Instructor: Paul Berman
One of the main currents of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and then in the Western hemisphere from the late nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth century and beyond was socialism, which contained a lively anarchist subcurrent. This course will study the anarchist subcurrent. It will follow the Jewish anarchists as they emerged in Russia under the czars, and then as they emigrated to other parts of the world and especially to the United States, where they contributed significantly and constructively (as the course will show) to American Jewish life and the labor movement.
The course will focus especially on two of the leading personalities of the Jewish anarchist movement, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and on certain of their followers and comrades. The course will examine Peter Kropotkin of Russia and perhaps some other anarchist theoreticians who, without being Jewish themselves, shaped the Jewish movement. The course will examine anarchist cultural ideas, the anarchist role in the garment unions and the IWW, and the heroic anarchist confrontation with the Communist movement in the Soviet Union and around the world––a largely untold story.
Some guests with first-hand knowledge of these topics will participate. A bit of reminiscing will go on. And, throughout the course, the participants will reflect on the pertinence of the Jewish anarchists of long ago to questions and controversies of our own time.