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Pope Benedict XVI, who went from Hitler Youth to advancing Catholic-Jewish relations, dies at 95
(JTA) — Jewish groups are among those marking the death of Benedict XVI, the Catholic pontiff who died Saturday at 95, a decade after shocking the world by becoming the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign.
“It is with great sadness that I learned today that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has passed away,” Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement issued Saturday. “He was a towering figure of the Roman Catholic Church, both as pope and before that as the cardinal who gave the Catholic-Jewish relationship solid theological underpinning and enhanced understanding.”
During his eight years as pope, Benedict took many steps to advance Catholic-Jewish relations. visiting synagogues and Israel and condemning antisemitism on multiple occasions.
But he also reintroduced liturgy praying for the conversion of Jews, accepted back into the church an excommunicated priest who denied the Holocaust and never completely satisfied some who wished to see him more fully denounce his own Nazi past.
Born Joseph Ratzinger in Germany in 1927, Benedict spent a portion of his teenage years in the Hitler Youth organization, something that was mandatory for boys in Germany at the time and that he explained as necessary to obtain a tuition discount at his seminary. Those who knew him at the time attested after his election as pope in 2005 that his participation was reluctant, and Jewish groups who worked with him after the war said he had long worked to rectify the association.
“Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement after his election as pope.
As priest and professor of theology in the 1960s, Ratzinger took part in the Second Vatican Council, a policy meeting of church leaders, as a theological advisor. It was at that council that the church’s leadership rejected centuries of Catholic dogma and declared that the Jewish people should not be blamed for the death of Jesus. Their 1965 declaration, known as Nostra Aetate, recast the church’s relations with the Jewish community.
Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, is remembered as the first pope to visit a synagogue and, upon his ascension to the papacy, Benedict continued that tradition, making a habit of visiting with local Jewish communities on several of his international trips.
Pope Benedict XVI greets guests beside Rabbi Arthur Schneier (R) during a visit to the Park East Synagogue, April 18, 2008, in New York City. (Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2008, on a papal visit to the United States, Benedict visited New York’s Park East Synagogue on the eve of Passover, in the first visit by a pope to an American synagogue.
“Shalom! It is with joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesach, to express my respect and esteem for the Jewish community in New York City,” the pope said to the congregation, according to the church’s records. “I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this.”
The next year, Benedict visited Israel, in a trip that was largely focused around the common roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Related: Timeline of Pope Benedict XVI and the Jews (2013)
Upon Benedict’s resignation in 2013, he was praised by Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi. “During his period there were the best relations ever between the church and the chief rabbinate, and we hope that this trend will continue,” said the rabbi, Yona Metzger. “I think he deserves a lot of credit for advancing inter-religious links the world.”
Despite the praise, Benedict’s papacy ignited multiple episodes of criticism from Jews alarmed by the effects of his religious conservatism.
Early in his papacy, Benedict allowed for the expanded use of the Tridentine Mass — the pre-Vatican II Catholic liturgy also known as the Latin Mass — which includes a Good Friday prayer that many view as antisemitic because it prays for the conversion of Jews to Christianity. (Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, has curtailed the use of the Latin Mass, though not specifically because of its language about Jews.)
The ADL’s then-leader, Abraham Foxman, was among many Jewish leaders to condemn Benedict’s move.
‘We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday mass, it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted,’ Foxman said. “’It is the wrong decision at the wrong time. It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the church that rejects change and reconciliation.”
In response to the criticism, Benedict altered the Good Friday liturgy to drop a reference to the “blindness” of the Jews, but he maintained language praying for Jews to convert to Christianity.
Benedict also drew criticism for his refusal to acknowledge the Catholic church’s role in the Holocaust, and in particular, the role of the pope at the time, Pius XII — whose path to sainthood Benedict approved in 2009.
Pope Benedict XVI talks to Italian Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni in Rome’s main synagogue, Jan. 17, 2010. In his remarks there, Benedict said the Roman Catholic Church provided “often hidden and discreet” support for Jews during the Holocaust. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)
Pius has long been accused by Jewish groups of at best remaining silent, and at worst, being “Hitler’s pope” as the Holocaust raged across Europe. While Catholics were involved in many cases of rescue across the continent, initiatives coming from the Vatican itself often applied only to practicing Catholics of Jewish descent, or required Jews to convert to Catholicism.
After the war, Pius’ Vatican sheltered Ante Pavelic, the exiled leader of the Ustaše regime in the former Independent State of Croatia, a Catholic supremacist movement and Nazi puppet state that implemented the Holocaust in Western Yugoslavia. Jasenovac, the third-largest concentration camp in Europe, was built under the Ustaše rule and was the site of death for at least 100,000 people, including between 12,000 and 20,000 Jews.
The Vatican has long maintained that Pius worked to save Jews. Pius, Benedict said in 2008, “acted in a secret and silent way because, given the realities of that complex historical moment, he realized that it was only in this way that he could avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews.”
Benedict faced the decision of whether to declare Pius “venerable,” a crucial step in the path to sainthood. After initially deferring, he made the declaration in 2009. Now, the decision about whether Pius will be beatified, or declared a saint, could hinge on the contents of an archive that the Vatican is in the process of opening that includes materials about Pius’ handling of the Holocaust.
“The Pope at War,” a recent book by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kertzer, the son of a rabbi, draws on these new archives to make the case that Pius largely ignored pleas from Jews (while keeping a secret back channel to Hitler); Pius’ advisor used antisemitic language in urging him not to act on behalf of the Jews and the pope personally intervened to prevent Jewish children and their parents from being reunited, Kertzer concluded.
Benedict, who had access to the archive, worked to heal friction with the International Society of Saint Pius XII, a conservative faction within the Vatican that named itself after the wartime pope and added the “Saint” even though he lacked the title.
In early 2009, Benedict removed the excommunication of four priests from the society. Among them was Holocaust denier Richard Williamson, who claimed the Nazis’ use of gas chambers to be a lie.
German Jewish leaders called Benedict’s decision “a slap in the face for the Jewish community.”
“The result of this move is very simple: to give credence to a man who is a Holocaust denier, which means that the sensitivity to us as Jews is not what it should be,” Elie Wiesel said at the time.
“The Vatican has done far more than set back Vatican-Jewish relations,” the scholar (and current U.S. antisemitism monitor) Deborah Lipstadt wrote at the time. “It has made itself look like it is living in the darkest of ages.”
Benedict said he had not known about Williamson’s views and pressed him to recant them, but Williamson did not; the pope later said he had mishandled the situation.
Months later, during his visit to Israel, Benedict spoke outside of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. Though he denounced antisemitism in his remarks, he did not mention the words Germany or Nazi, nor did he reference any church involvement or his own experience in the Hitler Youth, or refer to the deaths of Europe’s Jews as murder.
Benedict ultimately refused to enter the museum, due to its negative depiction of Pope Pius XII.
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In three centuries of Southern Jewish life in the Big Easy, no easy way to be Jewish
Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries
By Nicholas Lemann
Liveright, 416 pages, $35
Nicholas Lemann’s Jewish life was negligible. Great care was taken to make it so.
His family not only celebrated Christmas, they skipped Hanukkah, a fact that created a small scandal in their Reform congregation in New Orleans, a shul that had confirmations instead of bar mitzvahs. His father was known to hide baskets of kippot at family weddings — including his own. The topic of Israel was never raised at home, a plantation-style house with the lofty name of Quercus, and as far as Lemann can recall, neither was the Holocaust. (Robert E. Lee, however, was rhapsodized in an elementary school poem Nicholas composed, and that his father recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.)
“I knew almost nothing about the Jewish aspect, as opposed to the Southern aspect, of my family’s history,” Lemann, a staff writer at the New Yorker and professor and dean emeritus at Columbia Journalism School, writes in Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries. Jewish was more the way others thought of the family than how they viewed themselves. Or so he thought.
Lemann’s book is his fifth and his most personal, reaching back in time to uncover how his aristocratic, well-established life in Louisiana was a relatively modern development following decades of assimilation.
It is a family portrait in a unique milieu — Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren meets Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers — that follows the rough contours of the Torah: the original sins of slavery, Exodus and the conflicted push towards a promised land with political Zionism and a codification of life as Lemann reclaims tradition. It’s a compelling read, all the more so for how its personal investigation brushes up against American history.
Lemann’s great-great grandfather, Jacob, who arrived in Louisiana from Essenheim, Germany, advanced in part from the sale of human beings. He left the country with his family during the Civil War, and by the time he returned and acquired plantations from owners who defaulted on loans, Zionism was the talk of Europe and a four-letter word in their Reform German world, as the newly-monied congregants strived to partake fully in American life and not arouse suspicion. By the turn of the 19th Century, the genteel way the Lemanns walked through life served as a contrast to a wave of more devout, poorer Jews from Eastern Europe.
But within the narrative is a force of particularism that Lemann was late to investigate. His great-grandfather, Bernard, the first American-born Lemann, was sent to New York for religious instruction and, while in Europe during the Civil War, lived like almost no Jews on the continent had before, absorbing high culture while observantly Jewish.
The platform of the American Reform movement sought to sand down all markers of difference, defining Judaism as a religion not a race, but Lemann’s Harvard Law-educated grandfather Montefiore (named for the great philanthropist Moses Montefiore) had a longstanding friendship with liberal Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and testified before Congress to bring German children to New York City after Kristallnacht. Though he came of age in Jim Crow on a plantation, his advocacy extended to Black people, urging other lawyers to sign on to a statement urging the South’s compliance to the Brown v. Board of Ed decision. His relatively progressive politics are hard to divorce from his own awareness of his minority status.
“We can never hope to eliminate all bigotry,” he wrote Frankfurter. “(Look at the experience of the Jews for 5,000 years.)”
Lemann’s largest reckoning is with his father, Thomas, whose resistance to Jewish life likely came from his experience at Harvard after World War II, in the age of quotas, and the false presumption that his difference could be fully expunged in favor of full acceptance. (An irony noted by Lemann is the fact that the family may not have converted because the old families already knew them to be Jews.)
Despite the mammoth efforts of Thomas and his wife, Barbara, who grew up in New Jersey but assimilated splendidly to her husband’s Louisiana roots, Nicholas began to feel a “distinct tug in the direction of Jewishness” as an undergrad at Harvard.
“The way I was brought up, supposedly so liberated, so carefree about what it meant to be Jewish, actually amounted to a heavy burden to bear,” he writes.
The titular return, to a more conventional Jewish life, is in some ways an acknowledgement of futility.
“It looks to me now as if, all these years later, under a profoundly different set of prevailing standards, Jewishness still isn’t universalizable,” Lemann writes, reflecting on the recent turmoil at Columbia, where he was cochair of an antisemitism task force.
He has a rather dim prognosis for the Jewish future.“The old dream that there might be a completely easy way of being Jewish (at least in the way I have chosen to be Jewish) in the wider world seems once again to have vanished.”
Gone with the wind, one could say. But then if Lemann’s chronicle proves anything, it’s that difficulty — and not the pursuit of ease — may be what gives Jews our foundation. We need to remember who we are, because the wider world won’t forget.
The post In three centuries of Southern Jewish life in the Big Easy, no easy way to be Jewish appeared first on The Forward.
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‘No speaking Swedish here!’ — Yiddish Day in Lund University
דעם 26סטן פֿעברואַר 2026 איז אין לונד, שװעדן, פֿאָרגעקומען אַ „ייִדיש־טאָג“.
דער לונדער אוניװערסיטעט בשותּפֿות מיטן שוועדישן אינסטיטוט פֿאַר שפּראַכן און פֿאָלקלאָר („איסאָף“) האָבן אָרגאַניזירט אַ צונױפֿטרעף פֿון אַמאָליקע און איצטיקע לונדער ייִדיש־סטודענטן. ס׳רובֿ הײַנטיקע ייִדיש־לימודים בײַם לונדער אוניװערסיטעט װערן געלערנט אָנלײַן, אין דיסטאַנצקורסן. דערפֿאַר איז דער ייִדיש־טאָג פֿאַר עטלעכע אָנטייל־נעמערס געװען דאָס ערשטע מאָל װאָס זײ טרעפֿן זיך מיט זײערע שותּפֿים און לערערס מחוץ די ראַמען פֿון קאָמפּיוטער־עקראַן.
אַחוץ סטודענטן און רעדנערס, האָט מען אויך פֿאַרבעטן מאַמע־לשון־רעדערס פֿון מאַלמע, אַ שטאָט נאָענט צו לונד מיט אַ גרעסערער ייִדישער קהילה. די טאַטעס און מאַמעס פֿון די הײַנטיקע מאַלמער ייִדיש־רעדערס זײַנען געװען פֿון דער שארית־הפּליטה און האָבן זיך בשעת אָדער קורץ נאָכן חורבן באַזעצט אין שװעדן. דאָס איז דער דור וואָס האָט אויפֿגעשטעלט דעם „ייִדישן קולטור־פֿאַראײן 1945“ אין מאַלמע.
די איבעריקע אָנטײל־נעמערס זײַנען געקומען צו פֿאָרן פֿון גאַנץ שװעדן, און אױך פֿון נאָרװעגיע, פֿינלאַנד, דענמאַרק, דײַטשלאַנד און האָלאַנד. אַלץ אין איינעם האָט די אונטערנעמונג צוגעצויגן אַ 30 מענטשן, פֿון יונגע סטודענטן ביז יונגע פּענסיאָנערן.
„פֿיקאַ“
אַ שוועדיש וואָרט אינעם אָרטיקן ייִדיש: אַ שמועס אַרום אַ טעפּל קאַווע מיט קוכן און אױבס.
מיט אַזאַ „פֿיקאַ“ האָט זיך נײַן אַ זײגער אָנגעהױבן די פּראָגראַם. די אָנגעקומענע האָבן זיך באַגריסט צװישן זיך, זיך פֿאַרשריבן, און יעדער אײנער האָט זיך אָנגעקלעפּט אַ ייִדיש־שפּראַכיק נאָמען־צעטל.
מאַריאַ פּערסאָן (ראָש פֿונעם צענטער פֿאַר שפּראַכן און ליטעראַטור בײַם לונדער אוניװערסיטעט) און ראָקעל נילען (קאָאָרדינאַטאָרשע פֿון די ייִדיש־לימודים) האָבן מקבל־פּנים געװען דעם עולם מיט אַ קורצער באַגריסונג אויף ענגליש. גלײַך נאָך דעם איז מען אַריבער אױף ייִדיש: אליעזר ניבאָרסקי און אורן כּהן ראָמאַן האָבן פֿאָרגעשטעלט די מיט-אָרגאַניזאַטאָרן פֿון „איסאָף“. מע האָט אָנגעװוּנטשן, אַז יעדער אײנער זאָל „הנאה האָבן פֿון ייִדישן װאָרט.“
און דאָס האָט זיך תּיכּף אײַנגעגעבן: מע האָט זיך אַרײַנגעטאָן אין אַ ליטעראַטור־װאַרשטאַט, וווּ עטלעכע אָנטײל־נעמערס האָבן פֿאָרגעלײענט לידער פֿון אַבֿרהם רײזען, ישׂראל שטערן, קאַדיע מאָלאָדאָװסקי, איציק מאַנגער און ציליע דראַפּקין. אַז איין סטודענטקע האָט פֿאָרגעלייענט דאָס פֿאָלקסליד „אַ מאָל איז געװען אַ מעשׂה“, האָט דער גאַנצער עולם גענומען זינגען אין איינעם. מע האָט געלײענט ניקאָלײַ אָלניאַנסקיס אַ פֿיקטיווע באַשרײַבונג פֿונעם אַמאָליקן ייִדישן קװאַרטאַל אין לונד און בפֿרט פֿון איין באַזונדער הײַזל.
אײנער פֿון די אָנטײל־נעמער האָט אויך דעקלאַמירט אײגענע פּאָעטישע און דראַמאַטישע טעקסטן.
בעת אַ צװײטער „פֿיקאַ“ האָט מען געהאַט די געלעגנהײט אַ קוק צו טאָן אױף די נײַסטע ייִדישע אױסגאַבעס אין די זאַמלונגען פֿון דער אוניווערסיטעט־ביבליאָטעק, מערסטנס פֿונעם שװעדישן „אָלניאַנסקי־פֿאַרלאַג“. ס׳רובֿ אָנטײל־נעמערס האָבן לײַכט געשמועסט און זיך אױסגעשפּאַנט מיט אַ טעפּעלע קאַװע, נאָר עטלעכע סטודענטן פֿון צװײטן יאָר האָבן שױן אָנגעהויבן דורכפֿירן אינטערװיוען צוצוגרייטן אַ רעפּאָרטאַזש וועגן דער קאָנפֿערענץ.
שידוכים
הײַנט איז נישט דאָס ערשטע מאָל װי מע לײענט װעגן לונד אין דער ייִדישער פּרעסע. אליעזר ניבאָרסקי האָט געברענגט „אַלטע נײַעס“ און פֿאָרגעשטעלט עטלעכע אַנאָנסן און באַריכטן בנוגע לונד אין אַמאָליקע צײַטונגען. נאָך אין 1895, עטלעכע יאָר נאָך דעם ווי אַ צאָל ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן ליטוואַקעס האָבן זיך אײַנגעאָרדנט אין אַ נײַעם פּעריפֿערישן קוואַרטאַל פֿון דער שטאָט, האָט מען געזוכט דורך אַנאָנסן אַזש אין װאַרשע אַ בעלן אויף אַ פּאָסטן פֿון שוחט, שליח־ציבור און מלמד אין לונד. און עס װײַזט זיך אַרױס אַז אין 1940, שוין לאַנג נאָך דער בליצײַט פֿונעם „לונדער שטעטל“, האָבן די „לונדער כּלות“ נאָך געהאַט אַ שם צווישן שוועדישע ייִדן.
נאָך דעם האָט סימאָ מויִר, אַ פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך און חורבן־לימודים אינעם אוניװערסיטעט פֿון אופּסאַלע, שװעדן, װאָס האָט פֿריִער געלערנט ייִדיש בײַם לונדער אוניווערסיטעט, געהאַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט װעגן דעם פּראָיעקט „ייִדיש אין די שװעדישע אַרכיװן“. מע האַלט אין צוגרײטן אַ דיגיטאַלישן קאַטאַלאָג פֿון די ייִדישע מאַטעריאַלן װאָס געפֿינען זיך, אָפֿט מאָל אָן געהעריקע באַשרײַבונגען, אין די שװעדישע אַרכיװן.
מויִר האָט געװיזן בילדער און כּתבֿ־ידן פֿון די אַרכיװן אין שטעט װי שטאָקהאָלם, קריסטיאַנשטאַט און מאַלמע, און דערמאָנט אַז עס װאָלט געװען כּדאַי אויסצופֿאָרשן און צושטעלן די נעמען פֿון די מענטשן אױף די בילדער. האָט זיך אָפּגערופֿן דער פֿאָרזיצער פֿון מאַלמער קולטור־פֿאַראײן, יערי אײלנבערג: „דאַרפֿט איר פֿרעגן מיך, איך האָב זײ דאָך אַלע געקענט!“
דער פֿאָרשער האָט אויך גערעדט װעגן דער פּראָבלעם, אַז מע װײסט שױן נישט װוּ עס געפֿינען זיך טייל אַרכיװ־מאַטעריאַלן. זײער אַ סך פֿון צווישן די 1940ער און 1960ער יאָרן איז אַ פּנים נעלם געװאָרן, למשל פֿונעם אַרכיװ פֿון דער מאַלמער ייִדישער ביבליאָטעק. האָט זיך אָבער יערי אײלנבערג גלײַך אָפּגערופֿן: „דאָס האָבן מיר פֿאַר אַ יאָרן אַלץ אַרױסגעשלעפּט, די קעסטלעך שטײען בײַ מיר אױפֿן בױדעם.“ אַזוי אַרום האָט דער ייִדיש־טאָג טאַקע בײַגעטראָגן צו אַ פֿרוכפּערדיקן אױסבײַט צװישן פֿאָרשערס און דעם ברייטן עולם.
מיטאָג האָט מען געגעסן בײַ איינער פֿון די אוניװערסיטעטישע קאַפֿעטעריעס: עס איז געשטאַנען אַ בופֿעט מיט כּל־המינים גוטע מיטל־מיזרחדיקע מאכלים און דער עולם האָט זיך צונױפֿגעקליבן בײַ די טישלעך און געשמועסט גאַנץ לײַטיש, זיך דערצײלט װיצן – אױף ייִדיש, פֿאַרשטײט זיך.
– יערי, קײן שװעדיש רעדט מען נישט!
– זײַ מוחל! איך האָב שױן נישט געטראַכט אַז איך וועל דערלעבן דעם טאָג װאָס די אײנציקע שפּראַך װאָס מע מעג רעדן איז ייִדיש!
אױפֿן פּריפּעטשיק
נאָכן עסן איז מען אַרױס אױף אַ שפּאַציר. מע איז געגאַנגען דורך דעם היסטאָרישן לונדער צענטער שטאָט און די „מדריכים“ אינעם עולם האָבן דערצײלט װעגן אַזאַ צי אַן אַנדער פּרט פֿון דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדישן לעבן אין לונד. טומאַס װוּדסקי, אַ מיטאַרבעטער פֿון „איסאָף“, האָט אַלעמען דערלאַנגט אַ טיפּיש שװעדישן כּיבוד, היימיש באַקאַנט ווי „שטױבזױגערלעך“: אַ מין זיסװאַרג מיט מאַרציפּאַן און שאָקאָלאַד װאָס איז שטאַרק באַליבט בײַם ייִדיש־אָפּטײל פֿון לונדער אוניווערסיטעט. מע האָט באַזוכט דעם אַמאָליקן ייִדישן קװאַרטאַל און געפֿונען דאָס הײַזל פֿון אָלניאַנסקיס דערצײלונג. פֿאַרן הויז פֿונעם ערשטן ייִדיש־לערער בײַם לונדער אוניווערסיטעט, שלמה שולמאַן ז״ל, האָט זיך די גאַנצע גרופּע אָפּגעשטעלט און געזונגען „אױפֿן פּריפּעטשיק“ לזכר אָט דער באַליבטער פֿיגור.
אַ באַקאַלאַװער
צוריק אין אוניװערסיטעט האָט יאַן שװאַרץ, עמעריטירטער ייִדיש־לעקטאָר אין לונד, געהאַלטן אַ „קלײנע זאַך, נישט קײן רעפֿעראַט“ װעגן זײַנע „לונדער יאָרן“, און דערצײלט װעגן דעם בראשית פֿון די ייִדיש־לימודים אין דער שטאָט, װעגן די חבֿרישע מחלוקתן מיט זײַן קאָלעגע שלמה שולמאַנען, און װעגן זײַן טאַטן, װאָס איז מיט זײַן זאַפֿטיקן פּױלישן ייִדיש געװען אַ יוצא־מן־הכּלל צװישן די ליטװישע קלאַנגען פֿון די ייִדיש־רעדערס אינעם נאָך־מלחמהדיקן דענמאַרק.
די געשיכטע איז אַזאַ: זײַט דעם יאָר 2000 האָט ייִדיש אין שװעדן דעם באַזונדערן סטאַטוס פֿון אַן אָפּגעהיטער מינאָריטעט־שפּראַך. אין 2007 האָט די רעגירונג אָנפֿאַרטרויט דעם לונדער אוניװערסיטעט דאָס אַחריות פֿאַר די ייִדיש־לימודים אין שװעדן, און זײַט 2012 קענען סטודענטן זיך לערנען אױף אַ באַקאַלאַװער אין ייִדישע לימודים.
דער תּחום האָט זיך אַנטװיקלט און הײַנט באַטייליקן זיך אין דעם פֿאָרשערס פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע אוניװערסיטעטן. און בזכות די איבערגעגעבענע טוערס און רעדערס האָט אױפֿגעבליט דאָס קולטורעלע ייִדישע לעבן אין שװעדן פֿון דאָס נײַ.
ווײַטער האָט מען זיך צעטײלט אין דרײַ גרופּעס אױסצופּרוּװן די נײַע ייִדישע „שמועס־קאַרטלעך“ װאָס דער „איסאָף“ האָט אָקערשט אַרױסגעגעבן. עס האָבן זיך אײַנגעשטעלט לעבעדיקע שמועסן אַרום פֿראַגעס װי „מיט װעמען רעדסטו ייִדיש?“ און (בפֿרט אַ שװעדישע פֿראַגע) „װאָסערע מאכלים עסטו לכּבֿוד מיטזומער?“ די טוערס פֿון „איסאָף“ האָבן ברייטהאַרציק געשאָנקען יעדן איינעם אַזאַ פּעשל שמועס־קאַרטלעך.
אין סופּערמאַרק
דער פֿאָרשער אורן כּהן ראָמאַן האָט געהאַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט „ייִדיש אין סופּערמאַרק“. ער האָט פֿאַרגליכן מאכלים מיט אַ בפֿירושן ייִדישן נאָמען אין העברעיִש־שפּראַכיקע סופּערמערק אין ישׂראל און ענגליש־שפּראַכיקע אין די פֿאַראייניקטע שטאַטן, און דערצײלט װעגן די װאַריאַציעס און בײַטן אין אױסלײג, אַרױסרעד און באַניץ במשך דער צײַט אין די צוויי לענדער. מע האָט זיך צערעדט וועגן דער פֿראַגע, „צי איז „ראָגעלעך“ אויף עבֿרית צי אויף ענגליש אײנצאָל אָדער מערצאָל?“ און „פֿאַר װאָס שרײַבט מען אין ישׂראל אַזוי זעלטן אַ קמץ־אַלף?“
טראַדיציע
פֿאַרן געזעגענען זיך האָבן אַלע אָנטײל־נעמערס געזאָגט אַ װאָרט װעגן זײערע אײַנדרוקן פֿונעם טאָג, און די אָרגאַניזאַטאָרן האָבן אונטערגעצויגן אַ סך־הכּל. האָפֿנטלעך װעט זיך לאָזן אײַנשטעלן אַ טראַדיציע און מע וועט זיך װידער קענען זיך טרעפֿן אין לונד אין 2027.
דער עולם איז זיך פֿונאַנדערגעגאַנגען. אַ ווײַל האָט מען נאָך געהערט ייִדיש אױף די לונדער גאַסן און אין די רעסטאָראַנען. נאָך דעם איז דאָס ייִדיש מיט זײַנע רעדערס אַוועק אױף דער באַנסטאַנציע און אין דער װעלט אַרײַן.
דער ייִדיש־טאָג האָט דערלאַנגט אַלע אָנטײל־נעמערס אַ געלעגנהײט אָנצוקניפּן נײַע באַציִונגען און צו באַנײַען אַלטע חבֿרשאַפֿטן, זיך צו באַקענען מיט דער הײַנטיקער ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג אין שװעדן און צו פֿילן דעם טעם פֿון דער שװעדיש־ייִדישער קולטור. בײַ ס׳רובֿ אָנטײל־נעמערס איז אָבער געשטאַנען ברומו־של־עולם דער פֿאַקט אַז מע האָט אַ גאַנצן טאָג געקענט הערן און רעדן נאָר ייִדיש.
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We’re forgetting the lessons of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
When the young women of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sat down before their Singer sewing machines on Saturday, Mar. 25, 1911, they could not know that their lives would soon be extinguished because of a lit cigarette.
At around 4:40 p.m., a worker flicked a still-smoldering cigarette butt into a bin filled with paper patterns and fabric scraps. The contents ignited instantly. Someone threw a bucket of water to douse the flames — to no avail. Eighteen minutes later, 148 people were dead: 123 women and 25 men, many of them teenagers, most of them immigrants.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which remains the deadliest workplace disaster in New York City and one of the worst in the country, not only shocked the nation, it transformed American labor law. Locked doors, unsafe conditions, and the exploitation of young workers came to symbolize an industrial system that all too often treated human beings as expendable. Public outrage led to sweeping workplace reforms and helped launch modern labor protections.
Now, 115 years later, those hard-won safeguards are eroding.
Across the country, child labor violations are rising. Teenagers are working longer hours and, in some cases, dangerous jobs like working in industrial freezers, on construction sites, and in meat-processing facilities. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the number of children employed illegally nearly quadrupled between 2015 and 2024; meanwhile, the companies that hire them often face minimal penalties.
The lesson of Triangle was clear — when economic pressure meets diminished regulations, minors become the most vulnerable workers. Today’s legislative rollbacks and declining enforcement risk recreating the very conditions reformers fought to eliminate.
Few understood those stakes better than Pauline Newman, one of the most influential labor organizers of the early U.S. labor movement. Born in Lithuania, Newman immigrated to the United States with her mother and sisters after her father’s death. By age nine, she was climbing dark factory stairs to work in a hairbrush factory. Later, she rolled cigars, and by 12, she found work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, laboring 14 hours a day in what workers called the “kindergarten,” trimming loose threads from finished garments. Shirtwaists arrived piled in cases taller than some of the children themselves.
“We were too young to do anything else,” Newman later recalled.
In one of several pieces she wrote for The Forward, she chronicled her experience working at The Triangle and what she described as her “own drab existence,” wondering “dear God will it ever be different?”
Although Newman had left Triangle before the fire, the disaster changed her life. The deaths of former coworkers propelled her into a lifetime of labor organizing and fighting to protect workers, especially minors, from exploitation. Her activism helped reshape public understanding of workplace safety and child labor, showing that reform comes only when society decides certain risks are unacceptable.
Throughout the 19th century, reformers had pursued piecemeal protections. Religious leaders fretted over working children who couldn’t read scripture, while secular advocates argued democracy required an educated citizenry. Early laws limited hours or required factory owners to provide basic education, but enforcement was inconsistent and protections varied state-by-state. When Newman arrived in New York City in 1901, meaningful safeguards were largely absent.
The Triangle fire changed that calculus. By 1913, Newman and her fellow organizers, including Rose Schneiderman, Clara Lemlich and Frances Perkins, helped push legislation that moved thousands of children from factory floors into classrooms and introduced workplace safety standards. The culmination came in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing nationwide rules governing wages, hours and child labor.
Now many of these protections are being undermined. Since 2021, at least 17 states have rolled back child labor protections, while others have introduced legislation to diminish existing safeguards.
In Florida, proposed legislation would remove limits on working hours for 16- and 17-year-olds, potentially allowing overnight shifts during the school year. In 2023, Iowa passed laws permitting minors to work in previously restricted environments, including meat coolers. Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio and other states have pursued similar measures.
Supporters argue the changes provide flexibility for families and help businesses facing labor shortages. Opponents warn they expose minors to injury and undermine education.
Many young workers entering hazardous jobs today come from immigrant families struggling with rising living costs. Some are recent arrivals, including unaccompanied minors particularly vulnerable to exploitation. For these families, work isn’t an extracurricular activity; it means economic survival. But hardship does not make dangerous labor safe, nor should it justify dismantling protections.
Families facing financial instability often feel they have little choice but to send children into the workforce. But no family, however, should face the choice Pauline Newman once did: education or survival.
Nostalgia often shapes today’s political arguments. Lawmakers recall babysitting, shoveling snow, or scooping ice cream as teenagers. But many modern violations occur not in safe, supervised settings but in industrial workplaces where injuries can be life-altering or fatal; as was the case when in 2023 a 16-year-old Wisconsin boy died in a cotton-packing machine.
Weakening protections risks reversing more than a century of progress, undermining not only individual futures but an economy and democracy that depend on an educated workforce.
Preventing a return to early industrial exploitation doesn’t require reinventing labor law. It requires enforcing and modernizing protections already proven to work.
States can strengthen work-permit systems, as Illinois did in 2024, improving oversight and reducing violations. Civil and criminal penalties must increase so illegal child labor is not treated as a routine business expense. For example, New York has expanded enforcement authority and centralized employment records for minors, enabling fines upwards of $50,000 for serious and repeat violations. Policymakers should eliminate subminimum wages for young workers and tighten prohibitions on hazardous work, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing. Colorado has taken steps allowing injured minors to pursue private legal action, strengthening employer accountability.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire compelled Americans to confront what happens when profit outweighs protection. Reformers like Pauline Newman spent decades ensuring children would no longer bear the cost of unsafe workplaces. Reform was hard-won, and progress is never inevitable. More than a century later we ought to remember why those protections exist.
The post We’re forgetting the lessons of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire appeared first on The Forward.