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Paraphrase the excerpts.</li>
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Discuss and agree upon the main points of each excerpt.</li>
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Describe the relationship between worker and boss or employer in the excer
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What do you notice about the illustration of the working girls on the cover of <em>The Masses</em>? What conclusions can you draw about the women selling newspapers in the photograph?
Written in 1925, Bread Givers is a novel about the Jewish immigrants who lived in the tenements of New York’s East Side and who worked in the garment industry.
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What does “Bread and Roses” mean in Oppenheim’s poem?</li>
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What does “the rising of the women means the rising of the race” mean? </li>
<l
The following lyrics are to the song “Bread and Roses.” The words were written by James Oppenheim and originally published in The American Magazine in December, 1911.
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How might each of these songs speak to one’s experience as a worker?</li>
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How might these two songs contribute to a worker’s feeling part of a larger, collective e
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How does the message of this song compare with that of <em>Ale Brider</em>?</li>
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Why do you think the song’s sound is so sad?</li>
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What is the central message of this song?</li>
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How does the sound, as opposed to the words, deliver this message?</li>
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When do you think a song like this might have
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Why do you think the ILGWU’s Unity House recreational facility sponsored talks on topics such as social psychology, as pictured here, or art history, for example?</li>
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W
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Why do you think the union had its own theater and why would workers be involved in it?</li>
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How are the values you identified in the first question demonstrated in the pictur
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Why do you think the Union has social and cultural objectives for its members that go beyond what happens in the workplace?</li>
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How do these union-provided services benefit t
Explore contemporary Jewish labor campaigns on issues such as the living wage and the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, and analyze how and why Jewish organizations are advocating in solidarity with oppressed workers.
Deborah Siegel, PhD, is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted and Only Child, a speaker and thought leadership coach. Visit her at www.deborahsiegelphd.com. She is also a member of Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, where the theme for 5775 is “Shabbat.”
Throughout history, Jews have been in the roles of both workers and employers, working alongside Jews and non-Jews and employing Jews and non-Jews. Yet about a third of the way through the twentieth century a significant economic and cultural shift too
Through the history of mutual aid societies, unions, and settlement houses, as well as contemporary organizations working for labor rights, consider the ways Jews have supported one another and also worked in solidarity with others to repair the world.
There is a deep commitment within Jewish tradition of helping those in need and of pursuing justice in the world. We need look no further than the commandment repeated thirty-six times in the Torah not to oppress the stranger or ill-treat the widow or
Examine inter-generational relationships among Jewish immigrants, and the role of work and workers’ youth culture in the Americanization process. Use art and writing to explore your own identity formation.
Life in America was drastically different from life in the shtetls, the villages in Russia, Poland and the other Eastern European countries from which came most of the Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. One challenge facing i
The American labor movement was shaped by the activism of immigrant workers, and few played as prominent a role as the young Jewish women who worked in the garment industry of the early 20th century. On November 23, 1909, between 20,000 and
Explore the concept of “Bread and Roses” and ideas about work and dignity, with specific cases on education and culture, hats and clothing, poetry and song, as well as traditional Jewish texts about labor.
