EMMA GOLDMAN'S RADICAL TRAJECTORY: A RESILIENT “LITVAK” LEGACY?

Abstract

The enduring legacy of Emma Goldman may be more of a factor in American Jewish politics and identity, especially among women, than is typically assumed. In order to gain a better sense of her positive resonance it may help to revisit Goldman's origins and intellectual development from under-exploited vantage points. An immense body of historiography is devoted to Goldman. Yet her birthplace, Kovno [Kaunas], Lithuania, and her initial United States residence, Rochester, New York, are unduly minimized. Kovno's Jews were famed for their revolutionary politics and ardent rationalism; Rochester was (supposedly) exemplary of a new industrial order. Goldman perceived, however, that the Jews' plight in Upstate New York was far from hopeful. She narrated, and even distorted, her autobiography to underscore Rochester as a crucible of her radicalism and the setting of a dramatic challenge to her loyalties, while her “Litvak” legacy and connections were vital throughout her life. Moreover, she was able to maintain a passionate commitment to her family while sustaining fierce adherence to universal principles.

Notes

Mosse, The Reformation, 1.

See Kosak, Cultures of Opposition.

Falk et al., The Emma Goldman Papers [microform]; Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume One; Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume Two.

Falk, Love, Anarchy.

Ibid., vi.

Morton, Emma Goldman and the American Left.

Falk, Love, Anarchy, 11.

Antler, The Journey Home, 74.

Wexler, Emma Goldman, 3–15.

Wexler, Emma Goldman, 40.

Falk, “Goldman, Emma,” 526–30.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 214.

See Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, yet a substantial article is in Hyman and Moore, Jewish Women in America. See also Waldstreicher, “Radicalism, Religion, Jewishness,” 74–92; Frankel, “Whatever Happened,” 903–42; Wexler, “The Early Life,” 7–21.

Howe, World of Our Fathers; Rischin, The Promised City; Sanders, The Downtown Jews; Sorin, The Jewish People in America, Vol. III; Sorin, The Prophetic Minority.

Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation of the Jews, 167–71.

Morawska, Insecure Prosperity; Sachar, A History of the Jews in America; Rischin and Livingstone, Jews of the American West; Dinnerstein and Paulsson, Jews in the South.

Endelman, The Jewish Community of Indianapolis.

Higham, Send These to Me; Jaher, A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness; Dinnerstein and Reimers, Ethnic Americans.

See Tedlow, “The Manichean World of George Eastman”; Brayer, George Eastman; Taft, Photography and the American Scene.

Leopold Godowsky, Jr., transcript of an interview conducted by Alan Green, April 16 [and] 30, 1971 (New York: American Jewish Committee, Oral History Library, 1971), **P Oral Histories, Box 27, no.2, New York Public Library [NYPL], pp. 63, 66, 106–9.

Rosenberg, The Jewish Community in Rochester.

Ibid., 64–5.

Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 184–7; Foner, The AFL in the Progressive Era, 257–64; Jensen, “The Great Uprising in Rochester,” 94–113; Adler, The Rise and Decline; Rochester Joint Board, The Amalgamated in Rochester: 1915–1939 (Rochester [Rochester Joint Board], 1939); Hindman, Child Labor, 187–90; Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement, 119–21.

Frommer and Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills.

Noveck, Milton Steinberg, 1.

Jensen, “The Great Uprising,” 94.

Noveck, Milton Steinberg, 1.

Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation, 167–9.

Quoted in Falk, Love, Anarchy, 19.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 13.

Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 30–56; Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago. Levin is exemplary in situating its subject within a particular Jewish context. Rather than following the trend of previous Chicago biographers in seeing her Jewish background as generic, Levin explores the importance of Vilna and Lithuania to Judy Chicago and her family.

Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago, especially 6–30.

Ginzberg, Foreword, 25–6.

Ozer, The Litvak Legacy, 145. I am grateful to Francois Guesnet for this recommendation.

Alice Wexner's fleshed-out portrait of Berkman in her biography of Goldman is the exception to the rule: Wexner, Emma Goldman, 54–8.

Wexner, Emma Goldman, 29.

Despite the general “backwardness” of Lithuania, Kovno was regarded as important in the development of the Bund and nearly every other radical movement among Jews; see Trunk, “Di eynheyibn fun der yiddisher-arbeter beveygun,” 38, 43, 48, 75.

Letter from Ron Allen, 20 September 2001, Weekly Worker 200; Shatz, Jan Waclaw Machajski, 15.

Steinberg, “Milton Steinberg,” 579–600.

Steinberg, “When I Think of Seraye,” 183.

Chrust, Keyda'n, iii, emphasis added.

Goldman, “A Sketch of Alexander Berkman,” n.p.; Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 57, 78.

Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 103–4. Goldman was not oblivious to her own attractiveness; see Living My Life, vol. 2, 951.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 2, 634.

Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 206–7.

Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 227–8.

Wexner, Emma Goldman, 54.

Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 356, 562, 472.

Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 562–3.

Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 81; Litvak, Vos geven, 3–5.

Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume Two, 522, 395, 396.

Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 34.

Zoldok, “Marijampole,” 31.

Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 39.

Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 40.

M. M., “Profile: The Litvak,” 31.

Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume One, 21–4, 557, 493–5, 519, 254, 486, 132 n. 2; 323, 95, 523, 565, 570; 257 n. 2, 556, 566, 574; 21, 114 n. 6, 519; Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume Two, 228, 574; 542, 355–8, 390, 411–12; 106, 542–3, 32, 156, 476, 172–3, 361, 471, 477; 223, 467, 532, 565.

Noveck, Milton Steinberg, 282, n.18.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 11–12. The moniker of Rochester as “Flower City” was derived from its earlier reputation for producing “flour” for baking. In this regard it was overtaken by other cities, such as Minneapolis, Minnesota. Later the prominence of the “Lilac Festival” in Rochester's Highland Park, as well as other events related to horticulture, prompted the change to “Flower City.”

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 16.

Falk, “Forging Her Place,” 6.

See the “The Temple” on the website of Hickey Freeman: <www.hickeyfreeman.com/about/>.

Bernstein, The Life It Brings, 1–2.

One of the most explicit illustrations of this idea is articulated in Sholem Asch's novel, Three Cities, originally published in 1933, with at least 15 editions following; see Asch, Three Cities.

Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale, although dated, remains the gold standard. There is extensive literature on the Bund; see Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours, and Pickhan, “Gegen den Strom.”

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 213; Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume Two, 472.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 213.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Rosenberg, The Jewish Community in Rochester, 125.

Ibid.

Rosenberg, The Jewish Community in Rochester, 125–6.

Eisenstadt, Affirming the Covenant, 92.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 214.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 215–16.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 2, 351.

Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation, 167–71.

Interestingly, at America's unrivalled prestige university, Harvard, it was Harry Starr, “the son of a Russian immigrant who established the first kosher butcher shop in Gloversville, New York” who initiated the fight against Harvard's notorious and dogged “Jewish quota.” See “Harvard's Jewish Problem,” at <http://www.us-israel.org/j.source/anti-semitism/harvard.html>; Jewish Studies as an academic field at Harvard would largely result from the benevolence of Lucius Littauer, who himself was notorious as a “glove industrialist” whose employees launched a bitter and protracted strike in 1914; see Engel, Shtetl in the Airondacks. A significant number of the Gloversville Jews were from Warsaw, the center of the glove industry in Poland; see Gladwell, “Letter from Los Angeles.”

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 210.

Jensen and Davidson, A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike.

Berkowitz, 97–9.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 7.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 6.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 1, 10.

Falk et al., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History, Volume One, 316.

Kosak, Cultures of Opposition.

Dobkowski and Lovenheim, A Family Among Families.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 2, 696–7.

Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 2, 633.

Letter from Emma Goldman to Alfred Stieglitz, 15 January 1915, Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keefe Archive, YCAL MSS 85, Box 4, Folder 85, Series I. Alfred Stieglitz: Correspondence Personal and business correspondence, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven.

<www.hochstein.org>.

“Goldman Returns to the United States for Only 90 Days,” <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/exhile.html>

Lazare, Job's Dungheap, 11.