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| 191 36 “The Strongest Weapons in the Hands of Jewish Workers” (1924) United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society The 1920s witnessed an upsurge of Yiddish cultural activity by activists associated with Di linke, the Communist-led segment of the Jewish labor movement. Resisting the general trend in American society toward “100% Americanism,” a notion opposed to the maintenance of ethnic identities, radicals in Chicago founded the United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society to develop Yiddish-language education and culture. Comrades! The United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society has finished its first year of activity. Twelve months ago the Cultural Society was no more than the sincere wish of a few to bring light and soul into the hardened life of the local Jewish working masses. Now it is the cultural expression of the healthiest part of the Chicago Jewish working class and its grass-roots intellectuals. Over the course of the past year the United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society has become an important factor in the cultural life of the local revolutionary Jewish workers—a solidly rooted cultural institution, which now plays a large role in our struggle for a spiritually rich future and the rights of our secular Yiddish culture in America. During the entire time of its existence, the Cultural Society has continuously awakened and beckoned the Jewish worker to great, unified, and purposeful cultural action for his own sake, for the interests of the Yiddish language, and for free thought in our culture. You have successfully broken through the wall of indifference toward our cultural problems among many of those who have naively believed that culture, in general, and Yiddish culture , in particular, is a matter for the petty-bourgeois intellectual who has barely a connection to the social-political tasks of the organized Jewish labor movement. The Cultural Society has received approval for its activities, rec- 192 | Life of the Mind ognition, love, and sympathy from the most significant political, cultural, and mutual-aid Jewish labor organizations in Chicago; even those who have betrayed our cultural interests here in the new country have had to reckon with it. At the beginning of our second year of cultural work, the United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society may truthfully boast of its accomplishment, of preparing the warm sentiments needed for tackling our local cultural problems in their full depth and breadth, and for the creation of a beautiful, festive cultural atmosphere in our prosaic working-class life. This accomplishment will be inscribed in bright colors in the cultural history of American Jewish workers; but it is only the precondition for responsible, ongoing cultural work among the broad Jewish masses. With strong confidence in our own forces, with redoubled energy, the United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society now enters into the process of building its most important institutions. Those are children’s schools, courses for adults, and its own cultural home in the northwest part of the city. These cultural institutions are the principal parts of the Cultural Society, the basis of every genuine workers’ cultural activity; they are the green oases on the dry paths of our workaday lives—the fresh well from which will flow happy belief in our own cultural possibilities; they are the strongest weapons in the hands of the Jewish workers against darkness and slavery; embedded in them is the shining hope and guarantee that we will not be emptied spiritually here in America and will not be left without suitable inheritors for our happy future. Comrades! We have taken steps to realize the most beautiful dreams of Jewish working-class life. This is a colossally difficult task, which will consume the limited means of the Cultural Society and can only be successfully realized with your help. More so than ever before, we now demand your active participation—your idealism, your warmth and generosity—in our constructive work. Carry the idea of our education and educational work to your places of work and leisure! Become teachers yourselves, send your children to our schools, and influence others to follow suit. See that our teachings and educational institutions grow in all parts of Jewish Chicago and are able to keep their doors wide open and friendly to every person who thirsts for learning and knowledge! Make possible the creation of a center, in the northwestern part of the city, for the various undertakings of the Cultural Society and the cultural revival of the local radical Jewish working masses! Carry a brick yourself to [3.140.242.165] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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