Introduction

Tony Michels

Part I Awakenings

1 “When I Went Home I Was Aflame” (memoir; c. 1925)

Abraham Bisno

2 “I Saw a New World Opening Before Me” (memoir; 1931)

Emma Goldman

3 The World of Socialism and Revolution (memoir; 1963)

Alexander Bittelman

4 “Rebellion Raged within Me” (memoir; 1948)

Lucy Robins Lang

5 “It Wasn’t Difficult for Me to Reject Judaism” (memoir; 1965)

Paul Jacobs

Part II In Struggle

6 “Strong, Firm, and Correct Propaganda” (1886)

Di Nyu-Yorker Yidishe Folkstsaytung

7 “Socialism Is Not a Dream” (1888)

Dovid Edelshtat

8 The Birth of the Knee-Pants Makers’ Union (memoir; 1924)

Bernard Vaynshteyn

9 “The Whole City Seethed” (1892)

Di Arbeter Tsaytung

10 Working Women Unite (1893–1894)

Women’s Societies

11 The Attempted Assassination of Henry Clay Frick (memoir; 1912)

Alexander Berkman

12 The Prophet Karl Marx (c. 1910s)

Abraham Shiplacoff

13 “Our Mecca” (memoir; n.d.)

Isadore Wisotsky

14 “The Right to Control Birth” (1916)

Rose Pastor Stokes

15 A Personal and Confidential Letter to Louis Marshall (1917)

Abraham Cahan

16 Gangsters and Socialists on Election Day (memoir; 1944)

Louis Waldman

17 “If I Were a Colored Man What Would I Do?” (1919)

Louis Michel

18 The Meaning of Labor Day (1921)

Justice

19 An Encounter with a Klansman (memoir; n.d.)

Sam Darcy

20 Communist “Criminals” in Los Angeles (1929)

Upton Sinclair

21 “Unions with Brains” (1930)

The Nation

22 In Defense of the Kentucky Miners (1932)

Workmen’s Circle, Branch 417

23 “The Obligations of Youth Today” (1932)

Isadore Bernick

24 “Some Vital Problems of Negro Labor” (1935)

Frank Crosswaith

25 “Charlatans and Gangsters and Pompous Racketeers” (1938)

Jennie Cohen

26 “With Nazism We All Are at War” (1942)

J. B. S. Hardman

Part III Life of the Mind

27 “Their Intense Desire to Study” (1893)

Ida Van Etten

28 The Power of Speech and Education (1893)

Education Societies

29 “For That, We Found Time” (interview; 1965)

Pauline Newman

30 A Lower East Side Vacation (1903)

Bernard G. Richards

31 “Jewish Working People … Have Lost All Interest in the Synagogue” (1905)

Phillip Davis

32 “Peripatetic Philosophers” (1910)

New York Times

33 Yiddish Lectures in Philadelphia (1916)

A. Faynman

34 “A Language That He Wants to and Must Forget” (1918)

B. Sheyfer

35 “America’s Most Interesting Daily” (1922)

Oswald Garrison Villard

36 “The Strongest Weapons in the Hands of Jewish Workers” (1924)

United Jewish Workers’ Cultural Society

37 The Aims of Workers’ Education (1926)

International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union

38 Sexual Relations from a Communist Standpoint (1928)

N. Glass

39 “Sow the Field of Yiddish Cultural Tradition” (1939)

United Council of Yiddish Women’s Reading Circles of Detroit

40 “The Responsibility of English-Speaking Jewish Intellectuals” (1946)

Nathan Ausubel

Part IV The Russian Revolution

41 In Honor of Red Sunday (1906)

New York Times

42 Leon Trotsky on Second Avenue (memoir; 1944)

Louis Waldman

43 “These Glad Days of Russian Freedom” (1917)

Katherina Maryson

44 New York Socialists Contribute to Chaos in Russia (1917)

New York Times

45 “The New Man” (1921)

Moissaye J. Olgin

46 Communism and Freedom of Speech (1925)

Workers’ (Communist) Party; Roger Baldwin and Earl Browder

47 A Revolutionary Returns (1929)

Nokhum Khanin

48 Building Communism in the Ukraine (interview, 1981–1982)

Max Granich

49 “G.P.U. Intrigues in America” (1938)

Vanguard

50 Fighting Stalinists and Chasing Girls (memoir; 1965)

Paul Jacobs

51 The Murder of Ehrlich and Alter (1943)

The New International

52 The Soviet Union Reappraised (1956)

Jewish Life

Part V The Question of Zionism

53 “The Whole Thing Is Ridiculous” (1906)

Jacob Milch

54 “The Jewish Militant” (1906)

Der yidisher kemfer

55 Zionism and Transnationalism (1916)

Randolph Bourne

56 “Should We Change Our Stance toward Zionism?” (1918)

Herts Burgin

57 “The Pogroms in Palestine” (1929)

The Forverts

58 A Revolt of the Oppressed Arab Masses (1929)

Di morgn frayhayt

59 “Jew and Arab” (1934)

Hayim Greenberg

60 “Give Up the Illusion of Building a Jewish Homeland” (1936)

Samuel Weiss

61 Jewish Upbuilding Is Revolutionizing Palestine (1939)

Bezalel Sherman

62 “The Jewish Problem Will Be Solved as Soon as the Jews Again Become a Normal Nation” (1943)

Arthur Rosenberg

63 The Final Emancipation of the Jews Is the Struggle for Socialism (1946)

Ernest Mandel

64 Jewish National Aspirations Are Not a Violation of Marxist Principles (1947)

Albert Glotzer

65 Israel and the World Struggle for Peace and Democracy (1948)

Alexander Bittelman