Jewish Socialists in the Land of Sunshine: Freedom, Springtime and the Pesakh Spirit of the Future

Abstract

Nature is free-springtime is here!The folk is free-Passover is here!- Chaim ShapiroBorn in Russia in wake of assassination of Tsar Alexander II, Chaim (Khayim) Shapiro moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1908. Although he was just twenty-two years old at time, he was already a veteran activist and became a founding member of city's first Yiddish-based Jewish organizations, including local branch of Arbeter Ring (Workmen's Circle). He served as principle for city's first Yiddish school, as director of Jewish Consumptive Relief Association's Sanatorium for victims of tuberculosis in Duarte (now known as City of Hope), as president of Los Angeles chapters of Histadrut (Israeli General Federation of Labor) and ORT (Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor), and as chairman Los Angeles offices of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. A graduate of University of Southern California Law School, Shapiro was one of city's leading defenders of civil liberties, representing several of city's unions and dozens of political activists threatened with imprisonment and deportation. An active leader in Socialist Party, he ran for lieutenant governor in 1930, on a socialist ticket with his friend Upton Sinclair, and was party's candidate for mayor of Los Angeles in 1933. He was also a prominent voice in fight against Nazism in Los Angeles, serving as chairman of United Anti-Nazi Conference and Jewish People's Relief Committee. Despite his left-leaning politics, he became a founding member of Los Angeles Bureau of Jewish Education and Los Angeles Jewish Community Council, serving for a time as Vice President. During his six decades in Los Angeles, he played a leading role in nearly every aspect of progressive politics and Jewish community life.In 1913, four-and-a-half years after his arrival, Chaim Shapiro penned an essay entitled Gedanken vegn frayhayt (Thoughts About Freedom), published in inaugural Pesakh (Passover) edition of Los Angeles' first Yiddish newspaper, Kalifornieryidish shtime (California Jewish Voice).1 Written in Yiddish, his essay honored occasion by joyfully recounting story of Jews' liberation in Egypt and linking that liberation to nature's renewal in springtime. Rather than offer praises to God, he heralded Jews' freedom from slavery as a product of collective action and called on his fellow Jews to be more involved in fight against slavery and oppression of their times. Weaving together religious and secular philosophy with allusions to natural world, Shapiro used Pesakh story as a medium for expressing his beliefs about Jewish peoplehood, politics, and prospects for future human liberation. Known for his forceful oratory, Shapiro was a people's propagandist, not a prolific writer or theorist, and Thoughts About Freedom is one of only a few pieces of his published work that remains today. The essay thereby provides a rare glimpse of how he understood his Jewish identity and a vital means of uncovering ideals that animated his long career as an activist.This article will examine Shapiro's life and variety of religious, political, and literary influences he contended with during his years in Europe and America, each providing important intellectual resources through which he forged his ethnic-socialist worldview, as described in his Thoughts About Freedom. Rather than debate truth or legitimacy of his interpretations of Jewish tradition, I will argue that Shapiro's system of beliefs was heterodox and syncretic, an ideological bricolage that blended sacred and secular, socialism and nationalism, and religious and philosophical traditions from Europe and America into his own particular understanding of Pesakh holiday and what it meant to be Jewish. First, I will consider Shapiro's life in Europe to examine his claim that socialism was the Pesakh spirit of future, showing how he combined his religious education and his engagement with socialism to forge his own understanding of Jewish peoplehood. …