The Ambivalence of Liberation: Ester Frumkin on the Role of Yiddish as a Language of National Internationalism

• In Event: Nationalism, Liberation, and Internationalism in the Global Yiddish Public Sphere

Abstract

By exploring some of the early writings by Ester Frumkin, a leading figure in the Jewish Labor Bund and a champion of national-cultural autonomy for the Jews minority of the Pale of Settlement, this talk will examine the ways in which she understood and discussed the role of Yiddish as a language of national internationalism. In the articles, pamphlets, and essays that Frumkin penned between 1905-1917, she argued that Yiddish constituted the key instrument for the liberation of the Jewish proletariat. In a seemingly ambivalent fashion, Yiddish-as the language of politics, education, and culture-would preserve the working class’s national identity and guarantee its survival as a nation, but would also allow the Jewish proletariat to join the international struggle for socialism.

Author

• Elissa Bemporad, CUNY Queens College / CUNY Graduate Center