By Ella Weiner
Image source: Historical Jewish Press
“Money for Passover
Fast, cheap, and exact,
After Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Israel…
To your relatives
Until entering in a house”
Amalgamated Bank is a corporation, still existing today, founded in 1923 with the intent of providing a bank for labor unions and working people. The bank was union controlled, specifically by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and its headquarters were in Union Square in New York City. Today it is controlled by the Service Employees International Union, and it uses its financial resources to push for liberal policies including a $15 hourly minimum wage. It is unsurprising that a bank with this purview would have advertised in “פֿאַרװערטס” (Forward), the Yiddish newspaper where this ad was found, considering the number of Yiddish speaking Jewish immigrants in the labor force.
Jewish immigrants who landed in New York often found themselves working in the garment industry, because of previous employment before immigration. These immigrants mostly spoke Yiddish, and thus Yiddish became the language of the American Jewish working class in the early 1900s. Consequently, anyone who wanted to start labor organizing among Jewish working people would have to communicate with them in Yiddish. It is unsurprising that Yiddish became essentially the Jewish Socialist language, considering how apt an analogy can be drawn between the Communist notion of the proletariat and bourgeoisie and the dynamics of Yiddish and Hebrew within Ashkenazi Jewish society. Hebrew, as the biblical language, has been throughout history the language of educated elites, of those who had time to study Torah. Yiddish, on the other hand, was the common language, the language of everyday life and of those who did not have the time or money (or both), to study Torah.
The Jewish community in New York has quite a notable history of involvement in labor movements. One notable Jewish labor activist, Abraham Cahan, was the editor of Forward for a time, where he used the language of Yiddish to communicate with the Jewish working class. He also translated the Communist Manifesto into Yiddish. Another notable activist, Rose Schneiderman, was a Polish immigrant and feminist, who advocated for both labor necessities, such as safe working conditions, in addition to amenities like education for workers, and time for recreation. She was president of the New York Women’s Trade Union League, and a friend and advisor of Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was nicknamed, by those who disagreed with her views, the “Red Rose of Anarchy.”
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