Yiddish Politics in Southern States: The Southern District of the Arbeter Ring, 1908-1949
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 20, 2019
- Creator
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Parshall, Josh
- College of Arts and Sciences, Department of American Studies
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Parshall, Josh
- Abstract
- Between 1908 and 1925, East European Jewish immigrants in nearly twenty southern cities founded branches of the Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle), a socialist-oriented, Yiddish-speaking fraternal organization. While the New York-based group was a well-known part of the Jewish labor movement in the North, its southern history remains underexplored. This dissertation demonstrates that secular Yiddish culture and left-wing politics served the needs of early twentieth-century immigrants as they both adapted to and resisted the economic, political and racial atmosphere of the New South. Branches offered mutual aid benefits, collected funds for international relief, hosted cultural events and operated Yiddish classes for children. They also promoted Socialist candidates and supported striking workers. In the 1920s, pro-Communist members in several cities formed radical splinter branches that eventually left the organization to join the International Workers Order. Through their cultural programs, Arbeter Ring members built local iterations of a transnational Yiddish public sphere, even as their efforts to educate their children in Yiddish anticipated the ongoing flourishing of secular Yiddish culture. By 1945, several events—including the Nazi Genocide, the rise of Zionism and the realignment of the American political landscape—caused the southern Arbeter Ring to enter a long decline. In response, its leaders wrote and/or collected historical essays and personal memoirs about Arbeter Ring activity and Yiddish life in the South. These historiographic efforts reflect the centrality of memory in Arbeter Ring and Jewish-left life, as commemorative texts both justify Arbeter Ring activities in relation to members’ experiences in Tsarist Russia and set forth the group’s history as a “usable past” for future generations. Today, the organization’s decades-long history in the South is nearly invisible in Jewish communities, which have physically migrated to suburban settings as they have moved politically and culturally closer to the American mainstream. Despite the southern Arbeter Ring’s obscurity, its history may yet constitute a usable past as Jewish southerners reckon with questions of Jewishness, politics, race and place. Through its examination of Arbeter Ring history in the South, this dissertation expands the scope of several scholarly fields, including modern Jewish politics, southern Jewish history and southern studies.
- Date of publication
- May 2017
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Auerbach, Karen
- Ferris, Marcie Cohen
- Kotch, Seth
- Boyarin, Jonathan
- Marr, Timothy
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
- Graduation year
- 2017
- Language
- Date uploaded
- July 5, 2017
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