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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Tony Michels, “Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York” (Harvard UP, 2005)
Description: I always assumed that the Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York and created the massive Jewish American labor movement brought their leftist politics with them from the Old Country. But now I know different thanks to Tony Michels’ terrific Fire in their Hearts. Yiddish Socialists in New York (Harvard University Press, 2005). As Tony explains, most of the Yiddish-speaking immigrants who arrived in New York were apolitical, or rather feared politics having come from a regime that punished open political activity (Tsarist Russia). These immigrants, then, learned socialism on American shores. Their teachers were Jewish members of th...