Farband
Encyclopedia
There were at least two American Jewish organizations colloquially known as the Farband -- the Communist-oriented Yidisher Kultur Farband (Jewish Culture Association) and the Labor Zionist-oriented Yidish Natsionaler Arbeter Farband (Jewish National Workers Alliance).

YKUF / Jewish Culture Association

The Yidisher Kultur Farband (YKUF, rarely called by its English [translated] name, the Jewish Culture Association) was a U.S. association, initially Communist-oriented, formed for preserving and developing Yiddish culture in Yiddish and in English, through an art section, a writers' group, reading circles, and publications. YKUF was founded in Paris in September 1937 by Jewish Communists and their supporters as an international body to disseminate ideology to the Yiddish-reading and Yiddish-speaking community.

The organizing meeting was an international congress of Yiddish culture, the first to be held since the 1908 Czernowitz Conference for the Yiddish Language; about 100 delegates attended, including 11 from the United States. The first chairman of YKUF was the non-Communist writer A. Mukdoni; the secretary (to 1957) was the poet Zishe Weinper, an efficient fundraiser for YKUF and, according to Melech Epstein, a "secret member of the Communist Party." In the U.S., financial support also came from the Jewish People's Fraternal Order, the Jewish section of the International Workers Order
International Workers Order
The International Workers Order was a Communist Party-affiliated insurance, mutual benefit and fraternal organization founded in 1930 and disbanded in 1954 as the result of legal action undertaken by the state of New York in 1951...

. At the time of the non-aggression pact
Non-aggression pact
A non-aggression pact is an international treaty between two or more states/countries agreeing to avoid war or armed conflict between them and resolve their disputes through peaceful negotiations...

 between Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in August 1939, many of the non-Communist artists and writers affiliated with YKUF left the organization.

Branches of the international YKUF were established in various countries. The U.S. branch, founded in 1937, ceased operation soon after the death of Itche Goldberg
Itche Goldberg
Itche Goldberg was a Yiddish writer of children's books, poet, librettist, educator, literary critic, camp director, publisher, fundraiser, essayist, literary editor, Yiddish language and culture scholar, and left-wing political activist...

 on December 27, 2006.

Prominent cultural figures, such as Kalman Marmor and Nachman Meisel, saw to it that Farlag YKUF, the organization’s New York-based publishing house, issued highly-regarded anthologies and studies of Yiddish literature. It published more than 250 books, including Yiddish fiction and poetry, memoirs (by Reuben Brainin, among others), history, and anthologies such as America in Yiddish Literature (1961). The U.S. YKUF began publishing the journal Yidishe Kultur in 1938, initially a monthly, in recent decades it appeared bimonthly or seven times a year. Meisel, who was not a Communist Party member and had edited a Polish literary magazine, became its first editor; in 1964, he was succeeded by Itche Goldberg, who edited it since that time to 2004. With Goldberg's death, the magazine ceased publication.

The political roots of YKUF are more of historical note than ideological tendency in its last decades. In the mid-1990s, contact and rapprochement developed between YKUF and its historically socialist counterpart organization, the Congress for Jewish Culture, also based in New York, as well as the Congress’s publication, Zukunft. They subsequently cooperated in such activities as commemorations of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and memorials for the Soviet-Yiddish writers murdered in August, 1952, in Moscow 's Lubyanka prison.

Jewish National Workers Alliance

The Yidish Natsionaler Arbeter Farband or Jewish National Workers Alliance was an early Yiddish-speaking Labor Zionist landsmanshaft in North America. Its official organ was the Yidishe Kempfer or Jewish Fighter, edited by Baruch Zuckerman
Baruch Zuckerman
Baruch Zuckerman was a leading American-Israeli zionist, one of the leading proponents of Yad Vashem, editor of Yiddishe Kempfer, and a leading figure in the Farband and Histadrut campaigns, and president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America.-Early life:He was born into a poor family in...

. The Farband operated as a mutual aid society parallel to the political party Poale Zion
Poale Zion
Poale Zion was a Movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in various cities of the Russian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.-Formation and early years:Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the Jewish diaspora in the...

, organizing cooperative insurance and medical plans and an extensive Yiddish and Hebrew educational system, as well as having developed in the 1920s a cooperative housing building in the Bronx, New York. The Farband even developed and maintained cemeteries for movement members. While mainly based in New York, the Farband was active throughout the United States and Canada, forming local chapters and summer camps in many cities with significant Jewish communities. The summer camp for the New York chapter was called Camp Kinderwelt
Camp Kinderwelt
Camp Kinderwelt, was a Jewish sleepaway summer camp of the New York chapter of the Farband labor Zionist landsmanschaft . Located in Highland Mills, New York, Kinderwelt shared its with the Farband's adult summer colony Unser Camp...

, located in upstate New York, and had an adjoining adults camp called Unser Camp. In 1931 the Farband Yugnt Clubs, their youth wing, joined with Young Poale Zion
Poale Zion
Poale Zion was a Movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in various cities of the Russian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.-Formation and early years:Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the Jewish diaspora in the...

 to form the Young Poale Zion Alliance as the official youth wing of the entire Labor Zionist movement in America.

In 1971, the Farband joined with Poale Zion, the Labor Zionist Organization of America, and the American Habonim Association to form the Labor Zionist Alliance, which in 2004 re-branded and re-named itself as Ameinu
Ameinu
Ameinu is an American Jewish Zionist organization. Established in 2004 as the successor to the Labor Zionist Alliance, it is the continuation of Labor Zionist activity in the United States that began with the founding of Poale Zion in 1905....

.

See also

  • The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
    The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
    The Workmen’s Circle or Arbeter Ring is a Yiddish language-oriented American Jewish fraternal organization committed to Social Justice, Jewish Community, and Ashkenazic Culture...

  • International Workers Order
    International Workers Order
    The International Workers Order was a Communist Party-affiliated insurance, mutual benefit and fraternal organization founded in 1930 and disbanded in 1954 as the result of legal action undertaken by the state of New York in 1951...

  • Habonim Dror
    Habonim Dror
    Habonim Dror is a Jewish Labour Zionist youth movement formed by the merger in 1982 of the Habonim and Dror youth movements. Habonim Dror's sister movement in Israel is Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, the Working and Studying Youth.-Ideology:...

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