Yiddish and the Left: Papers of the Third Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish 1351198238, 9781351198233

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Yiddish and the Left Pap€15 of the T/md Ade/idol Friedman. Iiirmiarzonal Confcicna’ 017 YdidI5/z

Edited by Gennady Esti‘aikh and Mikhail Krutikov 7

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YIDDISH

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THE EUROPEAN HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

The European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford organizes a range of academic activities, including conferences and workshops, and publishes scholarly works under its own imprint, LBGENDA. Within Oxford, the EHRC bridges, at the research level, the main humanities faculties: Modern Languages, English, Modern History, Literae Humaniores, Music and Theology. The Centre stimulates interdisciplinary research collaboration throughout these subject areas and provides an Oxford base for advanced researchers in the humanities. The Centre’s publications programme focuses on making available the results of advanced research in medieval and modern languages and related interdisciplinary areas. An Editorial Board, whose members are drawn from across the British university system, covers the principal European languages. Titles include works on French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish literature. In addition, the EHRC co-publishes with the Society for French Studies, the British Comparative literature Association and the Modern Humanities Research Association. The Centre also publishes Oxford German Studies and Film Studies, and has launched a Special Lecture Series under the LEGENDA imprint.

Enquiries about the Centre’s publishing activities should be addressed to: Professor Malcolm Bowie, Director Further information: Kareni Bannister, Senior Publications Officer European Humanities Research Centre University of Oxford 47 Wellington Square, Oxford oxr 21F

[email protected] www.chrc.ox.ac.uk

LEGENDA EDITORIAL BOARD Chairman Professor Malcolm Bowie, All Souls College

Professor Ian Maclean, All Souls College (French) Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret, Queen Mary University of London (French) Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John’s College (German) Professor Lesley Sharpe, University of Bristol (German) Dr Diego Zancani, Balliol College (Italian) Professor David Robey, University of Reading (Italian) Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College (Portuguese) Professor Helder Macedo, King’s College London (Portuguese) Professor Gerald Smith, New College (Russian) Professor David Shepherd, University of Shefield (Russian) Dr David Pattison, Magdalen College (Spanish) Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish) Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London (Comparative Literature) Senior Publications Ofiicer Kareni Bannister

Publications Oflicer Dr Graham Nelson

LEGENDA EUROPEAN HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE STUDIES IN YIDDISH 3

Yiddish and the Left 0

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EDITED

BY

GENNADY ESTRAIKH AND MIKHAIL KRUTIKOV

LEGENDA European Humanities Research Centre University of Oxford Studies in Yiddish 3 2001

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European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford 47 Wellington Square

Oxford OX1 21F LEGENDA is the publications imprint of the European Humanities Research Centre ISBN 1 900755 48 3 ISSN 1474—2543 First published 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system, or otherwise used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue recordfor this book is available flom the British Library

© European Humanities Research Centre of the University qf Oxford 2001 ‘The Cult of Self-Sacrifice in Yiddish Anarchism and Saul Yanovsley’s The First Years of Jewish Libertarian Socialism’ © Karen Rosenberg 2001 LEGENDA series designed by Cox Design Partnership, Witney, Oxon Printed in Great Britain by Information Press

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Oxford OX8 11] Copy-Editor: Nigel Hope

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CONTENTS 6

Preface

ix

Contributors

x

PART I: Politics

The Question of Human Rights in American Yiddish Journalism: The Example of Di tsuleunft Steven Cassedy

2

Socialism with a Jewish Face: The Origins of the Yiddish-Speaking Communist Movement in the United States, 1907-1923 24 Tony Michels

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8

Abraham Cahan’s Travels in Jewish Homelands: Palestine in 1925 and the Soviet Union in 1927 Daniel Sayer

56

Diaspora, Ethnicity and Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Birobidzhan Project Henry Srebrnile

80

The Left Poalei Zion in Inter-War Poland Samuel D. Kassow

109

The History of ‘The Truth': Soviet Jewish Activists and the Moscow Yiddish Daily Newspaper David Shneer

129

etamorphoses of Morgn-frayhayt Gennady Estraikh

I44

Yiddish in Poland after 1945 Eleonora Bergman

167

viii

CONTENTS

PART II: Culture 9

The Cult of Self-Sacrifice in Yiddish Anarchism and Saul Yanovsky’s The First Years ofjewish Libertarian Socialism Karen Rosenberg I78

10

Abraham Golomb’s ‘lntegrated Jewishness’ Thomas Soxberger

I95

Inscribing the Yiddish Past: Inter-War Explorations of Old Yiddish Texts Barry 'li'achtenberg

208

Soviet Literary Theory in the Search for a Yiddish Canon: The Case of Moshe Litvakov Mikhail Krutileov

226

II

12

13 From Exile to Exile: Bergelson’s Berlin Years

Dafna Clgflord

242

I4 Chaim Sloves and the Soviet Union: An Essay on the Jewish

People in one of its Peregrinations

Annette Aronowicz I5

259

The Status of Yiddish in Jewish Educational Systems in Argentina and Mexico

Efraim Zadofi’

280

16 The Image of Apartheid in South African Yiddish Prose Writing

joseph Sherman Index

299 3I5

PREFACE 0:»

This volume is the outcome of the Third Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish, held in Oxford in July 2000. This series has been established by Jack and Naomi Friedman of Long View, Texas, as part of the joint research programme of the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, and the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies. This present collection of papers examines the complex diversity of relationships between Yiddish and the Left, from the attitude of Yiddish writers to apartheid in South Africa to the status of Yiddish in educational systems in Argentina and Mexico. Although only two chapters deal directly with Soviet Yiddish cultural history, the Soviet impact on the Western Jewish Left plays the central role in the whole volume, most notably in the chapters dealing with the Birobidzhan project, the émigré writer David Bergelson, the Labour (Poalei) Zionist movement in Poland and the disintegration of the Yiddish communist movement. A number of prominent Yiddish cultural and political activists appear as protagonists, such as the anarchist writer Saul Yanovsky, the educator Abraham Golomb, the playwright Chaim Sloves, and the newspaper editors Abraham Cahan and Moshe Litvakov. Several chapters concentrate on the history of the Yiddish press: the New York socialist journal Di tsulcunfl, the New York communist paper Frayhayt and the Moscow daily Der emes. Like the previous two volumes of the Mendel Friedman Conference, this book was able to appear within the Stakhanovite space of one year after the conference itself. This could not have been achieved without the exceptional professionalism and great commitment of Legenda’s Chief Executive Oficer Kareni Bannister and Publications Officer Graham Nelson, to both of whom warm

thanks are due.

IMAGE TEM PO RARILY U NAVAILAB LE

16

HUMAN RIGHTS 1N AMERICAN YIDDISII JOURNALISM

socialist argument that irmnigration is in the first place the consequence of a capitalist system, Since international capital cannot confine labour within national boundaries. When Hourwich comes to his own defence, it is precisely on the first charge that he expresses himself most emphatically.18 He cares little about the national origin of workers. Economic laws work independently of national origin and Similar factors, he insists, and every time an Irish worker earns more than an Italian, it is only because the Irishman has been in the country longer and has accumulated more experience. At the same time, Hourwich says, statistics show that immigration, which often means an influx of workers less skilled than those already residing in the receiving country, instead of depressing wages has actually raised them. Hourwich then brings in some classic Marxist arguments to support his claims. The details and merits of these arguments are not important. What is important is that he has used the traditional party line of Di tsuleunfl to argue, in a climate in which ‘racial’ and national differences are of paramount importance, that such difiemnces are irrelevant, that immigration restrictions are not only wrong but economically unsound. Used this way, Marxist theory thus paves the way for a modern, transnational conception of human rights.

Women’s Rights The human rights issue about which Di tsuleunft’s contributors had the most to say that was not a boundary issue was women’s rights. This was unequivocally an international issue, not only because the cause itself is inherently international but also because the political movement advancing it was international. Though the movement had been ‘international’ since earlier in the nineteenth century (in the narrow sense that it had representatives in a number Of countries and that these representatives were often in contact with each other), it had become truly international after the turn of the century with the formation of international organizations dedicated to women’s rights. The first truly prominent such organization was the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, formed by American feminist Carrie Chapman Catt between I902 and 1904. Starting in 1911, Di tsuleunfl ran a series on Russian revolutionaries by Leo Deutsch (1855—1941). Deutsch had been a legendary participant in the Russian revolutionary movement, having spent sixteen

STEVEN CASSEDY

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years in Siberia for his activities, and he was one of the most noted chroniclers of both the entire movement and its specifically Jewish phase. Included in his series were articles about Russian women revolutionaries. But even though these articles were among the first in the journal’s history to be devoted to women, they did not really focus on women’s rights as such. When articles truly devoted to women’s rights began to appear in the pages of Di tsuleunft, it was largely owing to the efforts of two women. One was Katerina Yevzerov-Merison

(1870—1928), a distinguished member of the immigrant community with a medical degree fi'om New York University and a long list of publications on medicine, child-rearing and women’s rights. Unlike most Russian Jewish women of her era, she had received an impressive religious and secular education as a child in the old country, so that when she arrived in the United States in 1888, she boasted credentials similar or even superior to those of the prominent men in the socialist movement. The other was Esther Lurye (1877-?), a Polish-born immigrant with a doctorateIn humanities from Switzerland. Little15 known about her life. Articles by both women began appearing regularly only after Liessin assumed the editorship of Di tsuleunft. In 1913, Dr Yevzerov—Merison published ‘The Movement for Women’s Voting Rights in England and America’ in Di tsuleunfi. ’9 She gives a brief history of the movement in each of the two countries and mentions the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Keeping her sights on the international scene, at the end of the article she surveys the progress of women’s voting rights around the world, listing the countries that have enfranchised women and expressing the hope that in the near future women in all civilized countries will have the vote. Later, in 1917, she contributed an article on New York’s passage of a constitutional amendment giving women full voting rights.”0 Once again Yevzerov-Merison offered a brief history of the women’s sufiage movement and noted progress by listing the American states, American territories and countries around the world that had already enfianchised women. Esther Lurye contributed a large number of articles on women and women’s issues. The choice of topics calls to mind the early days of women’s studies in American universities (a half-century after Lurye’s stint with Di tsukunft). The purpose in many cases is simply to call the reader’s attention to remarkable women whose existence or accomplishments were previously overlooked. Like Dr YevzerovMerison, Dr Lurye also devoted considerable attention to the history

18

HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMERICAN YIDDISH JOURNALISM

of the international women’s rights movement, assembling a sort of ’great figures in the women’s rights movement’ series in Di tsuleunft. In addition to composing articles on Jewish women, she wrote about Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine Rose (Jewish, to be sure, but noteworthy for reasons having nothing to do with her religious identity), Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others. Though neither Dr Yevzerov-Merison nor Dr Lurye was a particularly militant feminist, both contributed significantly to Di tsuleunft’s focus on international human rights starting in 1913. The women’s rights movement in general and the sufl'rage movement in particular, after all, did not experience a sudden surge of activity in 1913. And Dr Yevzerov-Merison had already established herself in the Yiddish-speaking world as an authority on the subject as early as 1907, with the publication of a book titled The Woman in Society.“ It is thus safe to conclude that, before 1913, the editorial board of Di tsuleunfl was simply not interested in women’s rights. BegimIing in that year, however, hardly an issue appeared that did not have at least one article devoted to a ‘women’s topic’.

International Law and Human Rights In late 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe and after the dimensions of the war had become clear (it was already being referred to as a ‘world war’), Dr Elihu Sintovsky, an immigrant with degrees in law and philosophy fi‘om the University of Berne, wrote an article for Di tsuleunft on international law.22 Drawing a distinction between morality, which has no executive power to compel compliance, and law, which does have such power, Sintovsky noted that international law, like morality, is hindered at the outset by its lack of executive power. This is because international law applies to countries and governments without itself having the power of a government. But international law must concern individuals as well as governments, Sintovsky says, and its power will ultimately stand in direct proportion to the extent to which governments reflect the will of the masses

they represent. With the emergence of the League of Nations after the First World War, Di tsuleunfi turned its attention more regularly to the subject Of human rights itself, at least for a few years. Most of its commentary on the new organization was confined to the period of its formation and the period when the fate of the Treaty of Versailles (which

STEVEN CASSEDY

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contained the Covenant of the League) was still uncertain in the United States Senate. In 1919, as the Paris Peace Conference was underway and the principles of the League were being formulated, Sintovsky, who appears to have become the journal’s leading authority on international law, twice commented on the proposed organization. Early in the year he wrote an article in which he set out the principles he believed the emerging League should follow.23 Though he speaks almost exclusively of international relations, urging the establishment of an international code governing the conduct of nations, he mentions the possibility that international law based on justice rather than power might well produce benefits in the area of human rights (without using this phrase). In the second article, Sintovsky shows that the ultimate concern for the League of Nations is the prevention of war.24 But his internationalist orientation, his belief in a system of justice that crosses national borders, is clear throughout the article. In what is perhaps nothing more than a gratuitous display of erudition to impress his readers, Sintovsky declares that a Hobbesian state of nature has hitherto governed the relations between nations (something that capitalism has supported) and that what is needed is an application of Kant’s categorical imperative. He complains that the force responsible for the Great War was imperialism (a topic seldom discussed in the pages of Di tsuleunft) and that the victorious Allied powers monopolized the proceedings at the peace conference (a charge fi'equently levelled in Di tsuleunfi in this and succeeding periods). But the dream is for a peace that will secure the world against further wars and allow peaceful relations to prevail among the world’s masses. Other discussions in Di tsukunfl in 1919 and 1920 fOcused both on the international, political dimension of the League and the Treaty and on the domestic politics surrounding the debate over ratification in the United States Senate.” Even though the journal had relatively little to say specifically about human rights in these discussions, two factors are significant. The first is the recognition that such enormously broad concepts as ‘justice’ must now be understood in an international context. Even if a writer regards the abolition of militarism as the chief goal of the new organization, there is a common feeling that in the new order a moral concept like justice must replace what served as the foundation for the old, militaristic order, namely power. The second is that in a journal that had moved through two parochialisms (starting out by appealing to Russian Jewish immigrant socialists, while pretending that ‘Jewish’ was

2.0

HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMERICAN YIDDISH JOURNALISM

irrelevant, then moving on to accept Jewishness as a primary characteristic Of its readership), an international issue like the formation of the League of Nations is treated independently of any bias other than Di tsukunft’s traditional political progressiveness. No longer does an international peace conference need to be viewed only from the perspective of someone obsessed with the fate of Russia or someone interested only in what it means ‘for the Jews’. Now such a conference can be viewed fiom the perspective of someone interested in the international application of the concept of justice. In subsequent years, Di tsuleunfl certainly continued to run articles on anti-Semitism and other issues of particular interest to progressive, Yiddish-speakingJewish readers, but 1919 and 1920 represented banner years for the discussion Of international human rights. No doubt this was partly because the Great War and its aftermath significantly raised the profile of international law and human rights. In the specific case of women’s rights, the granting of partial voting rights to women in Great Britain in 1918, the granting of full voting rights to women in Germany in 1919, and the final, successfiIl push for the Nineteenth Amendment in the United States in 1920 undoubtedly drove much of the interest in Di tsuleunfl. But it is also likely that Vinchevsky, back in 1913, quite possibly without realizing it, had put his finger on the new direction this progressive journal would take for quite some time. Just as internationalism is impossible without nations (inVinchevsky’s view), an international perspective is impossible without the recognition and acceptance of a national (ethnic, racial, religious) identity. NO longer, for example, would Zionism be a subject on which it was forbidden to comment except to deliver scathing broadsides onJewish particularism; now it would be a topic that raised human rights issues—and not only those of interest toJews. GrowingJewish settlements in Palestine obliged Ditsuleunfi’s contributors—andJews everywhere—to address such issues asJewish—Arab relations and the position of women on the kibbutz.26 But at the same time, no longer was it necessary to restrict topics to those connected with the ‘national’ identity of Di tsuleunfl’s readers. The journal could offer commentary not only on the latest round of pogroms in Romania but also on the rise of fascism in Italy, the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the United States, and the ravages Of imperialism in Asia. We should not forget that, by 1920, the American Jewish community in general and the American Jewish immigrant community in particular had risen to a position of power that allowed them to

STEVEN CASSEDY

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focus attention on concerns other than those that directly or exclusively affected them. We should not forget, either, that the United States under Woodrow Wilson and the Western world after the Great War had entered an era in which international relations and human rights had ineluctably become forces impossible to ignore. But the years from 1913 to roughly 1920 represent a moment when many of the Jewish immigrant intellectuals writing for Di tsukunfi have moved from the parochialism of social-democratic orthodoxy through a moment of ‘nationalism’ (in Vinchevsky’s sense) to an internationalist perspective founded on nationalism. The timing of the progression explains the absence of commentary on certain issues: Dreyfus and the Belgian Congo were prominent issues before Di tsuleunft’s contributors had begun to look beyond their community. But broadly conceived, this is the progression that the modern conception of human rights itself underwent, and it dramatically illustrates the entry of this community, with all of its own political biases, into the mainstream of Western thinking on this issue. Notes to Chapter

1

example, Louis Henkin, in The Age of Rights (New York, 1990), describes the modern conception of human righm as the one embodied in the Universal Declaration qf Human Rights. He sees it as almost entirely a product of the second half of the twentieth century. Like Henkin, Robert F. Drinan, in Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope qf the Human Rights Revolution (San Francisco, 1987), Views the modern notion of human rights as the one embodied in the Universal Declaration, but he believes the League of Nations—and specifically the lntemational labor Organization as an agency of the League of Nations— anticipated the conception of human righm that found fiill expression in the Universal Declaration. Others trace the origins of human rights farther back, citing the Enlightenment concepts of natural law and natural rights as predecessors. See, for example, Kenneth Minogue, ’The History of the Idea of Human Rights’, in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (eds), The Human Rights Reader (New York, 1979; revised edition New York, 1990), 3—17. 2. Though anti-slavery organizations had been in existence in England since the late eighteenth century, the movement took on an international character with the appearance of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1839 by Joseph Sturge, and with the organization of the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Communitarian socialism became international with, for example, the efforts of Robert Owen and his followers, starting in the 18205, to found colonies in the United States. A recent book by Bonnie S. Anderson, joyous Greetings: The First International l'Vomen’s Movement, 1830-1860 (Oxford, 2000), shows that the women's rights movement, following the example of early socialism, had already become international in the first half of I. For

HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMERICAN YIDDISH JOURNALISM

22

the nineteenth century (though largely through the existence of a network of

contacts between activists in different countries rather than through the existence

of international organizations). . This is the subject of Adam Hochschild’s recent book, King Leopold's Ghost (New York, 1998). Hochschild claims that the movement that protested against Belgian abuses in the Congo was ‘the first great international human rights movement of the twentieth century' (p. 2). There is no doubt that this movement was a ‘great international human rights movement of the twentieth century’, and one might argue that it was the first such movement that began in the twentieth century. But if the women’s righu movement, to take only one example, can be characterized as an international human rights movement, then it must be acknowledged as preceding the movement protesting Belgian atrocities in the Congo. . ‘Der tsar un der Beylis protses’, Di tsuleunft (1913), 1099-106. In citing Yiddish titles, I have not changed the original spelling. . ‘Der velt-protses un der velt-gevisen', Di tsuleunft (1913), 1153—7. .Vladimir Grosman, ‘Farvos hot men unz faynt? Di pogromen un der antisemitizm, vos ferfleytst itst di velt', Di tsuleunft (1920), 232-6. The editors followed this article with an endnote in which they distanced themselves fiom the Views of the author, likening him to RussianJewish aposutes of the previous century who believed they could abolish anti-Jewish sentiment by shaving their beards and speaking good Russian (p. 236). . Isaac Hourwich, ‘Sosyalisten un pogromen’, Di tsuleunfl (1919), 350—2. . ‘Di befiayung fun di neger—un 50 yohr shpeter', Di tsuleunft(1913), 1-9. English translation in Steven Cassedy, Building the Future:jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and the Making ofTsukunft (New York, 1999), 228—32. . ‘Di neger—frage fun sotsyalistishen shtandpunkt’, Di tsuleunft (1914), 129—32. 10. ‘Di lage fun di nigers in di Fereynigte Shtaaten’, Di tsuleunfl (1917), 581-5. I1. ‘Buker T. Vashington. Der “erleyzer” fun di negers’, Di tsuleunfl (1915), 1088—91. 12. ‘Di un 788-92; Cassedy, (1915), Di di negren’, Frenk-tragedye, di iden tsuleunfl 241-9. Future, Building the I3. ‘Rase un klas’, Di tsuleunft (1913), 1055-60. 14. See John M. Lund, ‘Boundaries of Restriction: The Dillingham Commission', University of Vermont History Review, 6 (1994). (Web version: http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/histreview/vol6/Iund.html) I5. P. Libman, ‘Der nayer anti-imigrasyons gezets’, Di tsuleunft (1913), 216-18. 16. Isaac A. Hourwich, Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States (New York, 1912). I7. Dr. Y. M. Rubinov, ‘Fraye aynvanderung un di arbayter-frage’, Di tsuleunft

MO

cox)

(1913). 375-82. 18. Isaac Hourwich, ‘Idishe taynes gegen imigratsyon', Di tsuleunfi (1913), 570—7. 19. ‘Di bevegung far fioyen-shtimrekht in England un Amerika’, Di tsuleunft (1917),

459—65-

‘Di amerikaner froyen-bevegung un der zieg fun di flown in di forige vahlen’, Di tsuleunfl (I913), 677 ff.; Cassedy, Building the Future, 194-201. 21. Difray in der gezelshaft (New York, 1907). 22. ‘Dos intematsyonale rekht. Dos rekht fun frieden, dos kriegs-rekht, dos yamrekht, neyUalitet’, Di tsuleunft (1914), 909-13. 20.

STEVEN CASSEDY

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23. ‘A lieg fim nasyonen. Vos iz biz itst geven un vos es darf veren dos

internasyonale rekht’, Di (subunit (1919), 15-18. 24. ‘Di lieg 0v neyshons. Vos zi hot gezolt zayn un vos zi iz nit', Di tsuleunft (1919), 3 56—8. 25. For example, Hillel Rogofl', best known for his long association with the jewish Daily Forward, wrote a number of very cynical articles for Di tsuleunfl attacking

both the conduct of the Allies at the peace conference and the political manoeuvring over ratification in the United States Senate. See, for example, Abraham Revutsky, ‘Iz faran in Erets Yisroel an araber-fiage?', 26. Di tsuleunft (1923), 493-500; Rachel Feigenberg, ‘Di befiayte idishe fioy fun Erets Yisroel. Di fray un dos familyen-leben in der kibutse’, Di tsuleunfi (1926), 102-3; R. Kh., ‘Iden un araber in Erets Yisroel. Di fiage fun farshtendigung un fun a parlament’, Di tsuhunfl (1929), 371-5.

CHAPTER 2 o 0.0

Socialism with a Jewish Face: The Origins of the Yiddish—Speaking Communist Movement in the United States, 1907—1923 ’Ibny Michels The Yiddish-speaking communist movement in the United States emerged in the early 19205 from a welter of factional struggles in the Jewish labour movement and the Socialist Party. These disputes may seem, eight decades later, far removed from the day-to-day lives of most Jewish immigrants. The numbers of people involved were relatively few and they spoke in a hopelessly arcane political vocabulary about events in a distant country. Yet these same disputes laid the foundation for what would soon become a popular movement. During the 19205 and 19305, Yiddish-speaking immigrants created a constellation of communist and pro-communist organizations including party branches, trade unions, housing cooperatives, summer camps, schools, newspapers and journals, theatre groups and choirs. When one includes non-Yiddish speaking immigrant Jews and English-speaking children of immigrants (who often maintained ties to the Yiddish-speaking sphere), Jews made up the party’s largest and most strategically important ethnic group between the 19205 and 19505. No other communist party in Europe and North America during this period had a comparably high proportion of Jews.’ Yet Jewish communists, Yiddish- and non-Yiddish-speaking alike, have received little scholarly attention. Jews are certainly present in the numerous studies of American Communism published since the 19505, but they typically appear as individuals detached fiom a larger

TONY MICHELS

25

historical phenomenon requiring consideration.2 Specialists in American Jewish history have largely ignored the subject, while historians of American Communism interested in ethnic history have focused mainly on African-Americans. 3 Scattered articles and oral

English-langnag__w monoWW ggaphuhghistgry_pfjeszh_c_ornmgm~sts. The dearth of scholar4

ship on Jewish Communists reflects, to a significant extent, an earlier reluctance_ofcontemporaries to discuss publicly the disproportionate numbers of Jewish members. COmrIIUniSt Party officials usually to the high number of Jews (many of avoided drawing attéiitiOiiT— whom, especially the American-born, were not factory workers but professionals, students and small businessmen) because this implicitly questioned the party’s credentials as the vanguard of the entire proletariat. On the other hand, popular anti-Semites, such as Henry Ford and Father Charles Caughlin, talked a lot about Jews and Communism, but in terms of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the United States and Europe. This kind of anti-Semitism had the effect of discouraging reasonable people from discussing a subject that could lend credence to anti-Jewish stereotypes. From the perspective of most Jewish communal leaders, especially during the Cold War, Jewish communists were a liability to be minimized through a combination of apologetic public relations and expulsions from communal organizations. Thanks to the climate of fear created by McCarthyism, many former party members and ‘fellow travellers’ remained reluctant to discuss their involvement in the movement or denied it altogether, even long after the fact.5 The present chapter examines the origins of the Yiddish-speaking immigrant communist movement. It argues that thismovementshoid bwodwithinthecontext of deep-seatedconflicts within the ImrmgrantJeWIshggmmumty At Ehe heart of thesecOiifliCts Was a WienEal tension in modern Jewish politics (and perhaps in the politics of all minority groups) between particularistic and universalistic goals and political strategies. From this perspective, the J wish communist movement can be Viewed as an attempt to resolVe t s historic tension in a time of heightened rebelliousness and polarization caused by the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution. In this regard, there is an interesting parallel between Jewish immigrants and Afi'ican-Americans who joined the Communist Party in its early years. Many of the Jews were ex—Bundists and many African-Americans were

26

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

Caribbean-born participants in the pan-Africanist movement. In the case of at least one individual, Max Goldfarb (Petrovsky), there was an important point of convergence. Goldfarb/Petrovsky was a former member of the Bund Who lived in the United States before returning to the Soviet Union where, as a Comintern Oficial, he played an important role in the Comintern’s definition of Blacks in the South as a non-territorial nation, much like the Bund’s definition of East ropean Jews.7 movement as a significant \Th‘? Yiddish-speaking communist organized force began in early 1922 with the founding of the daily Frayhayt. Most of Frayhayt’s founders did not aim to re-enact the Revolution on American shores; in fact, they had opposed slBolsheVik {‘the founding of the American Communist Party (originally two separate parties) in 1919. They chose to ally with the party when it seemed to provide a congenial politicalvehicle to advance long-standing ; goals, including the promotion of Yiddish culture. By 1923, however, Frayhayt was placed under strict party control and lost its political and . cultural autonomy. In subsequent years, the Communist Party would ; exert greater or lesser control over the newspaper, depending on the party line in a given period, so that fiom 1923 onward, the Yiddish3 speaking communist movement would continually have to negotiate between its cultural goals and the political dictates of the party." t____'*

Emigré Bundists, ‘Yiddish Culture’ and the Agitation Bureau The Yiddish-speaking communist movement had its origins in a important organization called the relatively small, but nonet The JSF was the Socialist Party’s Jewish Socialist Federatio 1912 to 1921, and though it never Yiddish-language section totalled more than 8,000 members, it was a considerable force Within the Jewish labour movement. In addition to enjoying the irnprimatur of the Socialist Party (and the Socialist International, by extension), the JSF was closely connected through overlapping members to the trade unions and theJewish fiaternal order Workmen’s Circle (Arbeter Ring). Its national leadership included a host of prominent writers, lecturers and educators who contributed to the JSF’S Visibility and prestige. Still, while the JSF was situated squarely in the mainstream of the labour movement, it often clashed with the movement’s ‘old guard’ (the pioneer generation who founded the United Hebrew Trades, the Workmen’s Circle and the New York Yiddish daily Forverts in the 18805

TONY MICHELS

27

and 18905) over two controversial goals: the political centralization the labour movement under the JSF’s auspices and the creation of gglmrallylleyish’ brand of socialism. The JSF pursued these two goal with uneven success during a series of controversies ranging ro Yiddish schools to relief for RussianJewry during the First World War. The campaign to establish the JSF took place between 1907 and 1912. The starting point was a seemingly benign question of political organization: how to unify the Socialist Party’s Yiddish-language branches into a single, nationwide body? Finnish immigrants had already created such a central organization in 1904 and were followed by other immigrant socialists. Jewish socialists made their first step in 1907 by forming the Jewish Socialist Agitation Bureau.9 A loose consortium of Socialist Party branches, the Agitation Bureau occasionally published Yiddish pamphlets and sponsored lecture tours, but accomplished little more. BeginningIn 1908, its leadersInitI tiated a campaign to build up the Agitation Bureau by formulating a ‘Jewish national programme’ focusing on the cultural and political interests of l Jewish workers. This campaign provoked fierce opposition fiom the labour movement’s veterans who, since the 18805, had advocated a kind of socialist version of the melting-pot under the banner of ‘enlightenment. The Agitation Bureau, for this reason, became the focal point of a larger debate about the Jewish labour movement j cultural politics. The Agitation Bureau’s most articulate advocates (most of whom would later play a pivotal role in the formation of the Jewish communist movement) were part of a cohort of young revolutionaries who immigrated to the United States between the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution and the First World War. They included Tsivyon eV Salutski, A. S. Zaks, (Ben-Tsien Hofman), Shakhne Borekh Charney Vladek and Moshe lg I This group shared common political background in the Bu intellectuals and activists at the local and regional levels. Though not uniform in outlook, the post-1905ers shared a similar political orientation, particular] regarding the all-important ‘national question’. These individuals had supported the Bund’s goal of ‘national cultural autonomy’ for Russian Jews and its activities on behalf Of Yiddish culture. After emigrating to the United States, they continued, through personal ties and ideological afinity, to identify with the Bund, though the party as such did not exist in the United States.’0 For this reason, they continued t be known as ‘Bundists’ even years after they settled in the United States.

Epshteyztgfike

afi/

28

SOCIALISM WITH A JEWISH FACE

In New York, the Bundists encountered a movement organized very difi'erently from the one they had known in Russia. In the Bund, ‘politics dominated’, asJonathan Frankel has pointed out, which is to say that the central party apparatus controlled the press, trade unions, and cultural organizations.” By contrast, the American Jewish labour movement had assumed a decentralized structure: the Agitation Bureau, Forverts, the United Hebrew Trades and the Workmen’s Circle existed independently of one another. The closest thing to a central authority was the Forward Association, the board of governors that published Forverts, while the movement’s political arm, the Agitation Bureau, was the weakest segment.’2 From the Bundists’ perspective, the labour movement’s institutional hierarchy was upside down; it needed a strong party to which the other segments would be accountable. Echoing the Bund’s position on ‘the national question’ posite that of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, the newcomers argued that Jewish workers were members of the Jewish i ‘nation’ and, therefore, possessed special cultural and political interests at required representation by the Agitation Bureau. In order to become the powerful political force it deserved to be, the Agitation Bureau must address Jewish ‘national’ interests, as well as class interests.’3 Just prior to the Agitation Bureau’s 1909 convention, Morris Vinchevsky, one of the few veterans who sympathized with the Bundists on this issue, argued that the Agitation Bureau should 9adapt itself to ‘Jewish traditions, psychology and national particularities’." Failing that, Vinchevsky warned, socialists risked ceding round to political opponents, be they ‘uptown’ philanthropists, Tammany Hall Democrats, Zionists or Orthodox Jews.” The Agitation Bureau could only develop a popular constituency, the . Bundists and their allies agreed, through a relevant ‘Jewish national

rogramme’. The call for a ‘Jewish national prograrrune’ had a grand ring, but the idea actually stood for something comparatively modest in the American context. In the Russian empire, the Bund’s programme of ‘national cultural autonomy’ called for the legal recognition ofJews as a nation with the right to self-governance in educational and cultural affairs with support from the government. However, Bundists recognized that in the United States, where Jews had the legal status of citizens rather than some kind of corporate entity, ‘national cultural autonomy’ was not a realistic demand. For that matter, they refi'ained from making any specifically ‘Jewish’ claims (such as bilingual

TONY MICHELs

29

education in public schools) on local, state or national government. Bundists insisted on the importance Of developing Yiddish culture, but confined this ‘national demand’ to the immigrant Jewish community; they Viewed it as an internal affair. In Epshteyn’s words, ‘ be sure, we should not and cannot pose any political demands for the Jewish proletariat, as the Bund does in Russia, because we live in entirely different conditions, in fiee conditions of a democratic republic. [...] The national question in the United States [...] is n more than a cultural problem; but as a cultural problem the Jewis Question has lost none of its significance.”" ‘For the time being’, Tsivyon wrote in 1911, ‘there can be no talk about a Jewish national question as a national political problem in America, but it can exist in part as a problem Of culture’.’7 Bundists thus made Yiddish culture the rallying point of their efl'orts to transform the Agitation Bureau into the centre of political power in the Jewish labour movement. In making this case, they presented a reduced version of the Bund’s programme by casting ofi' the demand for autonomy (or any other demand from the State) w insisting on the importance of Yiddish culture for politica ‘1 mobilization. ‘Yiddish cultural work [...]’, Olgin argued, ‘clarifies th ,. ,2 worker’s class-consciousness and shows the Jewish bourgeoisie in i (l ‘55true image’."’ According to Epshteyn, ‘Yiddish culture’ could be used ,l to ‘raise the class consciousness of the Jewish worker [...] to make him into a dedicated freedom-fighter, to awaken in him the heroism of l Judah Maccabee and Bar Kokhba and the spirit of Ferdinand Lasalle and Karl Marx’.’9 The Bundists’ notion of yidishe leultur referred to a secular, high culture of Yiddish-language arts, letters and education. ‘Yiddish culture’ in this sense was a recent invention—less than ten years old in the United States—and quite controversial. The first person to speak of ‘Yiddish culture’ was probably Chaim Zhitlovsky in an 1898 es entitled ‘Zionism or Socialism?’2° In the article, Zhitl vs envisioned a flowering of Yiddish literature, art and science, and th creation of a Yiddish educational system from primary schools to universities. As an alternative to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Zhitlovsky proposed communal autonomy for Russian Jewry with Yiddish acting as the cultural glue bindingJews together.“ Zhitlovs exercised considerable influence on the Bund (which first pub 5 ed ‘Zionism or Socialism’”) and the smaller socialist-Zionist, autonomist and territorialist parties that emerged in the early 19005 (though they

‘E l

f

ll

’-

\J

i i /X

3o

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

necessarily agree with all his ideas or interpret them in the same way). In 1904, Zhitlovsky introduced ‘Yiddishism’ to American Jewish audiences while he toured the United States as a representative of the agrarian-populist Socialist Revolutionary Party.23 But not until after 1905, when Bundists and members of other Jewish parties emigrated to the United States in large numbers, did the idea of {Yiddish culture’ gain political weight in the Jewish labour movement. the labour movement’s veterans objected to the idea that ll heMost of vernacular could foster ‘Yiddish culture’. Since the 1880s, l Jewish l ocialists had used Yiddish to organize and educate workers, but they . 'd not (with very rare exceptions) believe that they should k“, ork toward a Yiddish cultural renaissance, or that such a thing was prossible. On the contrary, they endeavoured to use Yiddish to secular culture, education and political propaganda for the Iftransmit " purpose of dissolving Jewish cultural particularities and group identification. This process of education, radicalization and cultural uplift—‘enlightenment’ (uflelerung)—was supposed to encourage ’ cross-ethnic, working-class solidarity by erasing ‘all boundaries Jew and non-Jew in the labour world’, as Abraham Cahan put it in 1890. Most socialists of Cahan’s generation viewed Yiddish utilitarian terms; they did not ascribe to it cultural value in its own lin right. Typically, they referred to Yiddish in a condescending and | sometimes even disparaging fashion as the zhargon (jargon), a dialect incapable of sustaining a modern, intellectual culture. This was true even of important Yiddish creative writers, such as the playwright Yankev Gordin, who did not believe that Yiddish could produce works of original or lasting value. ‘The zhargon’, Gordin stated in 1905, ‘has not and cannot create a special Jewish form of literature. its form from takes world [... T]he zhargon literature?“ Gordin and most of his contemporaries did not envision yidishleayt beyond a retrograde culture of religious texts and ritual observance. ‘What do the Jews share apart from a synagogue, a ritual bath, a cantor, a kosher butcher and a wedding officiator?’ Yankev Milkh wrote in a 1904 polemic against the Bund. ‘Which traditions, what special culture exists except the Talmudic “culture”?”5 Some socialists, to be sure, held dissenting Views. As early as 1896, Cahan recognized with some astonishment that zhargonishe literature was capable of genuine artistic achievement.” Yiddish writers, such as Morris Vinchevsky, Abraham Liessin and Leon Kobrin, went even further by asserting sentiments of Jewish pride and solidarity, if not a fully articulated nationalism, did

l

not

lbetween

TONY MICHELs

3I

in their poetry and fiction. Nonetheless, these were exceptional individuals in the 18905 and early 19005. gen as Cahan entertained feelings for the mame-loshn, he did not believe that Yiddish had

warm

Wares.”

’r'

Bundists rarely, if ever, elaborated their conception of Yiddish culture; their more pressing task was defence of the idea against their'€'— critics. Still, by invoking ‘Yiddish culture’ on behalf of the Agitation Bureau, Bundists asserted at least two new, radical ideas. By choosing to call the Jewish vemacular;Y_iddish’, rather than zhargon, they stressed that Yiddish was a proper languggcapable of intellectual expression and Heser‘ving OT respect. Second, the Bundism believed that socialists weremobliged to foster an ongoing, creative seculg .-

cultur‘é'?’Yiddish-euIE—Wrégfrcemmmfmm schools) may have been in a formative stage, but Bundists Viewed

them as the beginning of a renaissance that they should lead as the advance guard of the Jewish working__c_la__ss. These opinions were heretical and denounced as/ " 'onalist opium; As early as came out against Tsayt-gayst, a political the Agitation Bureau on the grounds that it would serve as a vehicle for Jewish nationalism and separatism, though, in fact, it proposed to do nothing of the sort. ‘Separatism in all its forms’, Mikhl Zametkin warned, ‘is a sickness that can and must be healed. The infected have only to be held in quarantine; the carriers have only to be left outside the camp.” The Agitation Bureau and the Jewish Socialist Federation subsequently served as a lightening rod for such accusations and counter-accusations for many years. Bundists argued their case vigorously, but they made little headway. Forverts maintained the status quo in the Agitation Bureau through a combination of political pressure and co—optation.3° This brought a number of Bundists (Vladek was an exception) into direct conflict with Forverts and its editor, Abraham Cahan. Tsivyon and Zaks were among the earliest and harshest critics of Forverts. Former European correspondents for the newspaper, both men were on good terms with Forverts when they arrived in New York in 1908, and while Zaks went to work as editor of Chicago’s weekly Di yidishe arbeter velt, Tsivyon continued as a regular contributor. By 1909, however, relations had deteriorated. On the pages of the monthly Di tsuleunfi (then edited by Vinchevsky) and Di yidishe arbeter velt, Zaks, Tsivyon and others accused Forverts of withholding financial support and publicity from the Agitation Bureau. Following a 1909 strike at

" weeldyngi’verts,

190% /

6”-

32

SOCIALISM WITH A JEWISH FACE

Forverts (which resulted in Tsivyon’s dismissal), Tsivyon and Zaks began attacking not only the Forverts’s treatment of the Agitation Bureau, but the character of the newspaper itself.” Tsivyon and _Z__aks_ accused_Cahan _of _dil‘uting Forverts’s socialist content " for the sake of increasing itspOpWA generally accurate descnptionOfForverts: Cahan indeed refused to place Forverts at the service of any one political organization nor did he shy away fiom sensationalist journalism, human interest features (such as the famous Bintl briv (bundle of letters) advice column) and melodramatic potboilers (shund) to reach the widest possible audience. AS Cahan well understood, it was precisely this eclectic mix of socialism and yellow journalism that guaranteed the newspaper’s high circulation. But Zaks and Tsivyon believed that Cahan had compromised too much, shirking the newspaper’s responsibility to elevate the masses through political education and cultural refinement. ‘Better a good, pure socialist newspaper with 20,000 readers’, Tsivyon admonished, ‘then a bad, impure socialist newspaper with 100,000 readers. [...] The higher [Forverts’s] circulation, the lower it stooped to the rabble [and] the more its socialism became watered down.’32 A socialist newspaper, wrote Zaks, ought to appeal to the ‘developed’ Jewish worker who wants ‘to understand the extraordinarily complex construction of today’s class-society’.33 Zaks and Tsivyon considered Cahan’s editorial authority to be a symptom Of a deep, structural flaw in the Jewish labour movement. The root problem, they claimed, was the absence of a strong party authority that could supervise the press. In its place, existed a cooperative board Of governors, called the Forward Association. ‘One Of the greatest flaws in [...] the movement’, Zaks wrote, ‘is that we do not have a party press [...] controlled by party members to whom the press must give an accounting and be responsible.”4 Cahan was supposed to be accountable to the Forward Association but, in fact, he exercized the overriding influence in the paper. As long as Forverts attained ever higher circulation figures and profits, the Forward Association had re-elected him editor every year without fail since 1903. ‘An “association press”,’ Zaks argued, ‘regardless of how honestly and seriously the members of the association wish to serve our ideals, always stands in danger of being a private venture. [...] As soon as the party’s interests come into conflict with private interests [..] the general interests are sacrificed for the interests of a few individuals?” The problem, then, was that the editorial freedom granted to Cahan

TONY MICHELS

33

by the Forward Association enabled him to run the newspaper like a commercial venture rather than attend to the needs of the socialist movement. Freed fiom the responsibilities incumbent on a party newspaper, Cahan could ignore the Agitation Bureau with impunity. Zaks’s and Tsivyon’s preference for a-party organ did not reflect a desire to enforce a monolithic party line or inability to appreciate the value of popular journalism. Tsivyon himself was recognized as one of the liveliest and widest readjournalists1n the Yiddish press.3" Rather, their stand reflected a disc0mfort with the‘corrupting’ influence of the commercial newspaper market, something they had had little experience with in Russia, where censorship, before 1905, had forced the Bund to publish underground newspapers read mainly by participants in the labour movement or its sympathizers.” By contrast, in New York, socialist newspapers like Forverts contended with numerous dailies (eleven in 1917) Of all ideological persuasions for a pool of readers numbering less than 2 million nationwide. In this competitive climate, the li‘vely, heated, somewhat hoarse, shout of the marketplace’ held sway to the detriment of thoughtful discourse, as Yankev Salutski lamented in 1912.38 The Bundists wanted a strong political party to act as a shield protecting journalistic standards and political priorities from market logic. Thus in their critique of the labour movement’s institutional’ arrangement, Bundists fiIsed politics and culture into a single set 0 issues. They were convinced that in order to move the Agitatio Bureau into the movement’s centre of power, presently occupied b Forverts, they would have to promote a ‘Jewish national programme’ with ‘Yiddish culture’ as the cornerstone. In this way, the Agitation Bureau became the focal point of the Bundist-led campaign to refashion the structure and cultural aims of the Jewish labour movement. This campaign created deep and persistent cleavages in ~-~' labour movement.

the.I

The Jewish Socialist Federation and the Turn

to

Communism

The Bundists made no gains with the Agitation Bureau until May 1912. In that month, the Socialist Party amended its constitution to grant autonomous status to foreign-language ‘federations’; they were permitted, in efl'ect, to function as parties within a party. Members of the Agitation Bureau responded immediately. In late May, the Agitation Bureau held a special convention in Patterson, New Jersey,

34

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

where all forty delegates voted to create the JSF.39 With backing from the Socialist Party, the JSF enjoyed automatic legitimacy, and the benefits were soon apparent."0 In May 1912, the Agitation Bureau counted only 800 members in twenty-four branches and a budget of $1,200. Six months later, the JSF grew to about 1,800 members in sixty branches." By 1915, the JSF’S average monthly membership climbed to 2,787, making it the third largest foreign-language federation after the Finnish and German organizations."z Two years later, the JSF had a budget of $33,000 and about 5,000 members in good standing (with perhaps as many as 3,000 more behind in their dues) in 102 active branches across the country (including far-flung cities such asJacksonVille, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama).43 The majority of the JSF’s members and national leaders were former members of the Bund, including Salutski (the JSF’S national secretary), Tsivyon, Epshteyn, Zaks, Moshe Terman, Vladek, Olgin, Max Goldfarb/Petrovsky and A. Litvak.44 The JSF was more active and broadly focused than its predecessor. In New York City, it grew from two to twelve branches between 1912 and 1918.45 The Downtown and Harlem branches had 220 and 150 members respectively in 1914 (almost a fivefold increase from 1912)."" Among its regular activities, the Harlem branch sponsored lectures and debates, organized rallies for numerous causes from women’s suffrage to the Mendel Beilis trial in Russia, maintained soup kitchens for striking workers and assisted immigrants in becoming naturalized citizens.‘7 The JSF was strong outside New York. In Philadelphia, for example, the JSF reportedly had 300 members and was the organizational centre of the city’s Jewish labour movement.4" The JSF was also highly visible and active at the national level. It published its own pohtical—literary weekly Di naye velt (previously a fortnightly publication named Der yidisher sotsialist), the annual Dos yidishe yorbuleh, numerous booklets and pamphlets, and sponsored lecture tours.49 Because the JSF’S leaders and members were also prominent journalists, educators and activists in other branches of the labour movement, it enjoyed influence beyond what its membership figures would indicate. With the founding of the JSF, relations with Forverts were ‘normalized’ to a limited extent. The JSF was housed in the Forward Building on East Broadway and a number of the JSF’S leaders, such as Olgin, Epshteyn, Vladek, Terman, Lilliput, Peysakh Novick (head of the Downton branch) and even Tsivyon, were contributors or staff

TONY MICHELS

35

members of Forverts between 1912 and 1921. Yet the creation of the JSF did not resolve difl'erences of opinion between the Bundists and Forverts. On the contrary, these differences escalated in following years. At its 1913 convention, for example, the JSF officially criticized Forverts for failing to ‘educate its readers in a socialist spirit’ and sent a delegation to present the Forward Association with a list of complaints. In response, the United Hebrew Trades excluded the JSF fiom its twenty-fifth anniversary celebration that same year. 5° Bundists also came into conflict with Forverts over the question of Yiddish schools in the Workmen’s Circle, a debate that began in 1910 and continued even after the Workmen’s Circle allotted a budget for Yiddish schools in 1918 (the JSF permitted its branches to establish schools in 1915).51 Perhaps the most divisive issue was relief for Russian Jewry during the First World War. In 1917, the JSF made a bid to ‘establish its claim to the leadership of the Jewish labour movement’ through the National Workmen’s Committee on Jewish Rights in Belligerent Lands. The NWC was intended to be an ad hoc umbrella organization of the labour movement’s main organizations, but the JSF attempted to use it to create ‘permanent, organic union of all those Jewish labour organizations which stand for class struggle in all its forms’. Though the JSF’S initiative was endorsed by the NWC’s February convention, the executive committees of the Workmen’s Circle and the United Hebrew Trades rejected it and were able to convince the Forward Association to do the same.‘2 This was a major defeat for the JSF and produced tremendous bitterness on both sides. As Frankel notes, the JSF’s failed political gamble ‘hastened the entry of many of its members [..] into the Communist

movement’.53

The Jewish communist movement began in two stages. The first occurred in May 1919 when a newly formed, insurgent Left Wing broke from the JSF. 5‘ The Left Wing’s leaders—such as Alexander Bittelrnan, Noach London and M. Lunin—did not include any figures of national stature; they were mostly young, local activists inspired by the larger Left Wing that had formed in the Socialist Party in 1918. Based mainly in the foreign language federations (which then made up 53 per cent of the party’s 100,000-plus membership”) the Left Wing argued that the Bolshevik seizure of power signalled a revolutionary wave on an international scale. Insurrections in Germany and Hungary, in addition to general strikes in the United States, provided evidence for the Left Wing’s position that the

36

’

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

Socialist Party needed to prepare for an immanent seizure Of power. Faced with an internal opposition committed to destroying the party as it existed, the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee voted to expel the Left Wing, which resulted in the loss of some 70,000 members and left the party decimated. A small portion of the expelled members established the Communist Party (initially two rival parties each claiming the revolutionary mantle of the Bolsheviks). The JSF’S Left Wingjoined the Communist Party in October 1919 and changed its name to the Jewish Communist Federation. Its membership was small (perhaps 1,000 members, one-fifth or one-sixth that of the JSF five months earlier) and isolated from the larger Jewish labour organizations.5" Between October 1919 and June 1920, the Jewish Communist Federation was subject to police raids and suffered from a ‘great shortage1n intellectual forces’ and ‘material means, according to its oflicial report.57 Di naye velt and the JSF’S National Executive Committee resolutely opposed the Left Wing, which had all but paralysed activity in local branches. While the JSF’S leadership welcomed the idea Of pushing the Socialist Party in a more radical direction, it rejected the Left Wing’s basic assumptions and methods. ‘We are interested’, Di naye velt editorialized, ‘that the party should be left wing, go in a left-wing direction, should think and conduct itself in a revolutionary manner, in the socialist and Marxist sense of the word. But the organization of a “Left Wing” into a clique, which uses the methods of a clique, will be of no use to the stated goal.’ The Left Wing, critics charged, was disruptive and completely out of touch with reality in its anticipation of proletarian insurrection. ‘The young men of this group’, Olgin wrote, ‘live in a little world created in their own imagination where everything is as they like it to be. The workers are united, classconscious, organized and armed. Only one thing remains to be done: the final conflict.”8 Ironically, while the socialist movement in the United States and 1 abroad split over the Bolshevik revolution, the JSF and Forverts were in basic agreement over this otherwise divisive issue. Both became solid supporters of Soviet Russia by 1918 while remaining uncompromising opponents of the Socialist Party’s Left Wing and the Communist Party that followed it. By 1919, Cahan had all but prohibited anti-Bolshevik articles in Forverts. Even Olgin and Novick, originally strong critics of the Bolsheviks, reversed themselves by 1921, when Olgin returned from an assignment in Soviet Russia and-

Egan

K1

TONY MICHELS

37

Novick from an extended stay in Russia and Poland. In other words, while the Socialist Party collapsed, consensus prevailed in the Jewish labour movement about the Soviet Union: the JSF and Forverts were pro—Soviet, but anti-communist at home. Only after 1920 did this change. Between 1920 and 1921, the JSF called on the Socialist Party to join the Communist International. The Socialist Party applied membership but had its application rejected in 1920. The JSF, nonetheless, urged the party to set aside disagreements and accept Moscow’s terms for membership. The Socialist Party refirsed to do this and, in the summer of 1921, the JSF’s National Executive Committee announced a special convention to discuss leaving the party.59 The JSF grew increasingly impatient with trying to revive the Socialist Party and push it in a more radical direction. The JSF’s prospective divorce from the Socialist Party was met with uniform opposition fiom the Jewish labour movement’s ‘oflicial socialists’ in the Forward Association, the United Hebrew Trades and the Workmen’s Circle. This was not only an expression of loyalty to the Socialist Party but also an act of self-preservation. The Jewish labour movement’s established leadership understood that rebellion against the party would reverberate, sooner or later, elsewhere in the movement. It was feared that, once having left the Socialist Party, the JSF would play a similarly divisive role in the Workmen’s Circle and the United Hebrew Trades. In this sense, the JSF threatened to do more damage to the Jewish labour movement than to the Socialist Party. The party was, by 1921, a small organization of less than 20,000. The Jewish labour movement, by contrast, included trade unions and mutual-aid societies with membership that ran into the hundreds of thousands. The JSF’S impending departure had serious ramifications for the Jewish labour movement. The Forward Association called a special meeting to deal with the problem in August 1921: The head of the United Hebrew Trades, Max Pine, promised to ‘cut off the hands and the feet’ of the JSF. Meyer Gilis, a founding member of the Forward Association and leader in the Workmen’s Circle, promised to ‘throw out fiom the Forward Association every member who agrees with the Jewish Socialist Federation’. Vladek, a leader in the JSF ’opposed to its increasingly militant stand, recommended ‘condemning all those who had signed the Federation’s declaration about leaving the Party’ even if that meant a loss of writers."0 The events between September and December were crucial to the

foré‘

38

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

emergence of the Jewish communist movement. The JSF’s convention opened on 3 September in the Forward Building."I By this time, the JSF had fewer than 1,000 members, reduced by months of infighting. The following day, a majority of the delegates voted to break from the Socialist Party by a vote of 44 to 31. According to Nokhum Khanin, a minority delegate fiom the JSF’s Harlem branch, there were more delegates who favoured the majority but were afiaid of antagonizing Forverts. The convention debates and final split were painful for both sides. The JSF’S members had strong personal ties which, in many cases, originated in the Bund two decades earlier. Khanin recalls that ‘the discussion was drawn out [...] so that the difficult moment of separation would come later’. His final speech elicited tears fiom both sides: ‘I declare, on behalf of the [minority] that we leave the convention, and tomorrow we will meet as bitter political opponents. We do this with regret, with sorrow, but we cannot help it, we are for our party, we are doing our duty.’ The final vote was met ‘with silence, without applauds’. The minority delegates, led by Khanin, left the convention and established a new organization, the Jewish Socialist Farband, supported by Forverts, Workmen’s Circle and

. 1'

/'

‘

\ W -. "

United Hebrew Trades."2 JSF voted to split fiom the Socialist Party, but without intending to ally with the Communist Party, a prospect that was ruled out even before the convention. During the summer, Salutski had discussed with the CP the possibility of a merger but could not find common ground. The main point of disagreement was the status of the underground CP, which the JSF’s leaders viewed as unnecessary and sectarian. In a letter dated 1 August, the CP’s general secretary informed Salutski that the Jewish Socialist Federation would have to accept the primacy of the underground CP as a precondition to a merger. Salutski and the JSF’s leaders rejected these terms. ‘Can the Federation go with the Communist Party?’ Di naye velt editorialized on 2 September. The ‘answer, at least in the meanwhile, is negative’. The JSF’S manifesto called for the creation of ‘a broad proletarian mass party’, but because such a party did not exist, members advised to ‘wait and see what happens’ and to ‘first bring our own house in order’."3 Salutski doubted Whether the JSF could long survive without a larger political afiliation, but also recognized that the Federation had little choice Coming out of its September convention. After its split fiom the Socialist Party, the JSF faced condemnation fiom its right and left flanks. The CP’s Der emes (edited by Shakhne

TONY MICHELS

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Epshteyn who, after spending four years in Soviet Russia, returned a communist in 19216‘) ridiculed the JSF for trying to steer a middle course between the Socialist and Communist Parties. ‘The Federation’, Epshteyn wrote, ‘has put itself on a false path, on the path of wavering, neither here nor there, and it will be ground to dust between Right and Left."’5 At the same time, Forverts and the monthly Di tsuleunft (published by the Forward Association since 1912) pilloried the JSF for breaking ranks. Liessin, Di tsuleunft’s editor and former ally of the JSF, explained that he was pro-Soviet with his ‘entire heart’, but he believed that the JSF’s militancy was irresponsible and unreasonable at a time when post-First-World-War labour unrest was on the wane and anti-immigrant sentiment at a peak.“ Why, Liessin asked, should Jewish workers bear responsibility for upholding the banner of revolution during a period of reaction? The prospect of ‘a communist East Side’, Liessin noted, ‘when America is so far from even socialism, when America is so far fiom even liberalism, is as bad an idea as a Jewish commissar in the Ukraine’. ‘We will not’, Liessin vowed in Forverts, ‘permit the Jewish labour movement to become the plaything of the Federation’s own ambitions’."7 Cahan made good on Liessin’s promise when he returned fiom Europe the week following the JSF’s convention. He evicted the JSF from the Forward Building, /‘ where it had been headquartered for almost a decade, and fired every stafi' writer who had agreed with the JSF’S decision to break with the \ Socialist Party. This resulted in the dismissal of Forverts’s core writers: Olgin, Tsivyon, Novick, Lilliput and Hillel Rogoff. Isolated from the Jewish labour movement’s major institutions and bereft of a larger political afiliation, the JSF’s members attempted to rebuild the organization. They focused their efforts on transforming Di naye velt into a daily newspaper. TWO months into the campaign, Di naye velt’s circulation grew fiom 5,000 to 20,000, yet a daily version of Di naye velt never appeared.” The campaign failed to reach its circulation goal of 30,000—4o,ooo and raised only $15,000 of its projected goal of $100,000.70 With the campaign for Di naye velt stalled, the JSF might have collapsed or even returned to the Socialist Party. However, in November, a new opportunity was presented by the CP. Under pressure from the Comintern, the CP decided (over significant internal resistance) to establish an above-ground organization in order ‘to spread communism among the masses’.7’ This reversal of pol/igy came after the Comintern concluded several months earlier that

/

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SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

Fs‘world revolution’ was

no longer an immediate prospect.72 The CP’s new policy provided an opening to the JSF and other groups that had

grown disillusioned with the Socialist Party but did not identify themselves as communist. The creation of a new ‘broad proletarian mass party’ wished for at the JSF’s September convention now seemed

possible.

In late November, the JSF voted by a slim majority to enter into negotiations with the CP. From the outset, these negotiations (conducted by Salutski and 01 in, then head of the JSF) were plagued of this with misgivings and new party be? How should power be distributed within it? What should its relationship be with the existing, underground CP? In late December, Salutski called an emergency meeting in Olgin’s apartment to organize a walkout Of the non-communist delegates just days before a merger was scheduled to take place. ‘I know that it is humanly inexplicable’, Salutski confessed to his wife, ‘after my performances during the last three months, the split, the daily, the unity, etc. [...] Am sorry for all I have done lately. All I wish now is the strength to break up decisively. [..] Olgin is tempting, attempting to persuade, arguing, etc. He is right, Iknow, but Iam right, too, and it is all just wrong.’73 Salutski failed to convince the other delegates, and he went ahead with the merger. At the end of a three-day convention, between 23 and 26 December 1921, the Workers’ Party

diflicuthegsWHitWrJg—ramme

was

formed.74

‘We Sought a Home for Our Souls, but Instead Found a Hell’: The Rise and Fall of Frayhayt

The Workers’ Party’s programme difi'ered significantly from that of the CP by omitting references to workers’ soviets, violent revolution and the immediate seizure of power. Instead, it anticipated the fiiture creation of a ‘workers’ republic’ and, in order to achieve this goal, promised to engage in electoral campaigns, political education and the union movement.” This offered hope to the JSF—the Workers’ Party’s most important acquisition—that it would be a genuinely new party, not a CP by another name. Olgin heralded the Workers’ Party (which counted about 12,000 members) as a grand opportunity for the JSF to achieve its long-standing goal of displacing Forverts as leader of the Jewish labour movement. ‘[F]or twenty-five consecutive years’, Olgin wrote, Forverts was guilty of ‘feeding [the Yiddish reader] cheap,

is '

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TONY MICHELS

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watered-down, formless, hurrah-socialism mixed with a large dose of ridiculous sensationalism’. But with backing from a genuine ‘proletarian party’ the JSF would be able to advance a ‘clear, principled position’ on the ‘Jewish Question’ and introduce a ‘pure, sustainable, serious spirit in the Jewish labour movement’.7" Salutski, however, did not feel sanguine about the Workers’ Party. A skilled political tactician, Salutski recognized that the fate of the JSF—now renamed simply the Jewish Federation—rested on a precarious balance ofpower.77 First, the Jewish Federation’s eighteenmember National Executive Committee was split equally between communists and non-communists. Second, while power was shared equally within the Jewish Federation, communists were allotted a one-seat majority on the Workers’ Party’s Central Executive Committee. The communists enjoyed an additional advantage in that they could rely on direct ties to the Soviet Union and the Comintern as a crucial source of power, finances and authority. In short, the former members of the JSF—the ‘centrists’ in party terminology— did not possess a fiee hand in organizational matters. The powerSharing arrangement in the new Jewish Federation hinged on the larger balance of power in the Workers’ Party that favoured the communists. A final problem that would prove to be a constant source of friction was the status of the underground CP. With the founding of the Workers’ Party, the non-communists in the Jewish Federation expected the underground GP to dissolve, but the communists disagreed. They viewed the Workers’ Party as an extension of the underground party, a ‘transmission apparatus between the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat and its less conscious and as yet nonrevolutionary masses’.7" Thus, even at the creation of the Workers’ Party and the new Jewish Federation in December 1921, the two sides

did not resolve the basic organizational question: the relationship of the GP to the Workers’ Party. Whether this confusion resulted from subterfuge, misunderstanding, or willful ignorance on the part of Salutski, Olgin and the JSF’s leaders is impossible to determine.” Despite internal problems, the new alliance brought at least one important advantage to the newly constituted Jewish Federation: it made possible its previously elusive goal of a daily Yiddish newspaper. The title of the proposed newspaper was of symbolic importance. The communist faction wanted to retain the title of its weekly Der emes, in honour of the Moscow daily of the same name. But the former JSF

42

SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

leaders insisted on Frayhayt, the name of the German Independent Socialist Party’s newspaper which sought a ‘third course’ between mainstream social democracy and communism.°They prevailed on this issue because communist leaders such as Bittelrnan recognized that the new daily depended on the national reputations and journalistic skills of writers such as Olgin, Salutski, Tsivyon, Lilliput, Zaks and Vinchevsky."I The communists, by contrast, could not boast a comparable array of literary talent. This symbolic victory notwithstanding, neither faction claimed control of the newspaper; rather, each faction was represented by two chief editors: Epshteyn and Olgin, respectively. Though they had taken different political paths after 1917, their common roots in the Bund and the JSF, their pro-Soviet orientation and their shared passion for Yiddish literature made them com tible colleagues. 2,000 On 2 April Jewish immigrants gatheredIn New York City’s Lexington Opera House to celebrate the debut issue of Frayhayt. 2 Its founders heralded the daily as the beginning of a new era in the history of Yiddish culture and the Jewish labour movement. Here was a newspaper, they announced, committed both to social revolution and the creation of a sustainable, high culture in the Jewish immigrant vernacular. These goals were not new: the Jewish Federation’s former Bundists had argued for a programme of radical socialism and Yiddish culture for close to fifteen years in the United States. But before 1922, the prohibitive cost of publishing a daily newspaper and an unwillingness to rebel against Forverts (which, for all its flaws, was accepted as the spokesman for the Jewish working class prior to 1921) made this goal unattainable. But having broken with Forverts and with backing from the Workers’ Party, the Jewish Federation had an opportunity to build a new kind of Yiddish daily appealing to a ‘better’ sort of reader. Early issues of Frayhayt stressed political and cultural renewal. ‘Frayhayt is a child of a new era in the history of the Jewish labour movement’, the first editorial (on 2 April) announced. ‘A new generation of workers has arisen with a new View on life, with a new relationship to economic and political struggle, with new demands regarding organization and culture’. ‘For years and years’, Lilliput wrote in the same first issue, ‘I, as a journalist, have found myself in exile. [..] A stranger amongst strangers [...] entering our Frayhayt editorial ofice, Ifelt like a sinner who had worshipped foreign gods. Ientered into a holy temple and wanted to do penance.’ Vinchevsky

£2some

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called on Frayhayt to ‘give the Jewish worker a daily treasure of principled articles [...] and true literature’. Tsivyon described Frayhayt as ‘a cultural institution’. A ‘true Yiddish labour newspaper’, he wrote, ‘must be particularly interested in enriching and refining Yiddish literature and art, as well as in developing the literary and artistic tastes of the Jewish masses’. It was the newspaper’s intention, -. rial on 3 April explained, ‘to bring about a revolution not only in the economic, social and political concepts of Jewr -- orkers, but also in their outlook towards questions of culture’. On the occasion of Forverts’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the newspaper commented (on 23 April), A true workers' newspaper must be the intellectual leader and pathfinder of the workers; it must refine their tastes, make them into people with higher concepts and ideals, to awaken their fighting spirit. Toward this goal, it is necessary that a labour newspaper [...] raise the masses up to its level, not adjust to their backward tastes, to their primitive inclinations.

The cultural mission of Frayhayt was thus two-sided: building up Yiddish culture, especially Yiddish literature, and instilling an appreciation for it in Jewish workers by developing their aesthetic tastes. The newspaper defined itself against Forverts: its moderate fl socialism, ‘vulgar’ sensationalism and endorsement of ation at the expense of Yiddish. The editorial’s criticisms were identical to those of Zaksm Tsivyon more than a decade earlier. ! The problem with Forverts was the sum total of its ‘yellowness’: its ' ,crass commercialism, political pragmatism and willingness to succumb to the cultural ‘melting pot’. commitment to Yiddish culture in several wa 5 beginning with language. The editors used an updated certain silent letters and consonants that i were, - the late nineteenth century, widely used in Yiddish journalism in an effort to emulate German. The editors also favoured a purer Yiddish than Forverts’s ‘potato Yiddish”, which employed numerous English words spoken by immigrants in daily life (such as poteyto (potato) rather than kartqfl/bulbe or vinde (window) rather than fenster). Abraham Caha believed that the substitution of English as afaithful reflection of immigrant words for Yiddish was speech; it was a kind of Eng-dim?” Frayhayt’s editors, however, considered the inc rporation of~BnglLsh into written Yiddish as a means of promoting ° a sign of

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SOCIALISM WITH AJEWISH FACE

disrespect for the language by imposing the ‘vulgarity’ of street culture onto intellectual-literary culture. This was not a matter of elitism versus populism, according to Frayhayt’s editors, but of positive versus negative attitudes toward Yiddish. Frayhayt, they explained, ‘is created for workers and written for workers. It must therefore speak in an easy, understandable language. But not easy in content. [...] We want to be popular, but not cheap and vulgar."" In the realm of literature, Frayhayt attracted the most impressive array of poets and prose writers of any Yiddish newspaper. The regular contributors included Moshe Leib Halpern, Mani Leib, Moshe Nadir, Joseph Opatoshu, I-I. Leivick, Isaac Raboy and David IgnatoE—writers originally associated with the literary cohort Di yunge. Though these writers had socialist sympathies, their literary work was not primarily concerned with politics. What they perceived in Frayhayt, as Ruth Wisse notes, was the intimacy and seriousness of small literary journals combined with the wider readership and financial reward of a daily newspaper.” Though Frayhayt was a party organ, it did not subordinate artistic fieedom to politics and rejected the dictates of the commercial marketplaces" Frayhayt thus provided a literary home to a cohort of writers who, for the first time, felt that they could publish in a popular newspaper without a sense of artistic

compromise."7

While Frayhayt hoped to advance the cause of Yiddish letters and ‘revolutionary enlightenment’, its refusal to stoop to ‘the rabble’ limited the newspaper’s audience. Frayhayt’s journalistic and literary standards demanded from its readers a higher level of sophistication (or desire to achieve a higher level of sophistication) than that required by any other daily newspaper with the exception of Der tog, a liberal paper with strong financial backing from private individuals.88 Frayhayt’s parteyishkayt, its loyalty to the Workers’ Party, also placed the, newspaper at a disadvantage in the highly competitive Yiddish newspaper market. Whereas Forverts attracted the large number of immigrants who were sympathetic to socialism but not necessarily party members, Frayhayt appealed to a small portion of ideologically committed radicals. A final, and arguably the most formidable, hurdle faced by Frayhayt was set by the American Congress, which passed legislation in 1921 and 1924 that all but halted immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Consequently, regardless of the newspaper’s content, Frayhayt was fated to vie with other Yiddish newspapers for an ever-shrinking number of readers.

TONY MICHELS

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Given the harsh realities of the Yiddish newspaper market, Frayhayt barely survived its first year. Donations arrived ‘in a dribble’,

according to Melech Epstein, a member of the newspaper’s editorial staff.89 Frayhayt’s efl'ort to raise money through the sale of certificates brought in only $6,280 (628 certificates at $10 each) between January and late May.9° In that month, Salutski informed his wife that the paper was losing $3,000 per week and its circulation had declined to 18,000 from 40,000 a month earlier. In August, the Jewish Federation’s Executive Committee reported a deficit of more than $9,000 for the month of July; in September, it warned that Frayhayt faced bankruptcy.“ While Frayhayt struggled to survive, a fight within the Federation raged between communists (led by Bittelman) and socalled centrists (such as Olgin, Tsivyon and Salutski) over issues that had been submerged at the founding of the Workers’ Party in December 1921. The most serious point of disagreement was the status of the CP, which continued to operate underground. The ‘centrists’ accused the communists of acting in bad faith by treating the Workers’ Party as a front for the underground party. They demanded that communists dissolve the party and respect the powersharing arrangement originally agreed upon. Communists, by this point, were themselves divided over the issue of the underground party with ‘the geese’ faction in favour of the underground and ‘the liquidators’ opposed. Yet neither faction wanted to share power equally with the centrists, whom they viewed as a junior partner at best. From the beginning, Bittelman and his allies demanded greater influence in Frayhayt and even threatened to revive Der emes as a rival newspaper. Bittelman’s faction and the former JSF members were, as communist leader James Cannon recalls, ‘at each others’ throats in almost daily combat over control of the Freiheit (sic)’.92 Salutski had actually objected to the publication of Frayhayt until the behind-the-scenes strife and shortage in funds could be resolved. By the time the newspaper first appeared, he had grown estranged from even Olgin and Tsivyon. He was not invited to speak at Frayhayt’s celebration at the Lexington Opera House, though audience members insisted that he take the podium. Warning that internal dissension threatened Frayhayt, Salutski sounded the only dour note of the evening.93 The celebration left him dejected. ‘Olgin’s speech’, Salutski wrote in his diary, ‘was shallow, soulless. Zivion [Tsivyon] [...] hopelessly cheap-witty at its best. Bittelman

Jewish?"

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SOCIALISM WITH A JEWISH FACE

stupid beyond measure. [...] I cannot fight one evil and tolerate another evil and [even] help it grow. [..] Rot is rot even if it pretends to be red. [...] So it is to be started all over.’94 In November, the internal conflict came to a head after several communists resigned from the Jewish Federation’s Executive Committee, thereby leaving ‘centrists’ in the majority. Bittelman’s faction demanded restoration of the status quo ante, but when the new majority refiised, the communists quit in protest.” In response, the Workers’ Party’s Central Executive Committee intervened, ordering the Jewish Federation to relinquish 50 per cent ownership of Frayhayt. The Jewish Federation rejected this demand, a move which invited condemnation from the Central Execuu've Committee in the 9 December issue of The Worker. The Workers’ Party threatened, in the name of party unity, to take fiill possession of Frayhayt and the Jewish Federation’s administrative affairs. In the 16 December issue of The Worker, the party’s other foreign-language federations also condemned the Jewish Federation for breach of party discipline. The Jewish Federation found itself outnumbered and isolated. In late December, however, the crisis was suddenly averted on terms decisively favouring the communist faction: Bittelman was appointed Secretary of the Jewish Federation and communists were granted a majority on its National Executive. Furthermore, the Jewish Federation agreed to transfer complete ownership of Frayhayt to the

Workers’ Party. ederation ac Wh did the e ' ,-_ wn subordin -' on? ' One reason has to do with an important change ' . Acting on a Comintern directive, the underground CP decr-ed to liquidate itself after months of internal debate. The Jewish Federation’s members may have viewed this as an important concession warranting the sacrifice of their own organization’s autonomy. Second, the Jewish Federation’s members probably—merging they could not afford to publish Frayhayt without financial assistance-Wu, something only the communist Tacfiofi’comd secure. There is no record from American sources how much money the Comintern or the Soviet government provided in 1922. But it is known that the Comintern had pledged $10,000 for the creation of a Yiddish daily as early as November 1921 and that communist leaders, such as Bittelman and Jay Lovestone, returned from trips to Soviet Russia with money for Frayhayt during the course of the year. According to Epstein, for example, a last-minute, $1,500 grant from Lovestone

.

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covered the printing coss of Frayhayt’s first issue?" Without such infusions of cash, Frayhayt probably could not have continued as a daily, as the experience of Di naye velt suggested. The Soviet Union and Comintern clearly did not provide enough funds to place Frayhayt on solid footing, but Bittelman promised to secure more money if the Communist faction was permitted to exercise greater control over the

newspaper.97

_\

Finally, fiesonal interests) may have played a role. According to Epstein, Olginand—George Wishniak, the Jewish Federation’s chief negotiators during the November—December crisis, were bought ofl' with the promise that Olgin would become the sole editor of Frayhayt and Wishniak permitted to travel to Russia as a party representative. Thus co-opted, Epstein claims, Olgin and Wishniak persuaded the arrangement. Epstein’s Jewish Federation’s members to accept the O] e material nwas explanationrs plausible inasmuch as