Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Of Moses and Marx: Folk Ideology and Folk History in the Jewish Labor Movement

Of Moses and Marx: Folk Ideology and Folk History in the Jewish Labor Movement

Shuldiner, David P.
Buhle, Paul

Hardcover

LaborAnthropologyMythology & Folklore

ISBN10: 0897896173
ISBN13: 9780897896177
Publisher: Praeger
Published: Jun 30 1999
Pages: 264
Weight: 1.26
Height: 1.03 Width: 6.45 Depth: 9.63
Language: English

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.

Also in

Mythology & Folklore

View All