All Together Different Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism

"All Together Different will be a useful text for students of American labor, immigration, Jewish studies, and women's studies. It should also be required reading for any current labor activist or activist on the political left interested in bridging the ethnoracial differences among the '99 percent.'" (American Historical Review) "In All Together Different, Daniel Katz, an associate professor of history at Empire State College of the State University of New York, reveals why and how the predominantly Jewish leaders of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union enlisted many black and Hispanic colleagues beginning in the 1930s. Professor Katz mines archives at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and other research organizations to make his case that the recruitment was rooted in the revolutionary experiences of Russian Jewis" - Sam Roberts (The New York Times) "In this fine study, Katz provides a model for how to integrate labor, racial/ethnic, immigration, and gender history." - Mary McCune (Journal of American History) "This exciting book upends the conventional wisdom that puts ethnic identity and class identity at odds. Katz recovers a rich legacy of Yiddish socialist wisdom that saw how the one could animate the other, and he shows how women organizers, in particular, applied this understanding to rebuild their union in the Depression era. Cultivating mutual cultural appreciation among struggling African American, Latino, Italian, and Jewish workers, they fostered union loyalty and labor militancy. A surprising story full of timely insights for todays readers." - Nancy MacLean,Duke University, and author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace "All Together Different is an inspired title for this pathbreaking study in ideological transference from Russia to America, from Jewish Bundism to interracial unionism. With insightfulness and distinctive nuance, Daniel Katz recovers the ILGWU's complicated and consequential worldunited in its differencesof inter-racialism and gendered tensions." - David Levering Lewis,New York University, and two time Pulitzer Prize winner for W. E. B. Du Bois "In this carefully constructed book, Daniel Katzoffers a provocative reinterpretation of the history of New York Citys iconic early 20th century labor union, the ILGWU, highlighting the ways in which the revolutionary socialist worldview of the unions immigrant Russian-Jewish leadersespecially its women leadersled it to embrace and nurture workers diverse racial and ethnic identities. Challenging the widely held notion that radical class consciousness is undermined by such an emphasis on racial and ethnic differences, Katz argues that the two were mutually reinforcing among immigrant workers a century ago.This book is a must-read not only for labor historians, but also for anyone interested in the relationship of unions to immigrant workers in the 21st century, when once again worldviews shaped outside the United States borders are helping to transform the nations besieged labor movement." - Ruth Milkman,Professor of Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center "Katz's study makes a contribution to the fields of labor and women's history and discusses a very significant moment in the history of the Jewish labor movement." (The American Jewish Archives Journal)