ABSTRACT

In inter-war Poland the Jewish left bore a major share of the burden of maintaining the infrastructure of secular Yiddish culture—especially schools, but also libraries, support for the YIVO, theatre subscriptions, even literary prizes. Ber Borochov's Yiddishism had a particular impact in pre-1914 Galicia, which did not have the revolutionary traditions of tsarist Russia but where many Jews were looking for cultural alternatives to assimilationism and religious orthodoxy. In 1923 Emanuel Ringelblum, working closely with Raphael Mahler, founded an extraordinary organization called the Young Historians' Circle, which was open to members of all parties and would later affiliate with the YIVO. In response the Left Poalei Zion (LPZ) developed one of the most important Yiddish cultural organizations in inter-war Poland, the Evening Courses for Workers. The party's ideology made language politics even more vital to the mission of the movement. The LPZ argued that the Bund's analysis of the Jewish question was superficial and simplistic.