Review of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature by Anna Elena Torres

Influenced by the Yiddish sweatshop poets (230), famed anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) gave talks in Yiddish across North American cities about sexuality and reproductive health rights. On occasion, however, Goldman would deny knowing the language and would frustrate a Yiddish-speaking audience by addressing them in German. She proclaimed in 1916 in a letter to a friend: “I should prefer English meetings. I do not care for Jewish ones, especially since I do not speak Jargon” (231). According to Anna Elena Torres’s Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish, Goldman’s yiddishism in this sentence (“I should”) is representative of the language in her letters, which, Torres points out, “may reflect the texture of her everyday speech” (230). This anecdote highlights the dilemmas and tensions for a western individual of Jewish descent, who believes in Jewish integrationism, and their relation towards the language which epitomizes Jewish difference and closedness.

Contrary to Goldman’s ambivalence towards using Yiddish as a political tool, other American Yiddish sweatshop poets such as Dovid Edelshtat (1866-1892) embraced the Yiddish language as well as anarchism. These poets wrote pro-labor anarchist hymns in Yiddish about the Haymarket riots of 1886 and their heroes like Albert Parsons; in later decades, modernist Yiddish poets even wrote about the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti who were executed in 1927 in a state prison in Boston. The discussion of such poems by Edelshtat and his contemporaries comprise “Elegy,” the first of the four parts of Torres’s book. The subsequent three sections are entitled “Genealogy,” “Markish’s Modernism,” and “Language Politics.”

The book offers multi-layered discussions of cultural productions and individual cultural producers with an affinity for anarchism and Yiddish culture in the broadest sense: fiction, linguistics, oral agitation, the press, and song. The chapter “Anarchist Linguistics” (in “Language Politics”) about Yankev Meyer Zalkind (1875-1937), the rabbi-turned-anarchist who translated the Talmud into Yiddish, argues that his “political philosophy of anarchism” was precisely derived “from his study of Talmudic ethics,” thus “anticipating the rise of the ‘spiritual Left’” (258). The chapter “Religious Genealogies” (in “Genealogy”) focuses on Yosef Luden (1907-2002), who edited a bilingual Yiddish/Hebrew anarchist journal in Israel and published in Tel Aviv essays in Yiddish about the history of anarchism and its relation to literature as late as the mid-1980s. This section highlights the complex interplay of anarchism and Jewish statism in the post-war world.

Similar to proponents of other political currents in modern Jewish life, Yiddish anarchists established their own newspapers. Most notable is the Fraye arbeter shtime (Free Voice of Labor, 1890-1977), which boasts the distinction of being “the longest running anarchist paper in any language” (9). However, unlike other social-political currents in Ashkenazi Jewish life, Yiddish-speaking anarchists did not establish “anarchist institutions” such as political parties or an independent school system, as part of their principled anti-statist and anti-establishment world view.

Torres traces fascinating cases of the cultural-political manifestations of “Yiddish Anarchism,” such as the aforementioned discussion about Emma Goldman’s language politics (227-36). The book covers different cases where Yiddish and anarchism are intertwined, including poems and other texts that were not previously examined through an anarchist lens. The newness of this approach makes these explorations an important contribution of the book. For example, Torres analyzes the poetry of Yankev Glatshteyn and Malka Heifetz Tussman and examines extensively the works of Soviet Yiddish poet Peretz Markish (151-78). In particular, the book includes a close analysis of his long poem, Der fertsik yeriker man (179-217). Though Markish is typically regarded as a prime example of a Soviet Communist Yiddish poet, Torres aims to show that he was in fact a closeted anti-Soviet. Such an attempt is consistent with the general tendency among U.S. scholars (from the Left and the Right) when examining Soviet Jewish culture. In terms of theoretical contributions, Torres introduces the term anarchist diasporism to distinguish Jewish (Ashkenazi) anarchism from the common European anarchist tradition. The major distinction between these two groups was the Jewish group’s rejection of antisemitic rhetoric, which prominent European anarchists often used to emphasize their anti-clerical stance (14-15). Jewish anarchists, as Torres shows, followed a unique trajectory, establishing their movement while opposing antisemitism.

Throughout the book, Torres consistently connects the examination of Yiddish and anarchist thought to anarchist thought and movements in other cultures and languages, thus contributing to the general field of anarchism studies. Torres shows how Jewish anarchists embraced the pluralistic approach of certain anarchist thinkers towards the language question, making it intellectually possible for Yiddish-speaking anarchists to live and create in the language in which they were most comfortable.

One of the most challenging tasks for Torres is fleshing out and defining the term “anarchism.” According to widespread anarchist thinking, the focus of critique is the state apparatus, for it bears the main responsibility for human oppression. Hence anarchists’ basic anti-statist position: only the abolishment of the state and its legal, social, and military institutions and their replacement with egalitarian and independently-run communities would ensure human liberation. Torres’s definition of anarchism is partially in line with this definition: “Anarchism is a prefigurative ethics of anti-authoritarianism… [which inspires for] the dissolution of national borders, cessation of war and militarism, and abolition of prisons and police forces. Rather than prescribing a single platform or policy blueprint, anarchism critiques hierarchy as a structure; its praxis consists as artistic freedom, mutual aid, and direct action.” (4).

Well-known Jewish anarchist Noam Chomsky, who is briefly mentioned in the book (322); he used to travel at age twelve from Philadelphia to New York to visit the offices of the Fraye arbeter shtime, believed the Israeli kibbutzim served as “the most dramatic example [of the anarchist ideal]… [because] for a long period really [they] were constructed on anarchist principles, that is: self-management, direct worker control, integration of agriculture, industry, service, personal participation in self-management… extraordinarily successful by almost any measure that one can impose.” One can notice here a shift of emphasis between Torres’s definition and Chomsky’s, which is closer to “classic” anarchism (emphasis on restructuring the economy). Perhaps an examination of the Yiddish culture produced in such an economically restructured setting like kibbutzim would have added a communal dimension to Torres’s more individual based investigations. Moreover, in the book overall, a clearer distinction should have been made between (Yiddish) anarchism as a historical phenomenon active roughly from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century that was tied to union activism, aligned with the working class, and sometimes termed as “anarcho-syndicalism” or “anarcho-communism” versus movements in the post-industrial West that were also labeled “anarchism” but were clothed within a very different, middle-class garment, in which the praxis of economic struggle had diminished (at times labeled as individualist or post-left anarchism).

The book doesn’t include a separate “Conclusion” section, making it a little harder to flesh out its main argument(s). Instead, Torres ends with a very moving short piece about her acquaintance with and admiration for the late musician, artist, and anarcho-syndicalist Jewlia Eisenberg (1970-2021). Eisenberg’s edgy adaptations of Yiddish poetry and song – like “Di grine kuzine” and her duet with late scholar Dovid Shneer (1972-2020) of Edelshtat’s hymn “Mayn tsavoe” by his grave in Denver – make this piece an appropriate addition to the book. ^{1 1} On a personal note, alongside Shneer (z”l) and his partner, I once had the privilege of seeing Eisenberg (z”l) live in Tel Aviv during the summer of 2006. Her band’s live version of “Di grine kuzine” was very memorable. A sense of conclusion for the book might be found in a photo of Eisenberg (275) holding up a bilingual Yiddish-English sign, colored in anarcho-syndicalist red and black colors: “We Will Outlive Them With Intersectional Anti Fascism.”

Despite the sign’s coloring and Eisenberg’s declared support for the anarcho-syndicalist pro-working class line, I would argue that the identity politics’ lingua (“intersectional”) symbolically marks the shift between the pro-labor union “classic” anarchist movement to the contemporary phenomenon of anarchism. “Identity politics” tends to champion every possible human category besides social-class, and is often guided by “the go-to ‘philosopher’ of wokeness,” Judith Butler, ^{2 2} Norman Finkelstein, I’ll Burn that Bridge when I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom (Sublation Press, 2023), 58. The term “intersectionality” was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, “the reigning High Priestess of identity politics” (ibid, 70). who sees themself as a “provisional anarchist” ^{3 3} Jamie Heckert, “On anarchism: An interview with Judith Butler 1.” In Anarchism & Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 2011), 67. and is referenced in this book as well. The claim against the Butlerian style of identity politics stems from its perceived commonality with the neoliberal establishment – that is, its overall non-threatening rhetoric against the establishment’s own promotion of “the anarchy of market forces.” ^{4 4} Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 187. The common slogan “open borders” in the book’s title is but one example thereof. By dividing people according to a long list of cultural categories, identity politics masks class difference, and thus makes it difficult for working people of multiple backgrounds and preferences to unite based on shared class interests and to accurately pinpoint their class enemies. ^{5 5} I am echoing here claims of Glenn Greenwald against Butler’s promotion of “identity politics” during the 2021 Holberg Debate that featured Butler and Cornel West: “Identity Politics and Culture Wars” (in the linked video: 36:30-48:30 & 1:03:35-1:08:30). Notoriously, “identity politics” lingua was weaponized against the Bernie Sanders campaigns, thus helping to undermine the first genuine progressive class-based political campaigns to appear in the U.S. in decades (Finkelstein, I’ll Burn that Bridge when I Get to It!, 371-6). Drawing from the book, one illustration of this discrepancy lies in the different interpretations of the word “hefker”: while Torres celebrates the term and wants to reclaim it for anarchism as a term that “demands the redistribution of wealth and land, defines one’s duty to the poor, and sets the parameters of community legislative authority” (168-9), leading producer of Jewish socialism, I. L. Peretz, used “hefker” to signify the lawlessness and deceitfulness of the stock-market-capitalist run world in his famous poem “Meyn nisht.” ^{6 6} Lawlessness and chaos are also common dictionary translations for hefker.

These arguments regarding how to demarcate anarchism are partially new and partially go back to the nineteenth century. Though the ongoing challenge of defining anarchism comes across in Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish, Torres has provided readers with a formidable book about the multi-faceted relations between Yiddish culture and anarchism. Along with recent work in Hebrew on the subject, it is a very welcome addition to scholarship about the “Yiddish Left.”