United Jewish People's Order

Last updated
United Jewish People's Order
FormationApril 1926;97 years ago (1926-04)
Legal statusActive
Headquarters585 Cranbrooke Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Official languages
Yiddish, English
Executive Director
Sarena Sairan
Affiliations CPA, CSJO, IFSHJ, IISHJ, IJV Canada, JVP
Website ujpo.org
Formerly called
Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society

The United Jewish People's Order is a secular socialist Jewish cultural, political and educational fraternal organization in Canada. The UJPO traces its history to the founding of the Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society in 1926.

Contents

History

Early history

After the Russian Revolution and the creation of the Communist Party, divisions within the Arbeiter Ring became increasingly bitter. In Toronto, the pro-Bolshevik women withdrew from the Ring in 1923, forming the Jewish Working Women's League (Yiddish Arbeiter Froyen Farein). [1] When it was clear that control of the organization would stay in the hands of those critical of the Revolution, the men also withdrew and formed the Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society in 1926, which became a social and intellectual home for Jewish Communists. [2] The Canadian Workers' Circle was similarly formed in Montreal and Winnipeg. The two organizations merged on 4 October 1945 to form the UJPO. [3]

At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, the UJPO had more than 2,500 members nationwide with branches established in Hamilton and Niagara Falls, Calgary, and Vancouver, among others. The UJPO's leadership included well-known Jewish Communists and pro-Soviet activists, including Sholem Shtern, J. B. Salsberg, Joseph Zuken, Annie Buller, Sam Carr, and Fred Rose. [4] The UJPO was active in supporting Jewish settlement in Birobidzhan through the Canadian Biro-Bidjan Committee. [4]

Cold War era

The Toronto branch of the UJPO was originally housed in the Jewish Workers' Cultural Centre on Brunswick Avenue, just north of Kensington Market, and then for many years in its own building on Christie Street, overlooking Christie Pits. [5] UJPO's headquarters in Montreal were in the Morris Winchevsky Cultural Centre on de l'Esplanade Avenue from 1947 onwards. UJPO Montreal also operated the Morris Winchevsky Yiddish School on Villeneuve Street West and operated summer camps such as the Nitgedeiget. The UJPO headquarters included, as a unique feature, a second story balcony with a five-foot-tall parapet modelled on the balconies in Moscow's Red Square from which Soviet leaders would address the crowd below.

On January 27, 1950, the group's Montreal headquarters were closed under the Padlock Law, with boxes of seized books, files and organizational material carted away by the Quebec Provincial Police. Following the raid, the building was sold to the Farband, a Labour Zionist organization, which used the building from 1951 until 1968, with the first floor being occupied by Glatt's, a kosher butcher from 1962 until the 2010s. [6] [7] In 1951, the UJPO was expelled from the Canadian Jewish Congress for opposing German re-armament, [8] not to be re-admitted until 1995. [9]

After 1955, Sam Carr, a former organizer for the Labor-Progressive Party (as the Communist Party of Canada was known), became active in the UJPO and was elected National Secretary in 1964, a position he would hold until 1986. [10] During the crisis resulting from the release of the Secret Speech in 1956, prominent Party member J. B. Salsberg returned from a trip to the Soviet Union, where he found rampant Party-sponsored antisemitism and suppression of Jewish culture. [11] Salsberg's findings were rejected by the Communist Party (then known as the Labour-Progressive Party) and led to his suspension from its leading bodies. Ultimately, the crisis resulted in the departure from the Communist Party of the UJPO, Salsberg, Robert Laxer and many of the Party's Jewish members in 1956. [11]

In 1959 about one third of the UJPO's membership (including long-time leader J. B. Salsberg) left to start a new organization called the New Fraternal Jewish Association, feeling that the UJPO was not critical enough of the Soviet Union. [12] In the years following World War II, as the Jewish community moved north along Bathurst Street, the UJPO moved in 1960 to its current location at the Winchevsky Centre in the Bathurst and Lawrence area. [13]

Recent history

UJPO's sections in Winnipeg and Toronto continue to engage in a wide variety of political and cultural activities. UJPO Toronto's social justice committee has been active in organizing campaigns and speakers on a wide range of issues including labour and refugee rights; anti-racism and allyship; LGBTQ rights and opposition to homophobia and transphobia; aboriginal land rights and indigenous justice; Black Lives Matter; opposition to the Israeli Occupation and bombing of Gaza; the campaigns to prevent the prosecution and extradition of Canadian academic Hassan Diab; and numerous campaigns against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. The organization's Indigenous Solidarity Working Group has been active in reaching out to local Indigenous groups to promote Settler-Indigenous Solidarity. Continuing the organization's decades-long mission to promote Yiddish culture, UJPO-Toronto organizes a monthly drop-in singing group, Zing! Zing! Zing! and a Yiddish learning and discussion group, Red Yiddish. While the membership of UJPO has a wide range of views on Israel/Palestine, the organization has long opposed the Israeli Occupation and promoted Palestinian rights. In 2011, the United Jewish Appeal and Canadian Jewish Congress severed their relations with UJPO's Winchevsky Centre in Toronto after the organization hosted a panel discussion featuring, among other speakers, anti-Zionist activist and Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer, a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. . [14]

Activities

The UJPO has branches in Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Toronto, where it operates the Winchevsky Centre, named after the famed Jewish socialist poet Morris Winchevsky. The Toronto branch sponsors several groups including the Morris Winchevsky School which holds classes at the 918 Bathurst; the drop-in singing group, Zing! Zing! Zing!, and the Yiddish learning group, Red Yiddish. UJPO Toronto also owns Camp Naivelt, a socialist Jewish cottage community in Brampton, Ontario. For decades, the Vancouver branch published a national progressive Jewish magazine Outlook , and the Winnipeg section runs a number of cultural and educational activities. [15] [11]

The now defunct Toronto Jewish Folk Choir held well attended concerts, several of which included long-time UJPO supporter and friend Paul Robeson, featuring Yiddish and Hebrew music. Another contribution to music made, indirectly, by the UJPO was the founding of the folk group The Travellers, which originated at Camp Naivelt in the 1950s. [16] Zal Yanofsky — the son of prominent political cartoonist Avrom Yanovsky — spent his childhood years at Camp Naivelt and would later go on to found the Loving Spoonful with John Sebastian in 1964. Pete Seeger and a number of other prominent folk music figures including Phil Ochs often visited and sang at Camp Naivelt.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Workers Circle</span> Nonprofit for 501(c)(3) organization to support Jewish culture and social-economic justice

The Workers Circle or Der Arbeter Ring, formerly The Workmen's Circle, is an American Jewish nonprofit organization that promotes social and economic justice, Jewish community and education, including Yiddish studies, and Ashkenazic culture. It operates schools and Yiddish education programs, and year-round programs of concerts, lectures and secular holiday celebrations. The organization has community branch offices throughout North America, a national headquarters in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party of Canada</span> Federal political party in Canada

The Communist Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada. Founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality, it is the second oldest active political party in Canada, after the Liberal Party of Canada. Although it does not currently have any parliamentary representation, the party's candidates have previously been elected to the House of Commons, the Ontario legislature, the Manitoba legislature, and various municipal governments across the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lewis (Canadian politician)</span> Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician (1909–1981)

David Lewis was a Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician. He was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1936 to 1950 and one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. In 1962, he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP), in the House of Commons of Canada, for the York South electoral district. While an MP, he was elected the NDP's national leader and served from 1971 until 1975. After his defeat in the 1974 federal election, he stepped down as leader and retired from politics. He spent his last years as a university professor at Carleton University, and as a travel correspondent for the Toronto Star. In retirement, he was named to the Order of Canada for his political service. After suffering from cancer for a long time, he died in Ottawa in 1981.

Joseph Baruch (J.B.) Salsberg was a politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Labor-Progressive member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1943 to 1955 who represented the riding of St. Andrew in downtown Toronto. He was a longtime Communist and activist in the Jewish community.

Alexander Albert MacLeod was a political organizer and a prominent member of the Communist Party of Canada and, later, of its legal group, the Labor-Progressive Party. He was an elected Member of Provincial Parliament in Ontario (1943–51).

The Canadian Jewish Congress was, for more than ninety years, the main advocacy group for the Jewish community in Canada. Regarded by many as the "Parliament of Canadian Jewry," the Congress was at the forefront of the struggle for human rights, equality, immigration reform and civil rights in Canada.

Canadian Jews, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion, form the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel, the United States and France. As of 2021, Statistics Canada listed 335,295 Jews in Canada. This total would account for approximately 1.4% of the Canadian population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Communist League of Canada</span> Marxist–Leninist youth organization

The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

Sam Carr was an organizer for the Communist Party of Canada and its successor, the Labor-Progressive Party, in the 1930s and 1940s. He was born Schmil Kogan in Tomashpil, Ukraine, in 1906 and immigrated to Canada in 1924, living in Winnipeg and Regina before settling in Montreal in 1925. Carr became an organizer for the Young Communist League with Fred Rose.

The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) is an American secular Jewish labor organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities, and Jewish interests within unions. The organization is headquartered in New York City, with local/regional offices in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles, and volunteer-led affiliated groups in other U.S. communities. It was founded in 1934 in response to the rise of Nazism in Europe. Today, it works to maintain and strengthen the historically strong relationship between the American Jewish community and the trade union movement, and to promote what they see as the shared social justice agenda of both communities. The JLC was also active in Canada from 1936 until the 1970s.

The Morris Winchevsky School is a supplemental Jewish school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The focus of the curriculum is on strengthening ties to Jewish culture and heritage within a secular humanist framework. Key focuses are Tikkun Olam and social justice. The school's curriculum is an experiential and historical one, focusing on the nearly four thousand-year history of the Jewish People, culminating in the current period of secularization. It is intended to instill in students an appreciation of Hebrew and Yiddishkayt as well as the culture of Jews around the world. The three programs it runs are: Kinder Kapers ; the Morris Winchevsky School ; and the Secular B'nai Mitzvah Program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris Winchevsky</span> Lithuanian-born Jewish socialist activist

Morris Winchevsky, also known as Ben Netz, was a prominent Jewish socialist leader in London and the United States in the late 19th century.

Camp Naivelt is a left-wing secular Jewish camping community in Brampton, Ontario, founded in 1925 as a children's summer camp, Camp Kinderland. It is affiliated with the United Jewish People's Order.

The Labor-Progressive Party was the legal front of the Communist Party of Canada and several provincial wings of the party from 1943 to 1959.

The Keneder yiddishe vochenblatt, known as the Vochenblatt, was a Yiddish-language communist newspaper in Canada, published from Toronto from 1926 to 1979. Vochenblatt was one of the major communist Yiddish newspapers in the world during the Cold War. The newspaper was edited by Joshua Gershman until his death in 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Jewish Labor Bund</span> Jewish socialist organization

The International Jewish Labor Bund was a New York-based international Jewish socialist organization, based on the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897 and the Polish Bund that was active in the interwar years. The IJLB is composed by local Bundist groups around the world. It was an "associated organisation" of the Socialist International, similar in status to the World Labour Zionist Movement or the International League of Religious Socialists. The World Coordinating Council/Committee of the Jewish Labor Bund was dissolved in New York in the mid-2000s. although local Bundist groups or groups inspired by the Jewish Labor Bund still exist in France, the UK, and most notably Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish left</span> Movement of activists whose Judaism informs their support left-wing or liberal causes

The Jewish left consists of Jews who identify with, or support, left-wing or left-liberal causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the Jewish left, however. Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights movement, anti-racist and anti-colonialist work, and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist organizations of many forms in Europe, the United States, Australia, Algeria, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Africa, and modern-day Israel. Jews have a history of involvement in anarchism, socialism, Marxism, and Western liberalism. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been of Jews who were born into Jewish families and have various degrees of connection to Jewish communities, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, or the Jewish religion in its many variants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General Jewish Labour Bund</span> 1897–1921 Jewish socialist party in Russia

The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire and active between 1897 and 1920. In 1917 the Bund organizations in Poland seceded from the Russian Bund and created a new Polish General Jewish Labour Bund which continued to operate in Poland in the years between the two world wars. The majority faction of the Russian Bund was dissolved in 1921 and incorporated into the Communist Party. Other remnants of the Bund endured in various countries. A member of the Bund was called a Bundist.

The New Fraternal Jewish Association was founded in Toronto in January 1960 by approximately 200 former members of the United Jewish People's Order who had left UJPO for not being critical enough of the Soviet Union. The split was the culmination of four years of debate within the Communist-aligned UJPO after revelations by J. B. Salsberg of the extent of antisemitism in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khrushchev. Founded by Sam Lipshitz and Morris Biderman but led through much of its existence by Salsberg, the NFJA functioned as a left-wing, pro-Israel and non-Communist fraternal organization. Salsberg served as president of NFJA several times and wrote a column in its publication, Fraternally Yours. Lipshitz edited Fraternally Yours from 1960 until his death in 2000.

Rebecca Buhay, known as BeckyBuhay, was a Canadian labour activist and union organizer. She was a leader of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), among many other left-wing organizations.

References

  1. ↑ Reiter, Ester (Spring 2002). "Secular Yiddishkait: Left Politics, Culture, and Community". Labour/Le Travail . Canadian Committee on Labour History. 49: 121–146. doi:10.2307/25149216. JSTOR   25149216.
  2. ↑ Lambertson, Ross (Spring 2001). ""The Dresden Story": Racism, Human Rights, and the Jewish Labour Committee of Canada". Labour/Le Travail . Canadian Committee on Labour History. 47: 48. JSTOR   25149113.
  3. ↑ Elazar, Daniel J.; Brown, Michael; Robinson, Ira, eds. (2003). "Secular Organizations". Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions, and Constitutionalism in Canada. University of Ottawa Press. pp. 181–184. JSTOR   j.ctt1ckpg27.18.
  4. 1 2 Srebrnik, Henry Felix (2008). Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924-1951. McGill-Queen's University Press. OCLC   632050111.
  5. ↑ Tulchinsky, Gerald (2013). Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN   978-1-4426-1432-1.
  6. ↑ Smith, Stephen (19 February 2017). "Collapsed Mile End building once targeted by anti-communist Padlock Law". CBC News . Montreal.
  7. ↑ Moses, Zev (20 April 2012). "A balcony under threat in Balconville". Third Solitude Series. Museum of Jewish Montreal.
  8. ↑ "United Jewish People's Order".
  9. ↑ Reiter, Ester; Usiskin, Roz (30 May 2004). Jewish Dissent in Canada: The United Jewish People's Order. Forum on Jewish Dissent. Winnipeg: Association of Canadian Jewish Studies.
  10. ↑ Momryk, Myron (Autumn 2011). "Ignacy Witczak's Passport, Soviet Espionage and the Origins of the Cold War in Canada". Polish American Studies. University of Illinois Press. 68 (2): 82. JSTOR   23075179.
  11. 1 2 3 Tulchinsky, Gerald (Fall 2005). "Family Quarrel: Joe Salsberg, the 'Jewish' Question, and Canadian Communism". Labour/Le Travail . 56. Archived from the original on 14 February 2012.
  12. ↑ Abella, Irving (1977). "Portrait of a Jewish Professional Revolutionary: The Recollections of Joshua Gershman". Labour/Le Travail . Canadian Committee on Labour History. 2: 184–213. doi:10.2307/25139902. JSTOR   25139902.
  13. ↑ "Our History: 80 Years Strong". The Winchevsky Centre. Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "UJA, CJC sever ties with Winchevsky Centre". The Canadian Jewish News . 10 February 2011.
  15. ↑ "Who We Are" (PDF). United Jewish People's Order. 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016.
  16. ↑ Gladstone, Bill (14 October 2016). "Archives house valuable artifacts of Canada's Jewish left". The Canadian Jewish News .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.