Resources on Jewish Secularism

BOOK LIST

Memoirs and Stories:

Jones, Thai: A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience; (Free Press, 2004)
This book is a detailed history of one family’s tradition of radical politics. Jones’ mother came out of the radical Jewish tradition and there are detailed descriptions of her own mother’s early days as member of the Communist Party and then of the relation between these two generations of activists.

Kisseloff, Jeff: You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890’s to World War Two; (John Hopkins University Press, 1999)
Although not exclusively about secular Jews, or Jews of any sort for that matter, gives a great view into what it was like to live in a diverse Jewish Community in New York. Allows one to see how divisiveness is not always present.

Ed. Malene Alder Marks: Nice Jewish Girls; Growing up in America; (Plume, 1996)
This book is a wonderful collection of poems, stories and memoirs about growing up female and Jewish in the United States. Ilana Girard Singer’s short memoir “The Secret” lets us feel what it was like to be a child growing up Jewish and Radical during McCarthyism.

Ed. Metzker, Isaac: A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters to the Jewish Daily Forward; (Schoken Books, 1971)
This collection of questions from the Jewish Daily Forward’s advice column shows gives a window into the worries of secular and radical Jews and their conflicts with those more religious as they arrive in the United States and begin to assimilate.

Ed. Neugroschel, Joachine: The Shtetl; (Overlook Press, 1989)
Often when we refer to Jewish culture in a secular sense this is part of what we are talking about. The Shtetl gives us a glimpse of life in the Jewish villages across the pale of settlement through the stories that were written about them in the language of Shetl’s, Yiddish. The stories come from many years and many places but give us a wonderful sense of where secular Ashkenazi Jews come from.

Terkel, Studs: Coming of Age: The Story of our Century by Those Who Lived it; (New Press, 1995)
A great collection of oral histories about exactly what the title says. The two relevant to this packet are two secular non-Jews, Betty McCollister and Bresci Thompson. McCollister is a secular humanist and critic of religion she has a great perspective and her story if filled with logic and humor. Thompson is a radical who grew out of the same lower Manhattan poverty that produced so many radical secular Jews, helps make the connection between a time and place and the politics that came out of it.

REFERENCE:

Ed. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas: The Encyclopedia of the American Left; Second Edition; (Oxford University Press, 1998)
A useful place for basic information on secular Jewish organizations (Workman’s Circle, the Bund), as well as organizations and movements that secular Jews have played a large roll in. If you are reading the interviews included and find yourself not recognizing a social movement or radical organization or person it’s probably mentioned in this tomb.

ANALYSIS:

Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab: Jews and the New American Scene; (Harvard University Press 1995)
This book is a look into Jews in America and their relation to assimilation and the United States as a whole. Chapter three contains an analysis of the relation between being Jewish and participating in religious events, including some comparison to gentiles’ relation to religion.

Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner: Radical Hollywood; The Untold Story Behind America’s Favorite Movies; (The New Press, 2002)
This book tells the story of radicals in Hollywood during “ the golden age” of movies. This book explains how radicals intersected and in fact created mainstream American culture. Many of these radicals came from Jewish backgrounds and many of them were secular, although their secularism is not specifically explored.

WEB RESOURCES

There is overlap between the list of Web resources and Other Resources. I have only listed the web resources if they proved useful in their own right or if the location is outside of the New York Metropolitan area.

Center for Cultural Judaism: http://culturaljudaism.org/
A nice general website with one perspective on what it means to be secular. It contains articles, a bibliography and links to other resources as well as speaking to their own educational programs. They offer a grant for folks wanting to study secular Judaism. Easy to navigate

Cornell University’s Triangle Fire Online Exhibit: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/
Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School has put together an amazing online exhibit about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The fire took place on March 25th, 1911 in a factory in New York City and killed 146 workers primarily women of the Lower East Side from Jewish and Italian backgrounds. The fire is important to the study of secular Jews as it came one year after a major strike in which 30,000 shirtwaist girls walked off the job, including those at Triangle, and won concessions including better fire protection. The owners refused to implement the concessions after the strike ended and the fire worked to galvanize the community into further action. Many a radical was born from the deaths at Triangle. This a great site for kids.

National Yiddish Book Center: http://yiddishbookcenter.org/
The National Yiddish Book Center is devoted to the preservation of Yiddish written culture and engaging folks in that culture. It has out reach programs that include everything from writing workshops to conferences and readings. It is an amazing vault of our history. The website includes a schedule of events and general information. It is extremely friendly to navigate and they are a great resource even from a far. The center itself is located in Amherst Massachusetts, see listing under other resources.

Project Muse; Scholarly Journals Online: http://muse.jhu.edu/
This database is a great source for looking up articles regarding secular Jewishness. It’s very friendly to work with.

Tenement Museum: http://www.tenement.org
See other resources for description. Amazing website with great online exhibits. It’s easy to learn from and is great for kids.

OTHER RESOURCES

Museum of the city of New York
Address: 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 534-1672
Website: http://www.mcny.org/
This museum though stuffy looking in its architecture is anything but in their exhibits. In the winter of 2004 they featured an exhibit called “Radicals in the Bronx” about the radical housing cooperatives in the Bronx built between the wars that worked to be a community for radicals of all sorts in particular secular yiddishist Jews. Their collection is amazing and they know what to do with it.

National Yiddish Book Center
Address: On the Hampshire College Campus (on route 116) in Amherst MA
Phone: (413) 256-4900
See listing under web resources for description and website.

Tamiment Library
70 Washington Square South, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 998-2630
Website: http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/index.html
One of the best labor and radical history libraries existing in the United States. It is now a part of NYU but is open to the public. If you want to know more about radicalism in the United States this is a great resource. Their web is also quite comprehensive.

Tenement Museum
Address: 108 Orchard Street, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 431-0233
Website: http://www.tenement.org
This museum is dedicated to preserving the history of the Lower East Side and the remembering the folks who lived there. It is an amazing resource for anyone interested in learning about the location that sprung so many secular Jews. The museum uses many different forms of presentation to tell the story of the Lower East Side and take advantage of its amazing collection and building.

Workmen’s Circle-Arbeter Ring:
Address: 45 E. 33ed Street, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 889-6800
Website: http://www.circle.org/
One of the oldest specifically secular/cultural Jewish organizations still existing in the United States. Part union, part education society, part social club, dedicated to creating a better world and giving a community to Jewish secularists committed to social justice. Though based in New York there are branches across the country many of which offer secular shules for children and have Yiddish Chorus’s along with hosting cultural, political and secular religious events.

Jews For Racial & Economic Justice - 135 W. 29th St. #600 New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212-647-8966 Fax: 212-647-7124 email