Read more
The Jewish Labor Movement was a radical subculture that flourished within the trade union and political movements in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. Jewish immigrant activists-socialists, communists, anarchists, and labor Zionists-adapted aspects of the traditions with which they were raised in order to express the politics of social transformation. In doing so, they created a folk ideology which reflected their dual ethnic/class identity. This book explores that folk ideology, through an analysis of interviews with participants in the Jewish Labor Movement as well as through a survey of the voluminous literature written about that movement.
A synthesis of political ideology and ethnic tradition was carefully crafted by secular working-class Jewish immigrant radicals who rediscovered and reformulated elements of Jewish traditions as vehicles for political organizing. Commonly held symbols of their cultural identity-the Yiddish language, rituals such as the Passover seder, remembered narratives of the Eastern European
shtetl, and biblical imagery-served as powerful tools in forging political solidarity among fellow Jewish workers and activists within the Jewish Labor Movement.
List of contents
Foreword by Paul Buhle
Introduction
When Moses Met Marx: Aspects of Jewish Radical Folk Ideology
Folk Ideology and Folk History: Reading Writings about the Jewish Labor Movement
Matters of Belief: Secularized Judaism and Spiritualized Radicalism
"A Story in Itself": Personal Narrative and Folk Ideology
Folklore and Folk Ideology: Political Expression in Traditional Forms
The "Third" Seder of Passover: Liberating a Ritual of Liberation
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
About the author
DAVID P. SHULDINER holds appointments as Humanities Program Coordinator with the State of Connecticut, Department of Social Services, Elderly Services Division, as Adjunct Faculty in the School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut, and in the Gerontology Program at St. Joseph College, and has taught folklore at Trinity College. He is co-editor of the
Journal of Applied Folklore and the author of
Aging Political Activists: Personal Narratives from the Old Left (Praeger, 1995) and
Folklore, Culture, and Aging: A Research Guide (Greenwood, 1997).
