Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture in East Los Angeles ...

295 Pages·2013·15.44 MB·English

by  Caroline Luce

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture in East Los Angeles,
1908-1942
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2z3643xz
Author
Luce, Caroline Elizabeth
Publication Date
2013

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture
in East Los Angeles, 1908-1942

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in History

By

Caroline Elizabeth Luce

2013
© Copyright by
Caroline Elizabeth Luce
2013
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture
In East Los Angeles, 1908-1942

by

Caroline Elizabeth Luce
Doctor of Philosophy in History
University of California, Los Angeles, 2013
Professor Eric R. Avila, Co-Chair
Professor Frank Tobias Higbie, Co-Chair

This dissertation explores the activism of a cohort of Eastern European Jewish
immigrants who came to Los Angeles in the first decade of the twentieth century. They
focused their efforts in Boyle Heights, a residential subdivision east of the Los Angeles
River, where they spearheaded the creation of Yiddish-based unions, left-wing political
parties, and fraternal, cultural, and educational organizations. Scholars have long
assumed that the development of Yiddish life in Boyle Heights followed the same
course as in Jewish communities elsewhere and referred to the neighborhood as “Los
Angeles’ Lower East Side.” Using Yiddish-language newspapers, journals and
biographies, this dissertation probes the neighborhood’s reputation, showing how the
area’s particular geography, pattern of settlement, and unique ethno-racial diversity
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influenced the dynamics of Yiddish-based labor and community organizing in the
neighborhood. The Jewish radicals who settled in Boyle Heights had been involved in
revolutionary socialist and nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and in the
American cities where they lived before making their way west, and sought to replicate
these experiences in their new home. But in the multiethnic context of Boyle Heights,
they comprised the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, not the bottom, challenging
their understanding of their class-based and ethnic identities.
In their earliest efforts, these activists purposefully built an organizational and
cultural life that excluded the area’s non-Jewish residents in order to cultivate a distinct
ethnic community in the multiethnic neighborhood. But over the course of two decades
between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second, they
gradually expanded the scope and scale of their activities. They strayed from the
platforms of the national and international bodies with which they were affiliated, and
embraced the neighborhood’s multiculturalism as part of their new collective identities
as American Jews. To examine the variety of structural forces, local and global
developments that encouraged this transformation, I trace the history of the Jewish
Bakers Union, one of several Jewish unions formed in Boyle Heights in the 1910s,
showing how their attitudes and model of trade unionism shifted through the 1920s
and 1930s. By highlighting the activism of the bakers and the other members of their
cohort, this dissertation complicates our understandings of class formation and
Americanization of Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century. And in turn, it
contributes new details to the history of labor and left-wing community organizing in
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early twentieth century Los Angeles and asserts Boyle Heights’ place in the Yiddish-
speaking world.

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The dissertation of Caroline Elizabeth Luce is approved.

Eric J. Sundquist

David N. Myers

Eric R. Avila, Committee Co-chair

Frank Tobias Higbie, Committee Co-chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2013

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON YIDDISH TERMS……………………………………………….... vii

LIST OF IMAGES ..…………………………………………………………………………. viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………... ix

VITA..………………………………………………………………………………………….... x

INTRODUCTION: Yiddish Life in Boyle Heights, History and Historiography……….. 1

1. The Origins of Yiddish Public Culture on the East Side of Los Angeles ……..….. 38

2. “Koifn Broit Bloyz Mitn Union Leybel” (“Buy Bread Exclusively with the
Union Label”): the Jewish Food Chain and the Jewish Bakers Union
of Boyle Heights …………………………………………………………………….. 101

3. Making an American Union: the Jewish Bakers, the Great Depression,
and the New Deal …………………………………………………………………... 149

4. Los Andzhelezer Yiddishkayt and the Popular Front Against Fascism……….. 196

CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………… 246

BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………. 257

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AUTHOR’S NOTE ON YIDDISH TERMS

Yiddish words used in this dissertation are generally romanized according to the
standards prescribed by YIVO, except when I have chosen to preserve the romanization
provided by the author of the source. Accordingly some publications, including Folks
Zeitung and Di Yiddishe Presse, have been romanized according to the spellings
provided by the authors of the publications. The spelling of the authors’ and activists’
names honors their preferred spellings as they appear in English-language documents
from the period.

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LIST OF IMAGES

Chaim Shapiro upon his release from Odtiker Prison, 1905.…………………………….. 56

Arbeter Ring Picnic in Alhambra, 1920s…………………………………………………….. 73

Campus of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Association’s Sanatorium, 1920s………….. 81

Map, Population Distribution in Boyle Heights, 1920s…………………………………… 86

“The Bread Trust” from The Bakers Journal, March 13th, 1926…………………………… 112

Armenian Bakers in downtown Los Angeles, 1902……………………………………… 122

Advertisements from the California Jewish Voice, 1922 ………………………………….. 128

Mixers at an industrial baking plant, early twentieth century …………………………. 130

Members of Local 453’s executive board at the 12th Anniversary in 1936……………... 134

“Bekers Union Local 453 Apelirt tsu koifn broit und cake productn mit dem union leybel”
(“Bakers Union Local 453 appeals to [you] to buy bread and cake products
with the union label”), 1936………………………………………………………... 136

“Hunger Protest, October 2nd, 1933” by Harry Quillen ………………………………... 165

Logo of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers International Union, 1938 ………….. 189

Nazi Flag outside Downtown Los Angeles Businesses, 1938…………………………... 198

Class picture from the Yiddish folkschule on Soto Street, 1943………………………….. 218

Anti-Nazi Parade in Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 22nd, 1938 (three images)…………… 235-236

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