"May a Freethinker Help a Pious Man?": The Shared World of the "Religious" and the "Secular" Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants to America

Beginning in 1902, the Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward), already well on its way to becoming the most widely-read Yiddish newspaper in New York, debuted a series of debates that provided conflicting perspectives on serious as well as frivolous issues, from questions of morality and honesty to the proper use of cosmetics. Given the Forverts' standing as the foremost secular and socialist Yiddish newspaper, it is surprising that debates focusing on religion sparked the most responses, and endured longer than all the other features. The debate over the question, "May a progressive lodge admit believing members?" ran from September through November 1904, drawing eighty letters. Interrogating the boundaries between ideology and practice, the 1904 debate examined the religious practices of socialists as it considered the case of members of the Workmen's Circle, a socialist fraternal organization, who had been "caught" attending High Holiday religious services. The following spring, an exchange titled "A shabesdige shayle" (A Sabbath question) garnered fifty letters from February through April.¹

In both debates, religious matters were analyzed seriously, if from a somewhat unconventional perspective. While discussions of the "Sabbath question" in the Yiddish press typically referred to the plight of observant Jews forced to work on Saturday, the Forverts addressed the topic from the standpoint of freethinking, or nonreligious, Jewish immigrants who encountered religious Jews and observed their Sabbath dilemma at work. The debate asked: Should a free thinking hat maker help his religious coworker finish his work on a Friday afternoon so that the religious coworker would be able to leave the shop in time for the Sabbath, or would this assistance, in its direct support of religious behavior, constitute a violation of free thought? This article examines the two Forverts debates, the 1904 Workmen's Circle feature and the 1905 Sabbath question forum, to gain insight on the complex and variegated religious identities of eastern European Jewish immigrants to America.

The Forverts' debates point to the vigor with which Jewish immigrants and their organizations wrestled with religion. They are especially significant in showing how religion and reactions to it did not disappear with the waning of religious authority, but rather became all the more pressing. By the turn of the twentieth century, religious authority had diminished in importance for most eastern European Jews, whether they remained in eastern Europe or traveled to America. American principles of religious voluntarism and freedom of religion made religion a private, not public, matter, and sent religious leaders into somewhat of a tailspin as they had to forge new ways of reaching their audience and protecting their way of life.² Industrialization, urbanization, and migration within eastern Europe and to America weakened communal bonds and introduced drastic lifestyle changes that dealt severe blows not only to institutional religion, but also to the individual's sense of piety.³ Bereft of guidance and in constant encounter with the newness of the urban world and its challenges, individuals struggled to balance work schedules, political ideologies, and other secular interests with religious piety. Many immigrants, confronted with the economic requirement of Saturday work, sought ways to be religious, even when they could not adhere to every aspect of halacha (Jewish law). As the debates will show, even the Jewish radicals, who theoretically dismissed religion altogether, grappled with the novel endeavor of fashioning a Jewish identity without religion and figuring out how to interact with other Jews—coworkers, neighbors, family members—who retained religious practice and sensibilities.

The two debates place the focus on the immigrants' attitudes toward and questions about religious issues, and in so doing, challenge the way in which historiography has tended to divide immigrants into two groups: the religious and the secular. In a sense, historians have followed the cues of immigrant ideologues, the rabbis or the radical leaders, whose own writing and rhetoric tended to create a stark divide between the pious and the political radicals. As a result, the "secular" immigrant looms large in the historiography, organizing strikes, peddling on the street, and...