Rediscovering a History of Jewish Anarchism

Historian Kenyon Zimmer is joined by authors Anna Elena Torres and Shane Burley for a discussion of Joseph Cohen’s 1945 Yiddish-language history of the Jewish anarchist movement in America.

Cohen spent more than four decades as a prominent figure in the Yiddish-speaking anarchist movement, and wrote the only full-length historical study of it, , covering the period from the 1880s through the Second World War. The book's recent publication in English by AK Press allows a wider audience to access the story of thousands of radical Jewish immigrants who fought to create a new world without borders, militaries, or bosses.

Kenyon Zimmer is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of (2015) and co-editor of (2017), (2018), and (2023).

Anna Elena Torres is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Comparative Literature and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Torres is the author of (2024) and co-editor of (2023). Torres’ publications include work in Prooftexts, Jewish Quarterly Review, Nashim, make/shift: a journal of feminisms in motion, In geveb, and ArtsEverywhere. Torres' creative practice has included work as a poet and translator, community arts organizer, muralist, and conceptual artist exhibited at the Venice Biennale’s Yiddishland Pavilion (2022) and the POLIN Museum, Warsaw.

Shane Burley is a journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author, co-author, and editor of four books, including most recently (Melville House Books, 2024). His work has been featured in places such as NBC News, The Baffler, Al Jazeera, Jewish Currents, In These Times, New Lines, Yes! Magazine, MSNBC and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. You can follow him on X @shane_burley1 and on Instagram @shaneburley.

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