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With Freedom in Our Ears

With Freedom in Our Ears

Histories of Jewish Anarchism

Edited by Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer

Contributions by Tom Goyens, Binyamin Hunyadi, Samuel Hayim Brody, Inna Shtakser, Ayelet Brinn, Mark Grueter, Renny Hahamovitch, Allan Antliff, Ania Aizman and Elaine Leeder

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Imprint: University of Illinois Press

Digital download
9780252054280
Published: May 2023

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Jewish anarchism has long been marginalized in histories of anarchist thought and action. Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer edit a collection of essays which recovers many aspects of this erased tradition.

Contributors bring to light the presence and persistence of Jewish anarchism throughout histories of radical labor, women’s studies, political theory, multilingual literature, and ethnic studies.

These essays reveal an ongoing engagement with non-Jewish radical cultures, including the translation practices of the Jewish anarchist press. Jewish anarchists drew from a matrix of secular, cultural, and religious influences, inventing new anarchist forms that ranged from mystical individualism to militantly atheist revolutionary cells.

With Freedom in Our Ears brings together more than a dozen scholars and translators to write the first collaborative history of international, multilingual, and transdisciplinary Jewish anarchism.

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction. Freedom’s Fullness: An Introduction to Jewish Anarchisms

Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer

Chapter 1. Johann Most and Yiddish Anarchism, 1876-1906

Tom Goyens

Chapter 2. Political Satire in the Yiddish Anarchist Press, 1890-1918

Binyamin Hunyadi

Chapter 3. Jewish Anarchist Temporalities

Samuel Hayim Brody

Chapter 4. The Debate on Expropriations in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Anarchism

Inna Shtakser

Chapter 5. Translation, Politics, Pragmatism, and the American Yiddish Press

Ayelet Brinn

Chapter 6. Jews and North American Anarcho-Syndicalism: The Jewish Leadership of the Union of Russian Workers

Mark Grueter

Chapter 7. The Storm of Revolution: The Fraye Arbeter Shtime Reports on the Russian Revolution of 1905

Renny Hahamovitch

Chapter 8. Divine Fire: Alfred Stieglitz’s Anarchism

Allan Antliff

Chapter 9. In the Jewish Tower: Prison Stories by a Forgotten Anarchist

Ania Aizman

Chapter 10. Jewish-American Anarchist Women, 1920-1950: The Politics of Sexuality

Elaine Leeder

Conclusion. The Past and Futures of Jewish Anarchist History

Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer

Contributors

Index

Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor in the department of comparative literature at the University of Chicago and the author of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature. Kenyon Zimmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America.

“This volume vividly recaptures the lost world of Jewish anarchism, tracing its political imaginaries as well as the social structures and practices that it built. Spanning multiple continents and centuries, it offers a new way of approaching the Jewish radical experience in the past--and potentially rethinking its possibilities in the present.”--Faith C. Hillis, author of Utopia's Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s–1930s

“This is the first book of its kind in English and each contribution is original and important. Not only does the collection add to the quantity of studies, it steers research on the subject in new directions. Traditionally, anarchism’s connections to religious thought have been ignored, the presumption being they have nothing to do with one another. These authors show otherwise.”--Tony Michels, author of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History