. L'immigration de masse de dizaines de milliers de juifs Yiddishophones Europe de l’est au début du vingtième siècle a rendu la langue une force significative dans les centres juifs au Canada. Depuis l'Holocauste, le Canada Yiddish a montré la vitalité face à l'usure globale, tant dans la culture Yiddish séculaire modern que dans les communautés Haredi (Ultra Orthodoxes). Ses mécanismes primaires pour la transmission sont centrés sur la performance aussi bien que la traduction. Abstract The past century has transformed Yiddish in Canada: it has moved from an immigrant vernacular, to a language of high culture, to a heritage language and component of Jewish popular culture. These changes are reflected in shifts in its institutional life, notably in publishing, literature, education, and theatre and music. The mass immigration of tens of thousands of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews during the early twentieth century rendered the language a significant force in Jewish centres across Canada. -
The Jewish Unions in America Pages of History and Memories
BERNARD WEINSTEIN The Jewish Unions in America Pages of History and Memories TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY MAURICE WOLFTHAL To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/612 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. The Jewish Unions in America Pages of History and Memories by Bernard Weinstein, translated and annotated, with an introduction by Maurice Wolfthal https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2018 Maurice Wolfthal This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Maurice Wolfthal, The Jewish Unions in America: Pages of History and Memories. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0118 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/product/612#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www. -
A Short History of Jews in the American Labor Movement
A SHORT HISTORY OF JEWS IN THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT By Bennett Muraskin German-speaking Jews who arrived in the United States in the mid-19 th century spread across the U.S. and tended to be merchants and shopkeepers. Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe who arrived in the U.S. beginning in the 1880s settled in the big cities and tended to be workers. The conditions they faced were daunting. Low wages, long hours, unsafe workplaces and overcrowded and unsanitary tenement housing were the norm. Most of these Jewish immigrants came from small towns and were not prepared for the noise, dirt, congestion, disease and crime rampant in the great American cities of that period. Some even turned to crime and prostitution. However, they were free of the anti-Semitic laws and violence that plagued them in Eastern Europe. Their children were entitled to a free public education and once they became citizens, they could vote and participate in the political process. At first, many were pre-occupied with earning enough money to send for relatives they left behind in Europe. From the beginning, Jews gravitated to the garment industry in part because they had experience as tailors in Eastern Europe. It did not take long before they began to see trade unions as the path their economic and social progress. However, before going any further, it is necessary to recognize one of the most important Jewish personalities in the history of the American labor movement, Samuel Gompers. Gompers came to US from England in 1863. His parents came from Holland, with ancestry dating back to Spain. -
Of Nationhood
Preface DREAMS OF NATIONHOOD American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924-1951 i A BBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS JEWISH IDENTITIES IN POST MODERN SOCIETY Series Editor: Roberta Rosenberg Farber – Yeshiva University Editorial Board: Sara Abosch – University of Memphis Geoffrey Alderman – University of Buckingham Yoram Bilu – Hebrew University Steven M. Cohen – Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Bryan Daves – Yeshiva University Sergio Della Pergola – Hebrew University Simcha Fishbane – Touro College Deborah Dash Moore – University of Michigan Uzi Rebhun – Hebrew University Reeva Simon –Yeshiva University Chaim I. Waxman – Rutgers University ii Preface Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924-1951 Henry Felix Srebrnik Boston 2010 iii List of Illustrations Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Srebrnik, Henry Felix. American Jewish communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan project, 1924-1951 / Henry Felix Srebrnik. p. cm. -- (Jewish identities in post modern society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-936235-11-7 (hardback) 1. Jews--United States--Politics and government--20th century. 2. Jewish communists--United States--History--20th century. 3. Communism--United States--History--20th century. 4. Icor. 5. Birobidzhan (Russia)--History. 6. Evreiskaia avtonomnaia oblast (Russia)--History. I. Title. E184.J4S74 2010 973'.04924--dc22 2010024428 Copyright © 2010 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved Cover and interior design by Adell Medovoy Published by Academic Studies Press in 2010 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com iv Effective December 12th, 2017, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. -
Yiddish Poetry and Popular Song of London, 1884-1914: Anglicisation, Transnationalism and Cultural Controversy
Yiddish Poetry and Popular Song of London, 1884-1914: anglicisation, transnationalism and cultural controversy. Vivienne Rachel Lachs PhD 2016 Department of History Royal Holloway, University of London 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Vivienne Lachs hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 2 Abstract Yiddish-speaking immigrants arriving in London from the early 1880s, developed a rich cultural life. They established a Yiddish press, publishing houses, theatres and music halls. Although these institutions were often small and short-lived, the vibrancy of the popular culture is evident in the hundreds of songs and poems published in newspapers, periodicals, songbooks and penny songsheets. Many of these texts were home-grown, offering tantalising glimpses into London immigrant experience. This thesis analyses the socialist poetry, music-hall song and satirical verse written by immigrants to London about London immigrant life. The texts refer to local ideas, events and politics, alluding to community personalities, known places and English mores. They engage with conflict between Anglo-Jews, immigrant orthodox and socialists, holding positions in topical debates and arguing particular points. They tell unknown tales of changing sexual mores and nuance the place of religious ideas in the process of modernity. As Anglo-Yiddish texts, they can be seen as part of a process of anglicisation. Anglicisation is a contested term, and took different forms depending on the ideology of the writers: socialist revolutionaries, libertine entertainers or traditionally religious satirists. The writers and performers used a wide source of inspiration, and their poetry and song reflects the transnational world they inhabited. -
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Henry Srebrnik SUCH STUFF AS DIASPORA DREAMS ARE MADE ON: BIROBIDZHAN AND THE CANADIAN-JEWISH COMMUNIST IMAGINATION Perhaps the quintessential diaspora people are the Jews, who existed without a state from 70 C.E. to 1948. Statelessness, however, was not without problems, and over the years, various movements arose offering solutions to these diaspora dilem- mas. In the last 300 years, religious, assimilationist, completely universalistic, and nationalistic solutions were suggested. I have been examining a political movement that combined elements of the last two: Marxist universalism and Jewish terri- torial nationalism. They were promoted by like-minded organizations, which were active mainly between 1917 and 1956 and belonged to the Jewish Communist movement. The latter claimed members throughout the diaspora, especially in Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia. The groups were formally connected through international move- ments such as the World Jewish Cultural Union (Alveltlekher Yiddisher Kultur Farband [YKUF]). Jewish Communism evolved following the Russian Revolution and the founding of a Soviet state guided by the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, but it was part of a much larger socialist and left-Zionist Jewish milieu, already in full flower by the turn of the twentieth century. While some Jewish revo- lutionaries in Europe and North America distanced themselves from their Jewish background, others viewed involvement in Jewish left-wing and labour groups “as the preferred means of 76 Henry Srebrnik resolving both the -
Loyal Jewish Socialists Quit Seceding Body: Federation Convention
Loyal Jewish Socialists Quit Seceding Body [Sept. 5, 1921] 1 Loyal Jewish Socialists Quit Seceding Body: Federation Convention Votes, 41 to 34, to Leave Party — New Group is Immediately Organized: Resume Work Today: Bigger and More Active Movement Promised by Those Who Refuse to Bolt Organization. Unsigned article in the New York Call, v. 14, no. 248 (Sept. 5, 1921), pg. 11. Delegates loyal to the Socialist Party yesterday and to report this morning [Sept. 5, 1921] at 9:00 afternoon [Sept. 4, 1921] withdrew from the conven- o’clock, when the convention will resume work. tion of the Jewish Socialist Federation in Forward Hall, It is not known just where the 41 [majority del- and organized a new group, after the majority voted egates] are going, J.B. Salutsky saying that to take on a to leave the Socialist Party. new wife before getting rid of the old one was adul- The vote in favor of withdrawal was 41 to 34. tery. He said he knew what organization he wanted to The decision was taken after 6 hours of debate. After go with, but he declined to reveal his desire. the loyal 34 delegates left the convention, the group Morris Winchevsky of Harlem, who represented that remained announced that it would convene this a Milwaukee women’s branch, said that he was for morning [Sept. 5] and work out its plans. going into the Communist Party, only he didn’t be- At the organization meeting of the 34 delegates, lieve in secrecy and underground methods. in another hall in the Forward Building, addresses were Dr.