Labor Forum at Hebrew College Sunday

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

NEWTON - Judaism carries a proud history of active involvement in the labor movement, both in the shtetls and tundras of Eastern Europe as well as in 20^th century America. In keeping with this legacy, this Sunday at 7 p.m., a diverse program at Hebrew College will feature labor-oriented, Jewish-themed discussion and song.

The two-hour forum, sponsored by The American Jewish Historical Society, The Workmen’s Circle, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action and Jobs with Justice, will include an overview by Joyce Antler, the Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture at Brandeis University and chair of the American Studies department. Antler’s books include The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America, America and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers, The Journey Home: Jewish Women and the American Century, Changing Education: Women As Radicals and Conservators, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman, and The Educated Woman and Professionalization: The Struggle for a New Feminine Identity, 1890-1920.

Speaker Stephen Lerner, who serves as the Director of the Building Services Division of SEIU (Service Employees International Union), was the chief founder of the national Justice for Janitors effort, which mobilized national support for the janitors’ strike in Boston last fall. The organization has thus far organized more than 200,000 janitors, security officers, property service workers, window cleaners, and doormen nationwide, for whom it has won master contracts, health insurance, dramatic wage increases and full time work.

“Lerner has been a union organizer for over 25 years,” said SEIU publicist Cynthia Kain. “He started organizing with the United Farm Workers of America on the grape and lettuce boycott, and organized garment workers in North Carolina, South Carolina and other southern states.”

Many Boston-area Jews were involved in the janitor’s struggle; on Sunday, Lerner will discuss the relationship between his own Jewish identity and practice and his union work.

Performing Yiddish folk music will be A Besere Velt: Yiddish Community Chorus, a 70-member multigenerational chorus of the mutual aid society’s Workmen’s Circle, which was founded in 1900 by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Known as the “Red Cross of Labor,” it was, by 1935, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the U.S. Their “A Besere Velt – A Better World” will relate the history of the Jewish labor movement in song. “Yiddish was the mameloshn, the mother tongue, of the over 2.5 million eastern European Jewish immigrants who came to this country at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Lisa Gallatin, Boston District Director of the Workmen's Circle and Musical Director of A Besere Velt. “It was also the language of the Jewish workers and Jewish unions. The Yiddish folk songs tell the story of their hardships and their dreams.” Gallatin spent nearly 20 years as a union organizer; most recently, she organized clerical workers with SEIU.

Also speaking will be Jewish Labor Committee Regional Director Micha Josephy, a Newton native, who helped increase Jewish participation in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization while working at the JCRC.

“The JLC was founded in 1934 by leaders in the Jewish Labor Movement to mobilize American opposition to Nazism in Europe,” he explained, adding that the New England Region, which helped coordinate Jewish support for the janitors strike, is focusing on building a Labor-Jewish community alliance of mutual support and understanding. He believes that Jews likened the janitors’ struggle for immigrant and worker rights to both our history and moral teachings. “I see the evening as an opportunity to explore our American Jewish history, which is deeply rooted in the labor movement, to understand the key role that Jews still play in today's labor movement, and to explore our moral responsibility as Jews to stand up for immigrant and worker rights,” he said.

“As significant labor campaigns are constantly seeking support, I hope this event will contribute to Jewish community support for dignity and respect on the job.”

“Sunday’s sponsors represent some of the primary Jewish organizations building partnerships with labor,” said Gallatin. “It wasn't until I enrolled my daughter in the Workmen's Circle shule (its Sunday Jewish cultural school) that I began to understand that, in choosing to work for a more just world through the labor movement, I was carrying on the tradition of my people.”

Jewish Identity and the Labor Movement: Past and Present will be held at Hebrew College’s Berenson Hall, 160 Herrick St. in Newton Centre. The event is free, open to the public, and handicapped accessible. For more information, please contact the American Jewish Historical Society at 617-559-8880.