CU8.8

=Grade 8 Lesson 8.8 (Template)= Their identity as Jews was often associated with political radicalism rather than with religion. (Analogous to Secular Humanistic Judaism.) Even though most US Jews have since become middle or upper class, many, including members of Folkshul, still continue to work for social justice for the poor and often immigrant workers. For the first time, Jews align themselves with the non-Jewish poor in Russia instead of with the people in power. Gangs of NY - Discovery channel Jews tended to be employed by other Jews so their immediate conflict was with other Jews Highlighted the class rather than the religious or nationalistic bonds/differences. Undermined the validity of the orthodox owners preaching piety Why Jews associated with blacks - Jews never considered white in Europe - they were Jews - a breed apart Jewish view of their tenuous position as a besieged minority changed to be more a sense of part of the white majority in the sixties with the civil rights, women's and other movements (also gay rights - Stonewall in 1969) as well as Vatican II which said that Jews were not responsible for killing Jesus. Decisive win in the six day war gave the Jewish psyche great self-confidence (especially because Jews blamed themselves for passively if at all resisting the Nazis). Israel no longer seen as a small weak country under terrible threat from their Arab neighbors but as the military power in the region. e of person acting as boss> for your acting skills. This was a mild simulation of the terrible working conditions experienced by Jewish and non-Jewish laborers at the turn of the 20th century. Bosses used fear and intimidation to make them work harder. 2. Relevant past learning: Last week we explored the difficult living conditions of immigrant Jews in the United States around the turn of the 20th century. This week, we will explore the heavy Jewish involvement in social justice efforts to make their living and working conditions better. 3. Introduce new material: 4. **Provide guided practice**: <???> 5. **Provide independent practice**: Split class into groups and give out sections of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Have students summarize their section. Get back together in whole group and have each group explain the sections to the other groups. 6. **Close the lesson**: What would you protest today? 7. **Vocabulary**: Union (worker's union): A union is an organized group of workers who collectively use their strength to have a voice in their workplace. Through a union, workers have a right to impact wages, work hours, benefits, workplace health and safety, job training and other work-related issues. Under U.S. law, workers of all ages have the right to join a union. Having support from the union to ensure fairness and respect in the workplace is one of the key reasons workers organize. 8. **References**: 
 * TITLE:** **Immigrant life in US part II: Working for social Justice**
 * GOALS:** Eastern European Jewish Life in America around the turn of 20th Century, Part II: To explore the social justice efforts of Jews to organize unions, go on strike, etc., to improve conditions using the garment industry as an example and where most of the workers, and some of their leaders, were women.
 * MATERIALS:**
 * LESSON:**
 * 1. Gain the attention of the learner:** Simulate a 1911 workshop where students have a menial task and are harassed to do it. Teacher says, "It is 1911. Congratulations immigrants, you have all been hired to work in the Triangle Garment Factory. Your starting salary is 50 cents/day. You desperately need this money to provide for your families so listen to and obey your boss, . Are you ready for your first day?" The boss has the students sort markers by color, size, etc and perfectly align each group of markers. The boss, preferably not the class teacher, should harass, rush and criticized their work. Teacher says "Freeze" to stop the demo. Afterwards, teacher says, " Thank you
 * Working for social justice.
 * **Social justice** is achieved when people have the ability to realize their potential in society. It requires a set of institutions that enable people to lead fulfilling lives and be active contributors to their community. These institutions provide services such as education, health care, social security, labor rights, as well as a broader system of public services, progressive taxation and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equality of opportunity, and no gross inequality of outcome. (adapted from Wikipedia; Social_Justice)
 * **Social Service** - provide services directly to those in need (e.g., food, clothing, housing, counseling and medical services).
 * **Social Action** - advocacy to change institutions as way to increase social justice and thereby decrease need for social services.
 * Compare social service which cleans up a park with social action which lobbies for more staff; compare bringing food to a food pantry with working to eliminate the need for a food pantry.
 * The strength of social service is that it provides recipients with immediate help and our students with a first hand awareness of social problems. The strength of social action is that it provides recipients with longer term solutions and our students with a sense of what is necessary for institutional change.
 * Social Action Efforts
 * Workplace - unions
 * Significance of Bund (social democratic acitivism)- never developed strong organization in US -
 * Many American
 * Striking - dangerous to the strikers
 * Job of police was to protect rich from the poor. They would attack and arrest strikers on charges of loitering and prostitution.
 * Sachar 3900: Jewish women's garment workers were the core of the National American Women's Suffrage Association in New York
 * Rose Schneiderman - a leader of the NYC's Suffrage Party
 * 1909 - 1914 - Garment industries great revolt:
 * 1909 Jewish women were 70% of labor force in shirtwaist factories. An industry-wide strike begun in 1909 gained huge popular support (rich men's wives would serve tea to strikers, went to court to bail out arrected strikers, rabbis and ministers gave sermons in support of the workers).
 * Reduce workday to 52 hours
 * Provide 4 legal holidays with pay
 * Employees were no longer required to supply their own tools
 * 1910 - Strike of cutters and pressers failed to gain popular support. Jacob Schiff got Louis Brandeis to mediate between the Jewish owners and workers:
 * Reduce workday to 50 hours
 * Provide 10 legal holidays with pay
 * Time and a half for overtime
 * Joint sanitary control committee to monitor
 * Accept idea of a union shop - preference in hiring union over nonunion workers, as opposed to a closed shop with only union workers
 * Other workers achieved the rights of the garment workers including cigar makers, butchers and painters and the other garment workers.
 * (Howe p308) Different views of unions
 * American Unions - usually "focused on immediate bread and butter issues, . . . hostile to heterodox ideas"
 * Jewish Unions - "not merely bargaining agencies, they were centers of socio-cultural life, serving same function as the //landsmanshaftn,// though with a much more enlightened outlook." Dealt with "a wide range of [other] interests from social insurance plans to co-operative housing, educational programs to Yiddishist cultural activitity."
 * Triangle Fire - March 25, 1911
 * Building owned (managed?) by Jews who locked the doors to keep the union organizers out
 * Oil-soaked rags caught fire and 147 women and 21 men were killed plus 200 other with severe burns and broken limbs
 * Led to a commission and laws in New York State and later in 1930's to US Dept of Labor occupational safety laws and regulations to cover the whole country
 * Jews in Labor
 * Samuel Gompers
 * Living Conditions
 * Politics
 * Republican Party - liberals of their day
 * Progressive Policies
 * Teddy Roosevelt
 * Socialism and Communism (Marxism)
 * Appeal
 * Complained about the oppression resulting from capitalism
 * very low wages, long hours, dangerous and unsanitary workplaces, no job security
 * Provided ideology to solve the problems
 * Many Jewish leaders who came from Russia were Bundists and other Russian radicals dedicated to socialism as the way to relieve oppression
 * Detraction - most not obvious at that time
 * Dictatorship of the prolitariat
 * Most immigrants ignorant of socialism while in the old country
 * Non-Jewish German immigrant socialists on Lower East Side helped Jews organize into unions and socialist groups with money, publicity, organization models and ideological guidance (Tony Michaels p2)
 * Why it failed - essentially around the 1950's
 * Virulent Russian antisemitism, plus cold war. many Jews gave up their radicalism - became more conservative - giving up their utopianism
 * Ruling class had desire and need to portray the US as an alternative to fascism and communism where racism was being eliminated as well as antisemitism (in 1930's rampant US antisemitism was accepted because of the economic depression and Jews were an easy scapegoat)
 * Economic boom of the 1950's with man Many Jews became business owners and professionals with nice lives
 * Many of the most egregious workplace problems were eliminated (e.g. child labor) or ameliorated (e.g.12 hour workday days) - Capitalism adapted
 * Marx missed that reform could forestall revolution
 * Marx view of inevitable march of history to communism was wrong
 * Anarchism - appealed to some Jews, but not most because of its tendency to violence
 * Howe, Irving (1976). **World of Our Fathers**, Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, New York and London
 * Michaels, Tony. **A Fire In Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York**, Harvard University Press, 2005 Cambridge Mass,
 * Sachar, Howard M. (2013-07-24). **A History of the Jews in America** (Vintage). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice (2014-4-29)
 * Muraskin, Bennett. Let Justice Well Up Like Water: Progressive Jews from Hillel to Helen Suzman (2004-3-18). Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, publisher
 * Marx, Karl. Communist Manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

//Notes for continuing writing the lesson: Goals to understand what a union is and the progression of the union, in accordance with activists like, Rose Schneiderman (Spiderman...make a superhero comic about Rose "Spiderman" and her cronies saving women workers ;])// to Social action is composed of social service and working for social justice. Where social service focuses on alleviating the immediate manifestations of social injustice, working for social justice focuses on eliminating the underlying causes. Social service cleans up a park instead of lobbying for more staff; it brings food to a food pantry rather than working to eliminate the need for a food pantry. The strength of social service is that it provides recipients with immediate help and our students with a first hand awareness of social problems. The strength of working for social justice is that it provides recipients with longer term solutions and our students with a sense of what is necessary for institutional change.