ABSTRACT
I never knew my maternal grandmother. She died when my mother was twelve years old, an event that was to materially as well as psychologically shape her life. When my grandfather remarried two years later, his new wife did not want her around so my mother was sent to live with his sister, her husband, and child. My mother’s family-women as well as men-were garment workers. They came to the United States to escape the brutal Tzarist regime in Russia and Poland. Most of them were revolutionary socialists who were subject to imprisonment and exile. In a wrinkle on the usual Jewish working-class immigrant story they were skilled workers who moved up the US class ladder-but without the benefit of school credentials. My grandfather was a highly skilled tailor who worked as a cutter in the men’s clothing trade and eventually elevated himself to manage other workers. His sister Lily was a sewer of the whole garment in the high-end section of the dress industry. She sewed very expensive dresses by hand, a craft that has virtually disappeared. Her husband Zelig began as a machine operator, but became a writer and labor reporter for the Jewish Daily Forward which, under the leadership of Abraham Cahan, its editor until World War II, was a real power among immigrant Jews. My grandmother’s brother, a founder of the Cloak and Suit local of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, was also a machine operator of ladies’ coats and suits who, at the end of his life, became a small landlord with properties in the mostly black communities of the Bronx.
