Uncategorized
Overdue or overdone? Two scholars hope to secure the legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’
(JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Green gave the commencement address last week at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative flagship where he was ordained 56 years earlier.
His talk was mostly a response to political turmoil in Israel, but he also urged the graduates to pioneer a “new Judaism.”
“I had the good fortune, as a young seeker, to run into the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the writings of the early Hasidic masters,” said Green, who taught Jewish mysticism and Hasidic theology at Brandeis, the University of Pennsylvania and Hebrew College. “I have been working for half a century to articulate what could simply be called a Judaism for adults living in freedom. I am now near the end of my creative course. But you young people are just at the beginning of yours. We need you to enroll — however you can — in the task of the generations, that of re-creating Judaism.”
That is the language of Jewish Renewal, with which Green, 82, is deeply identified. Renewal isn’t a denomination, really, but a movement that was born in and reflects the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led.
Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led. Renewal’s signature institution was the havurah — intimate prayer, study and social fellowships. Its soundtrack were the liturgical melodies composed by the hippy-ish, “neo-Hasidic” Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach. And its rebbe — to the degree that an egalitarian movement had a central figure — was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), a refugee from Hitler’s Europe and former Lubavitcher Hasid whose Judaism channeled the spiritual “New Age” of the 1970s.
These ideas and approaches may be familiar to you even if you’ve never heard of “Renewal.” Rare is the synagogue that doesn’t try to offer a more intimate spiritual experience for its worshippers, to shrink the distance between pulpit and pew, to incorporate new Jewish music and, in non-Orthodox and a number of Modern Orthodox synagogues, to increase the participation of women in prayer and study.
Those prayer shawls with rainbow stripes? That was a Schachter-Shalomi innovation.
How a counterculture movement came to be absorbed by the mainstream is the subject of a paper in a new collection, “The Future of American Judaism,” edited by Mark Silk and Jerome Chanes. Chanes is the co-author, with Shaul Magid, of the chapter on “Renewal” that claims it as one of the most influential if not defining Jewish movements of the last 50 years.
“While Jewish Renewal has never boasted a large number of members, its influence on the larger American Jewish community has been significant, in terms of its liturgical experimentation, its revisions of ritual and its overall metaphysics,” they write. “It has also served as an ongoing conduit of information and inspiration from its own past — the havurah movement, radical politics, feminism — to the next generation.”
I came to the paper after giving a lecture at my own synagogue on “The Crisis of the American Synagogue.” I spoke of declining affiliation rates, plunging enrollment in supplementary schools, the shrinking number of non-Orthodox synagogues. Most of my adult life has been spent in synagogues, havurot and institutions heavily influenced by Renewal. If the Jewish Renewal movement revitalized synagogue life in the last century, could it also be blamed for its struggles in this one?
Magid, a fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, and Chanes, an adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Baruch College, presented their chapter at a conference dedicated to the release of the book, held Tuesday and Wednesday at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Magid made the claim — considered bold, at this small gathering of Jewish historians — that the three most important Jewish figures of the 20th century were Mordecai Kaplan, Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Shachter-Shalomi.
Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, downplayed the supernatural element of Judaism and instead called it a “civilization” defined by its people and culture. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe, turned an insular Orthodox sect into an outreach movement that promotes ritual practice among secular Jews.
Rabbi Arthur Green delivers the commencement address at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, May 18, 2023. (Courtesy JTS)
Schachter-Shalomi combined their visions and imagined a Judaism, said Magid, that “is no longer used as a tool for Jewish survival, but rather as a project for Jews to become part of the global community, to contribute to the global community.” Environmental awareness became a hallmark of Renewal, as did absorbing influences from other religions, especially Eastern ones. “He really did take Schneerson’s teaching about bringing Judaism to the streets and expanded it further to bring Judaism to the mosque, to bring Judaism to the monastery, to create another way of being Jewish which was not afraid of the world.”
In an interview with Magid before the conference, I asked if he and Chanes might be exaggerating Renewal’s influence.
“I’m sure there will be people who will claim that case but I don’t think so, no,” he said. Magid acknowledges that few people regard themselves as direct disciples of Schachter-Shalomi, and yet, like Kaplan, his influence is felt widely and deeply. “Each one of them had a futuristic vision,” he said. “They were able to cultivate a way of thinking about Judaism that was before their time and that eventually came into being in many ways.”
One of those skeptical of Schachter-Shalomi’s influence is Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history at Brandeis, who gave the keynote talk at the conference. In his response to the panel on Renewal, Sarna doubted Schachter-Shalomi was as influential as Carlebach, the Conservative theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel or the Modern Orthodox philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik. “I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that every innovator is a new Moses,” Sarna said.
Benjamin Steiner, a visiting assistant professor in religion at Trinity, also wondered if Renewal had spread “everywhere in the country, or only in large urban areas with critical masses of educated Jewish students.”
Listening to Magid’s response to such caveats, I thought of the quote often attributed to music producer Brian Eno: “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.” Renewal’s influence spread beyond its founding havurot because many of their principals went on to important positions in academia and Jewish organizations, including Green, Rabbi Everett Gendler, Sharon Strassfeld, John Ruskay and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Small but influential Gen X and millennial institutions also bear Renewal’s fingerprints: the “Jewish Emergent Network” of independent congregations; New York’s Romemu and B’nai Jeshurun synagogues; egalitarian, traditional-style yeshivas like Hadar. Bayit, with a number of principals associated with ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, is an online artist’s collective and publisher of Jewish books, including a forthcoming Shabbat prayer book.
One of its contributors, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who was ordained by ALEPH, has argued that the influence of Renewal is felt even within Orthodoxy. “If you look at the Open Orthodoxy movement, if you look at the ordination of women as ‘maharats’ [by Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary], the future of women as rabbinic leaders in Orthodoxy is already here,” she said on an episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast. “It’s not everywhere, but someday it will be.”
Magid and Chanes similarly claim a number of leading Jewish feminists as products of Renewal — they mention Paula Hyman, Eva Fogelman and Judith Plaskow — although some in the audience at Trinity insisted they gave Renewal too much credit for a movement by and for women. In there essay in the Silk/Chanes Book, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis University offers a counter-narrative of Jewish innovation over the past 50 years. In her chapter, she credits the “active partnership” of women in revitalizing American Judaism: Women’s religious expressions, she writes, “create social contexts and are distinguished by a communal dynamic, quite unlike the isolated, personalized Jewish experience, which some have claimed defines contemporary Jewishness.”
I came away convinced that Renewal has had an outsize influence on Jewish life, especially for baby boomers like me. But I also wondered if its outward-facing, syncretic Judaism failed to instill a sense of obligation to Jewish forms, institutions and peoplehood — unlike, by contrast, Orthodoxy in all of its booming present-day manifestations.
I asked Magid in what ways Renewal might have fallen short.
“Part of its failure is that it is very, very anchored to a certain kind of American counterculture that no longer exists. It hasn’t really moved into a 2.0 phase,” he said. “There are students and staff members that are still very tied to [Schachter-Shalomi’s] vision, and then there’s a younger generation, Gen Z, who have read some of his work and they’re influenced by it, but they really are thinking much more about, well, how does this translate into a post-countercultural America?”
Magid also feels the ideas of Renewal will become more important as American Jews’ attachment to Israel wanes, and the living memory of the Holocaust recedes.
If Rabbi Green’s speech at the JTS graduation was any indication, then the ideals of Jewish Renewal still hold their appeal.
“We need a new Judaism in America… where we also have the fresh air needed to create it,” he said. “How do we move forward… in articulating a Jewish theology for today that is both intellectually honest and spiritually rewarding?”
The audience of future Jewish leaders and teachers leapt to its feet.
—
The post Overdue or overdone? Two scholars hope to secure the legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
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.
Uncategorized
‘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.
The post ‘No speaking Swedish here!’ — Yiddish Day in Lund University appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
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.