Russian Jewish Riots on the streets of New York City

• In Event: Radical Jewish Politics in the Street through Photography, Literature, and Violence

Abstract

“Praised be He, who chose the Jews from among all peoples, and graced us with a tax, a collecting box…” This quote from Mendele Mocher Sforim’s 1869 Yiddish play DI TAKSE (the tax) emphasizes the deep influence of the notorious KOROBKA [the Kosher tax that was imposed on the Jews by the Russian Imperial government] on Eastern-European Jewry. In this paper, I will discuss the traces of Imperial Russian meat law on Russian Jewish culture in both Eastern Europe and the United States. I will focus on the 1902 New York City Kosher meat boycott as a public performance of the role of kosher meat as a transnational symbol of East-European Jews. The political importance of the 1902 boycott has been widely celebrated in modern American history. Historians such as Herbert Gutman and Paula Hyman have discussed the Kosher meat boycott as an important example of the emerging labor and women’s suffrage movements. However, as I shall demonstrate, this mass, primarily women’s, protest reveals that concerns about the Russian Imperial government were still a matter of distress in the U.S. By reading the boycott as a text and juxtaposing it with Abramovich's play, I argue that the boycott can be understood as a retroactive act of resistance against the Korobka, and a way for Eastern-European Jewish women to negotiate their role as active members in the Jewish immigrant community.

Author

• Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, UC San Diego