Dartmouth Events

When Yiddish-speaking immigrants left Eastern Europe more than a century ago, they confronted the contradiction that the same nation to which they fled in search of opportunity and freedom was engaged in the exploitation and oppression of African Americans. Yiddish cultural activists understood this contradiction, and they called attention to it as a reason to resist the push to assimilate into "white" American culture. Despite the ethics that motivated this resistance, these cultural leaders overestimated the guarantees of freedom and equality in America's founding documents, while they underestimated the extent to which they accepted racist assumptions and images. By considering the preoccupation with American racism in Yiddish literature, this lecture calls attention to the contradictions that constitute the dilemmas still confronting American society today.