Di Linke: the Yiddish Immigrant Left from Popular Front to Cold War

This conference will explore the complex history of the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order (JPFO) a crucial yet largely unknown component of the immigrant Jewish Left. Founded in 1930, the JPFO flourished for two decades as the Jewish division of the multi-ethnic International Workers Order (IWO) before being shut down during the Cold War.

One critical resource for the history of this organization is the IWO/JPFO archive previously confiscated by New York State’s Insurance Department, housed at Cornell’s ILR School Catherwood Library. This partially-digitized archive offers a wealth of information about war effort organizing, as well as postwar relief for Jewish communities in Poland, France and Belgium, and Mandate Palestine.

These documents provide a window into the politics and culture of the Yiddish-speaking immigrant Left, including how questions of anti-Semitism played out in the postwar period in the Soviet Union, Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Not least, they offer a window into the intersections of feminist Jewish and Black identity in programmatic political work and cultural productions prior to the 1960s mainstream civil rights movement.

Registration is required

Webinar Schedule

Sunday, December 6th, 1-3 p.m. EST; America: Communism, the Jewish Left, and Unity

  • Welcome
  • Short 1949 IWO Movie with Paul Robeson followed by Rubin Saltzman in Yiddish
  • Paul Buhle (Emeritus, Brown University
  • Elissa Sampson (Cornell University)
  • Paul Mishler (Indiana University South Bend)
  • Chair: Randi Storch (Cortland, SUNY)
  • Respondent: Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin)

Monday, December 7, 3-5 p.m. EST; A Fraternal Society with Emmas: Mutual Aid, Insurance, Acculturation, Civil Rights & Feminism

  • Jonathan Karp (Binghamton, SUNY)
  • Jennifer Young (Independent Scholar)
  • Robert Zecker (Saint Francis Xavier University)
  • Caroline Luce, (UCLA)
  • Chair: TBD

Tuesday, December 8, 3-5 p.m. EST

  • Virtual Tour of the Archives and Library

Wednesday, December 9, 3-5 p.m. EST; The Internationale

  • Henry F. Srebrnik (University of Prince Edward Island) 
  • Nerina Visacovsky (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
  • Amelia Glaser (University of California San Diego)
  • Chair: Larry Glickman (Cornell University)
  • Respondent: Jack Jacobs (John Jay College, Graduate Center, CUNY)

Thursday, December 10, 3-5 p.m. EST; Kultur Arbet: Creativity & Repression

  • Eddy Portnoy (YIVO)
  • Lauren Strauss (American University)
  • Dylan Kaufman-Obstler (University of Wisconsin)
  • Chair & Respondent: Harvey Teres (Syracuse University)

Monday, December 14, 1-3 p.m. EST; The Art of Resistance

  • Ben Katchor (New School, Parsons)
  • Respondent: Paul Buhle (Emeritus, Brown University)

Registration is required

Support provided by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Catherwood Library Cornell ILR School Kheel Center, Cornell Jewish Studies Program, Syracuse Jewish Studies Program, Cornell Departments of History, Anthropology, Near Eastern Studies, and Government, and the American Studies Program.

Co-sponsors: Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation; New York University, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Image by Yevgeniy Fiks

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