Jewish Feminists

"Milly was a person with an inherent sense of responsibility, such as one seldom finds, and it is precisely for this reason that she was a truly free human being in everything she thought and did. When she arrived in London, a girl in her teens, she denied herself every extra penny’s worth of food until, after three years, she was at last able to bring her parents and her three sisters from Russia and provide a home for them. The effort required for this can only be appreciated by someone familiar with the unbelievable working conditions which existed in the London ghetto at that time. Doing things of this sort was to Milly a matter of course."

"Milly was a woman of rare stature and nobility who rejected all that was ugly and mean. She was like a mother to her younger friends and comrades; even in her later years she was always surrounded by young people, who loved and revered her. Wherever we lived our modest home was a gathering place for people of different races and nationalities and it was Milly to whom it owed its warmth and charm."

"Milly was a courageous woman who always stood up for her conviction. This she proved during the first World War as well as on numerous other occasions. When, during the war, the English government issued a decree compelling all Russian immigrants in England to enroll in the British army or face deportation to Russia, she immediately joined the protest movement and was promptly arrested. The defense lawyer who was placed at her disposal had, without consulting her, presented a plea in which he endeavored to absolve her of all guilt in the matter. Milly first learned of this statement when her case came up for trial. She immediately lodged a protest and declared: “I am grateful to my attorney for his good intentions but nevertheless declare that I will openly voice my convictions, come what may. I believe that the voice of one’s conscience is the only true forum of justice.” This forthright avowal resulted in her imprisonment for two and a half years, but even her judges had to respect her honesty and courage."

"It was inevitable that some day the hour should come when one of us would have to go. But this is sober logic which cannot lessen the pain of the bereaved. I only know that, with this wonderful woman, something was taken from me that no eternity can bring back. We have all lost her, for, with Milly, one of the last of the old guard has passed away, one who contributed sixty years of her life to a cause that will never die as long as men live on this earth."

"She died on November 23rd, 1955 and was cremated on the 27th in accordance with her wishes. Once when we happened to touch on the subject she said, half in jest: “Perhaps it is all the same to the dead what happens to them but I find it beautiful to be consumed by flames, for fire is a pure element. To be eaten up by worms in the brave is ugly and repugnant to my feelings.” She was right. We went to life together for almost sixty years and my ashes will mingle with hers when my hour comes."

"She opened a door in my heart which had been unknown to me before and which might never have been opened without her. Through the open door came sunshine, came joyous experience and inner peace without which life would be hopelessly distorted. That is why she will always be with me, my companion of so many fruitful and happy years. She stood undismayed through storm and stress and, at the same time was a tender mother to our child. She was a part, and surely the best part of my life. Death may separate us physically, it can never erase her image from my heart or dim the memories of the precious years we spent."

"The syndicalists fight against the educational system sanctioned by State or Church, the only purpose of which is ultimately to reduce the minds of the young to stencils and to mold them into certain forms so that later, they can more willingly serve the system of political oppression and economic exploitation of the broad masses by a small privileged minority. We believe that the organized working class must provide the school for their own children on their own initiative, and we support any attempt aimed at wresting the monopoly of education from the State and the Church. Only in this way will it be possible to set up a truly free education for life, which not only opens up the collective treasures of human knowledge and provides them to the children, but also at the same time stirs them to their own meditations, promoting their independence and the development of their character in all directions."

"The syndicalists fight against every form of militarism, which they see as a terrible threat to the physical and mental well-being of the people, which is in reality only a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes to protect the power of the propertied classes against the working class, harnessing power of the great majority of the people against the rebellion of the oppressed. For the workers of all lands, there is no benefit to be had from slaughtering one another, and it is only their ignorance which arranges for them to go to the wars which are the result of conflicts of interests between the capitalists of different States. The syndicalists are opponents of the national lie; behind its dazzling raiment there is always hidden the naked egoism of the possessing classes. By principle, recognize the right of free development for every nation and for each group in the nation, as long as they are not passed to the welfare of all the damage that they are internationalists and representative of a general brotherhood of peoples."

"The syndicalists are principled opponents of every Church, in which they only see an institution for the mental domination and damnation of the working people, cultivating willing objects of exploitation for the bosses and loyal subjects for the State."

"By syndicalism, we mean the economic union of manual and intellectual workers on the basis of a federal form of organization that is oriented both to practical everyday demands and to the achievement of a better future. With the strength of their economic and moral solidarity, syndicalist workers try to better their overall situation within today’s society in all directions, using all the means of direct-action struggle that the moment commands. The principal aim of the syndicalists, however, is to overcome the capitalist state and economic order and reorganize society on the basis of . — The syndicalists believe that the land, the instruments of production, and the products of labor belong to the whole, and must be managed by the producers themselves. For this reason, the preparation of the worker for this purpose appears to them as the most crucial task of socialist education."

"Unlike the so-called socialist workers’ parties of various tendencies, which stipulate that the conquest of political power is the goal, the syndicalists reject every form of the State and its various institutions, since they argue that the State was never and never can be anything other than the political apparatus of force of the propertied classes to ensure the economic exploitation of the broad masses of the working people."

"We should support woman both mentally and morally, pointing her the way to freedom, which she must naturally find for herself."

"We have already realized today that the dreary bullying to which stupid pedagogues subject young people usually achiever just the opposite of what it should. By trampling on the human dignity of youth in this way, they have greatly harmed them spiritually and mentally, placing obstacles to their natural development. We believe that such a method must be rejected in every way, that one should not always emphasize people’s weaker side, but must appeal more to the good, the noble and the purely human, strengthening their will and reviving their courage."

"The proletariat has been kept in ignorance and slavery by the propertied classes for centuries, so that they have had little time for intellectual training, particularly for their own thinking, people who, though physically tough, are above all very often loaded malnourished and with all sorts of worries, have little opportunity to think seriously about social problems. In most cases it is not innate stupidity and inertia of thought that makes workers dull and indifferent, as is so often claimed, but the lack of the necessary opportunity and leisure."

"The claim that women cannot be won over to a great movement like socialism is just as groundless as the assertion that the proletariat generally has no sympathy for socialism."

"Early Christianity was able to release her soul by appealing to her humanity and presenting her as an equal at the side of men. And later, when Christian doctrine strangled in Church dogma and woman was branded as the mother of Original Sin, women fought for their human rights for many years to come. She took a prominent part in all movements against the Church and died as a heretic and witch on the countless pyres of the Inquisition after having endured all the agonies of the torture chamber. Only when all of these movements had bled to death and the Church remained as the victor on the battlefield did woman succumb to its enticements. In the mystical semi-darkness of the old Dome, her soul was weak and brittle. A weary resignation had taken hold of her, and she became the servant of the Church, which was most glad of this victory, for woman, who in her hopelessness was seized by its deceitful ideal, became one of its mightiest pillars and has remained so to this day."

"There was only one period in history in which women were addressed among the people. This happened in the time of the early Christian movement. The words that were spoken to her then deeply penetrated into woman’s soul, arousing what was most beautiful and precious in her. All the hidden feelings and sensations that had lain dormant in her for millennia suddenly came to the fore and found a wonderful expression in it. With a holy earnestness, she answered its call, proving that the slavery of centuries had not broken her spirit. Such a call is again needed from us today to seize woman’s heart with tongues of fire and to lead her into our ranks as a fighter."

"From their parents’ home, young people ought to take the richest and most beautiful memories with them on the path of life, which should accompany them later in all struggles and perils like a warm ray of hope. So ought it to be, so must it be, so shall it be when men and women come together as free and equal people, dedicating themselves to one another in the spirit of real love and mutual respect. But such a state of coexistence is only possible if both sexes are equal in all their relations and woman is no longer regarded as an immature and inferior being. We demand not women’s rights but human rights, and we want to win them in all spheres of life."

"The family is no artificial creation, arbitrarily called into being and always wearing the same forms. It has assumed different forms in different times and places, and also its present form will not remain the same; they will continue to evolve and adopt new forms, keeping pace with economic and social changes and with the ethical and intellectual needs of the people. To this day, it has been the most significant and influential institution for the individual lives of human beings, and it will undoubtedly remain for a long time. It is probably within the circle of the family, especially in youth, that people receive the deepest impressions, impressions that very often give their later lives a decisive direction. It should therefore be done everything possible to give this narrow circle a character that is as pleasant as possible and mentally appealing, especially one in which the child can experience well-being."

"That a woman whose life is only moving from one pregnancy to the next, is lost for any mental development, is all too understandable. And unfortunately there are millions of proletarian women in this terrible situation."

"The more the proletarians’ strength is exhausted and depleted in the daily struggle for existence, the less they are tempted to express outrage against the yoke that has been imposed on them, and the more they are forced to dully endure their misery. Big proletarian families mean cheap material for the entrepreneur to exploit and less risk in the inevitable economic battles between labor and management — and the State welcomes cannon fodder in case of a war."

"It is truly already high time that woman should stop playing the role of a mere breeding machine, the accidental victim of a multiplication of her family. A child should only see the light of day if it is wanted by the parents and it can be provided with the material conditions for healthy and humane development. As things stand today, however, the birth of every new child in a proletarian’s family means a greater austerity in the most necessary necessities of life and very often the destitution and slow languishing of all family members."

"Fifty years ago, it was utopian to dream of an eight-hour working day, as it is still a utopia to dream of a limitation of working hours in proletarian housekeeping. But utopias are invented to be realized, and as long as there is no demand for an improvement of living conditions, changing things is impossible."

"I need only recall the introduction, on the broadest basis, of central heating, washing machines and electric drying apparatus, vacuums, indoor baths, etc., all things that have already been made to serve large parts of the proletarian population in America, which make all the more embarrassing, for those who know it, the extremely primitive state of proletarian housekeeping in Germany."

"We have long understood that if the worker is chained to his work for ten, twelve, or fourteen hours, he cannot possibly muster the energy necessary for his intellectual development. It is for this reason that the reduction of working hours has played such a prominent role in the modern labor movement, and I would argue that in addition to fighting for the recognition of the worker’s human dignity, the reduction of working hours has been the most important result of the international workers’ movement to this day."

"“Yes, if woman would only think,” a good comrade once told me, “but she thinks too little and maybe not at all.” — Well, I think that woman thinks too much, way too much, but that her whole thinking continues to be turned toward the most trivial little things, so that her brain is consumed with and exhausted by them. Her entire life is filled with a plethora of banal things, but hardly ever to deal with the issues of the day. Since the entire management of the household almost exclusively weighs upon her, and her funds are meted extremely scarcely in most cases — I am speaking of course of the women of the working class — so she is always forced to speculate on every last penny. Under these circumstances, is it all too understandable that she is left with little time to focus her mind on other things, so that many women feel no desire at all for intellectual development."

"We have to take things as they are, and we must already accept the need to seek out women in their hiding places, bringing the necessary enlightenment to them there. This work needs to be done and should be our most sacred task. This work needs to be done and should be our most sacred task. Certainly, the task is not easy and pleasant, but it must be embraced and pursued all the more energetically in so far as we have come to the conclusion that the need to win woman for our cause outweighs any concerns."

"Ibsen and others had loudly and fearlessly proclaimed that the liberation of women in the family was bound to fail if men did not thoroughly correct their previous attitude towards women. For the philistines and blockheads, however, this constituted a monstrous crime, to which, in their petty meanness, they attributed the most ignoble motives. [...] Until his death, Ibsen lashed out at the existing family and tried to convince us that without women’s intellectual liberation, a true co-existence between man and woman is unthinkable, that the women’s emancipation is an issue not only for women, but also for the world, for children, for men, for all humanity, and that the resolution of this question could no longer be avoided."