2 10 14 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/b50838273538909f479460dc27a7c402.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=Lf5%7E5Su7D6iHCYB8UN1D%7EPRSANHJM7hTqKyFMxivY3-p0K36udao72Nz59hido%7Eer2GMbV7%7EWRFBwTPBfOPajXZgQzjngoGyE52rdai%7E93GbwfPFKu04BttgVdHi71Gc%7EHjK6DeeF%7EXZoPNTqXGopQnFAbaFMYw7YXRoiCWdSCpyrAyaVwshbM-pUrTJG11hfFQX1zMZAnrovO6NF38xyReWk81c%7E3DwKav1WOQqEkeC5tJkDI0M2ZSlf-0zNuSvFi695u6F%7Ei5aciX7FIYGMI3OENnjUtzsvHCVqajU5eG8rNJtRvcejLF7K3WfYn48KhBW8Bpq0aKXMWTdNeiUYw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 18361e3bcbbd5faade60b222efccb043 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Autobiographical writing Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Stan Weir (and a brief snapshot of left wing politics) One evening, toward the end of August in 1968, I received a call from someone named Stan Weir, explaining that he had just arrived in Washington from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and that a mutual friend gave him my name. He will be spending the year in Washington, doing research on a union democracy study. Could he meet with me? Absolutely. Union democracy was one of my favorite subjects. I invited him to come to dinner the next day. When he showed up, I was greeted by a tall, muscular red head, carrying flowers for Sylvia, and a note book in which to record my immortal words. We began talking about our involvement with the labor movement. I summarized my few years with the ILGWU, the laundry workers and AFSCME. Stan’s involvement was a lot longer, and as a worker, not as a union staffer. When he told me about his work in California, I asked him if he knew some of the union people I had worked with when I was at the Jewish Labor Committee. I didn’t realize it, but most of the people I asked him about had been members of the Independent Socialist League (ISL)—followers of Max Schachtman, an early follower of Leon Trotsky. Stan smiled and said, “you found me out.” Yes, he knew them, and he had been an active member of the ISL. Trying to figure out 20th century left wing politics can drive you crazy. There had been utopian socialists and Marxian scientific socialists through most of the second half of the 19th century. However, the official Socialist Party was formed in 1901 from the merger of the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Labor Party. And after the Russian Revolution, the Communist Party was established, and in the ‘20s, there were several different factions with different faction leaders: James B. Cannon and William Z. Foster and Jay Lovestone. What the various left wing parties wanted was to change our economic system from capitalism to socialism-- to put the means of production into the hands of the workers-- but they had different ways of going about it. When, in 1928, Stalin denounced Trotsky, and when Cannon, who was there, read what Trotsky wrote, he concluded that Trotsky was right. Cannon converted Max Schachtman who had been the leader of the Young Workers’ League, and they formed the Socialist Workers Party, but they split, and after World War II the ISL was formed with Schachtman as its leader. I had gotten to know the ISL within months after I started organizing for Local 38, in 1951. I had met Anne Draper who was an organizer for the hatters union. I was trying to organize workers in the Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue custom tailoring and dressmaking shops; Anne was trying to organize workers in custom millinery shops in the same area. Anne was the wife of Hal Draper who was the editor of Labor Action, the ISL newspaper. Some time after our meeting, Anne tried to get me to join the ISL. She invited Sylvia and me for dinner, and we had a lovely evening. I did not join ISL, but I did buy a subscription to Labor Action. Some months later, Anne invited us to attend an ISL meeting at which Max Schachtman was to speak. We accepted; we met Schachtman, and were duly impressed by his oratory. (One incident stands out. During the question and answer period, a disheveled man stood up and announced, “My name is Maxwell Bodenheim. I have written a poem.” And he proceeded to read his poem, and Schachtman listened politely.) Subsequently, in 1957, the ISL merged with the Socialist Party (SP), which had previously merged with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), calling itself the SP-SDF. As I said, trying to make sense of left wing politics can drive you crazy. Stan knew everybody in the ISL I knew them casually; he knew them intimately. He had been fighting the good fight since the early ‘40s: As a merchant seaman and a member of the Seaman’s Union of the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he had worked in an auto plant and was active in the United Auto Workers. He moved on to work as a longshoreman and was a member of the International Longshore and Warehousemen’s Union. It was in that capacity that he took on ILWU President Harry Bridges, and a union practice that he considered unfair. The union had created a B category, a second class category of longshoremen. There were 700 men in the B category, and they were supposed to be promoted to A in a year, but they weren’t. Stan objected, and he and a large group of B workers were fired. He brought a lawsuit which dragged on for 17 years. He lost. In 1968, most of that was behind him. He had been hired by the University of Illinois a few years earlier, to teach in its labor education program, and he was having a great time. Stan, his wife Mary and his two daughters, Kim and Laurie, had moved from California to Champaign-Urbana, and now looked forward to the year in Washington, where Stan would be doing research. They rented a house near us in the Takoma section, and Carol and Laurie went to school together and became good friends. The research work he did for the study was a labor of love. Stan was committed to fighting for workers’ rights and for union democracy. He was against the bosses, whether they were management bosses or labor bosses. Stan’s contribution to the study, “Comparative Union Democracy,” dealt with the limitations of democracy in several American unions, including the Steel Workers, the Electrical Workers and the Auto Workers. I had been at the US Civil Rights Commission for three years, and suggested to my supervisor, Sam Simmons, and staff director, Bill Taylor, that I could play a useful role for the Commission. I knew most of the labor leaders who supported civil rights and I offered to do for the Commission what I did at the JLC: attend union conventions, distribute Commission publications and discuss the work of the Commission with union officials. I offered to attend the upcoming UAW Convention in Atlantic City, and received approval. As the date for the convention approached, I thought it would be a great idea to invite Stan. I was driving a rental car, and had reserved a room at the Convention hotel. Stan could come along at no cost. When I suggested it, he refused. Why? No reason. I used all my powers of persuasion, and suggested that he think about it. I called him the next day and explained that we would have a terrific time in Atlantic City. He reluctantly agreed. We arrived at the Convention Hall just as the first day’s morning session was ending. The delegates were leaving for lunch. As we picked up our guest badges, we spotted a group of people whom we knew: Several UAW delegates and guests, and at the center of the group, Max Schachtman. We headed over. Schachtman spotted Stan and waved to him, calling out: “Hello Red! When are you going to make the revolution?” This was not said with affection. It was said with derision. Max Schachtman was ridiculing Stan. All these former radicals had moved dramatically to the right. Schachtman actually was the head of the right wing caucus within the merged SP-SDF. He was an outspoken supporter of LBJ and the Vietnam War. Stan was the only one of them who still had his socialist principles, who still believed. I now realized why Stan did not want to be there. 2-5-11 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data application/msword Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stan Weir (and a brief snapshot of left-wing politics) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jacob Schlitt Description An account of the resource "One evening, toward the end of August in 1968, I received a call from someone named Stan Weir, explaining that he had just arrived in Washington from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and that a mutual friend gave him my name." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-02-05 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource en Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1951/1970 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AutoRecovery_save_of_Stan_Weir Activism Civil Rights Friends Independent Socialist League (ISL) Labor Movement Politics Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/15586d3b910f243baa21fd0655caaba4.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=P--K7jDkD1yO4aihioFziV0Mu7JRPRHADW4d49HM%7EZbnA7Kskc%7ECc-H7hLeXk-Lh6cF8u6rU0ZavAHh91oCVeXJp7BhZsbz0CujePaNlGF-xsGdsc-1cEfosfdxyLBIlOlqxRm1yFFCg8uZL-1VwHMqUxuT5zEg5slYgd2TYSxccxWqP7-souS4hiwI58HVUfOZw5cIzqu16zmyI9%7E-8oK1XUDus5Gl%7ELJPiP4REvXWuaPnaOIrS8lVx7gFD3C-xG-tjbtGDttoTlwzSdVu-HfRMvi4Sv75a4EXbUxpOujEu5Wq08SsVTrQqyi-WTX46s5xaEOZkf6CeCBOBaLGN1A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 153e37c0ee71b19c4756f0e134b19ce6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Autobiographical writing Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document ANOTHER ROL (Revolutionary Organization of Labor) Many groups and organizations have spoken out in favor of the public workers of Wisconsin when Gov. Scott Walker announced his plan that substantially cuts the benefits and eliminates nearly all collective bargaining rights for state workers. At one of the demonstrations supporting the Wisconsin public employees, at the Boston State House, I was handed a leaflet that stated, “Capitalists always try to maximize profits, and unions are an obstacle to this end…The “union busters” new divide and conquer “big lie” is to blame state budget shortfalls on unionized government workers: that public sector workers (our teachers, sanitation workers and public health workers etc.) are “fat cats” at taxpayers’ expense...” It concluded, “The Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA, supports the just struggle of the Wisconsin workers. No more cutbacks or concessions! Make the rich pay!” I don’t disagree, but what caught my eye was the name of the organization: the Revolutionary Organization of Labor.” There was something familiar about that name. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realized: it is not the name, but the initials: ROL. Do members of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor call themselves ROL? Will they be confused with our ROL? Can we prevent them from using ROL, since we called ourselves ROL first? Perhaps we can call ourselves ROL #1, and they can be ROL #2. There may be a group called the Royal Order of Lemmings, or Russian Opera Lovers. If there are, they can be ROL #3 and ROL #4. Time out. I just Googled ROL and found 21 other ROLs. The Revolutionary Organization of Labor was not among them. There were Rule of Law, Rock of Love, Rotate Left, Rise of Legends, Review of Literature, Retired Officers Luncheon, etc. The closest to us was a band called Rock Out Loud. The source for this information was the Free Online Dictionary (FOD) and it asked readers to submit a new definition. I submitted Reading Out Loud. Hopefully, we will be the 22nd listing. I did not give them the Revolutionary Organization of Labor. If they want to be listed in FOD, let them submit their name themselves. 8-18-11 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data application/msword Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Another ROL (Revolutionary Organization of Labor) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jacob Schlitt Description An account of the resource "Many groups and organizations have spoken out in favor of the public workers of Wisconsin when Gov. Scott Walker announced his plan that substantially cuts the benefits and eliminates nearly all collective bargaining rights for state workers." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-08-18 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource en Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Another_ROL Labor Movement Observations Reading Out Loud (R.O.L.) Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/0f1c052325b9453ceb90261e40caf62b.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=W4THA5337wPocxneKjKRBV822pgdsBZILD1FXVyVEvj6F4vAaVl%7EZiqQhrM1-wV5DnhhPPXSqE5d6OOdhrNq5M5YmrqQHdLbUkBQFtnq3Nakn%7E7yD4iDcL5Y2z5uYoLc7cjeBQUTSx0rn6NAKBRK8pxiBY8XJsPMbZ7eR7dzGsXn5bOWcuU1zaZWxk4N2DyDIGeHEauBe7krMbvfZmqsbF4CYnUShXCltG9W-RObSYETJxkq3CvdrALNX-gcddbHRPz-oo8sKOg3ER83NqnOhcBFCvDujFAGzIXwYGmUymi5sTws5Wh85ty9Bw16DyO6FAK0-xqbh7iH1T1cSdgudw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 48230c8f91b322ee91c42ab0c42f2663 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Autobiographical writing Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document A Young Person’s View of The Class Struggle From my earliest days, I was convinced that we were caught up in the class struggle. I had not yet heard of Karl Marx or Das Kapital. I knew nothing about communism, socialism. anarchism, or capitalism. But wherever I looked, the class struggle was taking place. In grade school, it was the students versus the teachers. Though I shouldn’t have, I viewed the teachers as the enemy, the ruling class. We students were powerless. Teachers were supposed to impart knowledge, but most did it through a divide and conquer approach to the student class. Ours was not a classless society. Throughout our school life, we were moved from class to class by the state. We were the oppressed class. The teachers, the ruling class, pitted student against student. They opposed and undermined any form of solidarity among students. They gave tests, and divided the students. They praised those who received the highest marks, and demeaned those who did not do as well. Teachers would even try to get students to report on each other. In every class, there were the snitchers who turned on their class, who sold out their fellow students. Teacher’s pets! It took me many years to change my view, and see teachers in a different light: As people with whom you could have a friendly relationship. I had to overcome the idea that it would be consorting with the enemy class. The class struggle existed wherever I looked in my neighborhood. It was certainly the case with regard to the capitalist property owner of our living quarters. The landlord (or landowner) charged us $25 a month rent for our two room apartment. If we did not pay it, he would evict us. We would be out in the street, with no place to live. Fortunately, my mother always managed to pay the rent, but it was no question that we would have been at the mercy of the heartless Mr. Gordon if we missed a payment. During the depression, many apartments were vacant, and landlords would entice tenants by offering them the first month rent-free. Some tenants would take advantage of the offer, pay the second and third month’s rent, and then got back at the capitalist exploiter by no longer paying rent. A hollow victory for the poor renter. After several months, the eviction would come. The capitalist triumphs again. The relationship between the storekeeper and the customer was another aspect of the class struggle. Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Margolis, and Mr. Sheinman were our neighborhood grocer, butcher and druggist. They were the capitalists. They owned their stores, or so I believed, and they stocked them with merchandise, which they sold to their struggling customers, to make a profit. I was aware that the way you make a lot of money is to buy low and sell high. (I had to admit that they didn’t make a lot of money from their stores on Longwood Avenue.) I did not feel animosity, but I was aware that we belonged to two different classes. They were businessmen, and my mother was a poor (unemployed) worker, and therefore I was part of the working class. By the time I grew up and moved away from the neighborhood, Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Margolis and Mr. Sheinman, were no longer the local storekeepers. Messrs. Rosenbaum and Margolis were wiped out by supermarkets like the A and P, and Mr. Sheinman, by the likes of CVS. The big capitalists gobbled up the small capitalists. They were able to buy much lower, and by selling at a price lower than the smaller storekeeper could charge, they drove them out of business. By the time I started high school, I entered the working class. Almost every student at Stuyvesant High School had a part-time job. I considered my employment as close to socialism as we could get at the time. I worked for the New York Public Library (NYPL), which meant I worked for the city, not for a capitalist institution. The NYPL was not privately owned; it was collectively owned by all the citizens of New York. I did have a supervisor, who was my boss, but he was not making a profit from my labor. I saw him as a petty bureaucrat, and if I had chosen to stay with the NYPL, I could have become a supervisor. My friends worked for small businesses: garment factories, printers, bookbinders, wholesalers, retailers. Our work was not very different: menial labor, nor were our salaries. But I spoke with pride about working for the library, a non-profit, cultural institution. We provided an important intellectual service. We did not exploit anybody. We did not cheat anybody. My salary was paid out of the taxes of the citizens of New York. My friends’ salaries were paid by the capitalist owners of the businesses, from the profits they squeezed out of the labor of their exploited workers. I recognized that their businesses performed a service, but I also recognized the great disparity in the money the workers and the bosses took home. Thinking about the disparity and the class struggle, I concluded that one way to correct the disparity was for the workers to organize. My mother had been a member of a union, but they could not do much for her when there was no work. During the depression, neither the bosses nor the workers can make a living, but most bosses have the resources to sustain them until times get better. When things get better, and work resumes, workers will be scrambling for jobs. If there is a union contract, a procedure would be in place for workers to return by seniority; wages would be established so bosses would not be able to hire workers at the lowest wages. I figured that the most practical way to deal with the class struggle is for workers to form unions. By this time, I was a teen-ager, I was learning something about history and economics, and the world around me. I learned that my mother considered herself a socialist, that there were several political parties that called themselves socialist, and that they all talked about “my” class struggle. They talked about the workers as being the “vanguard,” and the dictatorship of the proletariat. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. When I learned more about “my solution—unions,” I learned that there were lots of different kinds of unions, with different approaches to the class struggle: craft unions, industrial unions. Labor leaders became my heroes, especially Walter Reuther. I also concluded that the teachers, local storekeepers and even my old landlord, Mr. Gordon, were not the enemy. By the time I entered college, I had a very different view of the class struggle. I learned a little more about socialism and communism (but not much about anarchism.) I felt indebted to FDR and the New Deal. I believed a progressive government can make life better for all Americans: that if the government supported the creation of unions, created jobs, Social Security, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, health insurance, minimum wages etc, life wouldn’t be such a struggle for the working class. There may no longer be such great disparity. I concluded that one way to bring this about was to organize workers. I was not ready to advocate that the workers own the means of production. I felt that a strong union with a strong union contract would be sufficient. A strong, politically active union would see to it that progressive legislation was passed, and workers were protected on the job. I was no longer a “young person.” I was in college, and on the verge of making a career choice. I thought about teaching. I chose the labor movement as my way to deal with the class struggle. 12-29-11 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data application/msword Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Young Person's View of the Class Struggle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jacob Schlitt Description An account of the resource "From my earliest days, I was convinced that we were caught up in the class struggle." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-12-29 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource en Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A_Young_Person's_View_of_the_Class_Struggle Childhood Labor Movement Politics Poverty Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/a600e348ac5cd60f1d38c8759988634c.pdf?Expires=1776902400&Signature=Nfz5DkpZHCt5CkXBWRqoJy8AHbe51jSiFVDBrZIK0gqb%7EEg6AqyuYUQgW5%7Eeyi6YjIM-4%7E6Qwp9d6FKqf2SXrpq%7EJiKk1GYsJUuBTK%7E1DmIECyEAZK-H0Wf8zRndwaky9RVaIpsfNB403xBcPshZAh5q%7EmrdNrxiYcMeQaotFRXbamSu2mwJM8cQbmFMI0-HgBzXg3w4D0I5TfGENjtouO8F8TAyPjhHdmIZBsaFZna%7ELzkaVVd1j9VDiVQlNJYHUxEy4%7ETCAZK7GFFr9fmxvQRUUZN4LowsRPXNvTOu3y4oJqmPe2pF5IJkMQmtkVa88NuOlllTrYSYsbmIBM509Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 15e823ab7007ad947cb30d2868ca028a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Numbered memoirs Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document # 26 IRVING HOWE (On June 8, 1993, the Boston Democratic Socialists of America held a memorial for Irving Howe who had died the month before at the age of 72. I think it was chutspadik that Fran and I spoke at this event along with Rose and Lewis Coser and George Scialabba and George Packer. Fran, at least, had Howe as a teacher at Brandeis. I drew on some coincidences and my admiration for his writings, his politics and his brilliance. The following are my remarks.) I feel that I have known Irving Howe all my life, although I may have been in the same room with him five times and exchanged no more than a few sentences with him each time. He was not easily approachable. And I was in awe of him. Of his knowledge and his insights into those areas if interest that I shared with him: Socialism, Yiddish culture, and labor. I sought reflected glory in the fact that Irving Howe and I lived in the same neighborhood in the East Bronx. The fact is he was eight years older, and there was no contact until many years later. In his autobiography, Howe described the East Bronx as a self-contained little world where Yiddish was spoken everywhere. And he quoted his father after the family was forced to move from the West Bronx as saying "at least we are not on Fox Street." I lived on Fox Street. He later explained that he really didn’t see much difference between Fox Street and Jennings Street where he lived. I also got a kick when I read about his childhood visits to Yankee Stadium sitting behind Babe Ruth, since I also went to Yankee Stadium as a kid, sat in the bleachers, but in my time it was Joe DiMaggio in center field. I shared a similar pattern of summer jobs, and the dream of parents that their child should become a high school teacher, and the challenge for those of us preparing to teach in the New York schools to pronounce Long Island without a hard g. His Workmen’s Circle Shule was on Wilkins Avenue; mine was on Beck Street. His father wouldn’t let him go there. My mother sent me to the Beck St. Shule and then to Hebrew school. The YPSL to which he belonged met at the Wilkins Avenue Shule Sunday nights. There was no YPSL in my immediate neighborhood. I was not recruited and I missed out on the political ferment that was a part of Irving Howe’s growing up: the street corner oratory and the debates in the City College cafeteria. In the early fifties, I was working as an organizer for the custom tailors and alteration workers of the ILGWU. It was then that I met Ann Draper who was organizing for the hat workers. Her husband, Hal Draper, was the editor of Labor Action, the publication of the Independent Socialist League, the position Irving Howe held ten years before. Irving’s first contact with Max Schachtman was in 1937 at City College. I was invited to a meeting of the ISL by Ann and Hal to hear Schachtman. And he was impressive. (During the question period, an imposing figure arose, announced "my name is Maxwell Bodenheim" and proceeded to read a poem he had written.) No, I didn’t join ISL, but I did buy a sub to Labor Action. In 1956 I went to work for the Jewish Labor Committee and found myself surrounded by YPSLs, both Thomasites and Schachtmanites: Manny Muravchik, Phil Heller, Don Slaiman, Irving Panken, Harry Fleischman, Iz Kugler, Harry Gersh, and Julie Bernstein. I bought my first subscription to Dissent, I joined The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, I read "The UAW and Walter Reuther," and when Mike Harrington split with the SP-SDF over Vietnam, and DSOC was founded at the Hotel McAlpin in 1973, I was there, and saw and heard Irving Howe in action. Over the years, I collected his books as well as Mike’s, and was excited about the Yiddish anthologies he was producing, confirming for me our similarity of interests. So many Jewish radicals and intellectuals were, as Irving noted, quoting Isaac Deutcher, "non-Jewish Jews." The fact is, so was Irving, up to his meeting with Eliezer Greenberg, and his translating and editing of Yiddish writers. Isaac Bashevis Singer might have remained unknown to the non-Yiddish reading public if Irving didn’t get Saul Bellow to translate Gimpel the Fool. Irving saw himself as a "partial Jew" –a man without contemporaries, since he felt that all that remained for Jewish identity was religion or nationalism, and he supported neither. Secular Jewishness was, to him, a period between faith and assimilation, like Alinsky’s description of an integrated neighborhood: the moment between all-white and all-black. To Howe, it was another lost cause. But Irving did more to popularize Jewish Socialism than any other writer. He was unrivaled as a serious scholar, yet this 714 page book "World of Our Fathers" made the best-seller list, and gave him, as he described it, "his 15 minutes of fame." He viewed its success as American Jewry’s readiness to say farewell to that world, and move on. My son Lewis gave me the book in 1976 for my birthday, and my wife Fran gave me Irving’s autobiography "Margin of Hope" for my birthday in 1982. My family knows who (and what) I like. Our sector, the Jewish Socialist and labor movement, represented by the Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Labor Committee, is forever in his debt. We at the Boston Workmen’s Circle wanted to invite Irving for a fund-raiser, but that’s out. We have lost another giant. Julie Bernstein in 1977, Michael Harrington in 1989, and now Irving Howe. Irving called Michael "Our voice, our hope, our pride." Leon Wieseltier called Irving "This skeptic, secularist and socialist; this great-souled man." Irving Howe ends "World of Our Fathers" with the Hasidic tale of Rabbi Zusia, who said before his death: "In the coming world they will not ask me Why were you not Moses? They will ask me Why were you not Zusia?" Irving Howe was always Irving Howe. June 8, 1993 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data application/msword Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource #26 Irving Howe Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jacob Schlitt Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-06-08 Language A language of the resource en Type The nature or genre of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context IRVING_HOWE Description An account of the resource "I feel that I have known Irving Howe all my life, although I may have been in the same room with him five times and exchanged no more than a few sentences with him each time." Bronx Friends Jewish Identity Socialism Yiddish YPSL