Building the Future: Jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and the Making of Tsukunft by Steven Cassedy (hardcover)

When Di Tsukunft was first published in 1892, the founding editors were optimistic that their sophisticated new monthly would enlighten the masses of Jewish immigrants and surpass, in political savvy and intellectual content, the numerous Yiddish newspapers already in existence.

The journal was initially the official organ of the Socialist Labor Party in the United States, but it evolved over the years, moving from a rigid political agenda toward a policy of greater political tolerance. By the 1920s, the magazine had become, according to one critic, "the central address for Jewish writers in the entire diaspora."

The present collection gathers together articles from the journal's inception through 1914, representing the work of the first two generations of Jewish immigrants to America. This volume provides us with an invaluable account of American Jewish intellectual thought at the turn of the century, allowing us to trace the process by which this intellectual elite, with its imported Russian cultural identity, adjusted to the ever-evolving milieu of a new nation.

"This anthology of the Tsukunft 1892–1918 fills in a badly neglected chapter in American intellectual history—introducing the first Yiddish immigrant writers and thinkers who pioneered 'Jewish progressivism' in all its varieties, and anticipated many of the arguments of later generations of Jewish socialists, anarchists, feminists, and liberals. Here is an excellent new resource for teaching and understanding the turn of the American twentieth century as it was being shaped in New York City."
—Ruth Wisse, Harvard University

“Professor Cassedy introduces his readers to the intellectual elite of Yiddish immigrant writers and thinkers whose progressive ideas and insights concerning the arts, literature, and politics found expression in the pages of the Yiddish language journal, Di Tzukunft.”
—Jewish Book World