Building the Future: Jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and the Making of Tsukunft

When Di Tsukunft was first published in 1892, the founding editors were optimistic that their sophisticated new monthly would enlighten the masses of Jewish immigrants and surpass, in political savvy and intellectual content, the numerous Yiddish newspapers already in existence. The journal was initially the official organ of the Socialist Labour Party in the United States, but it evolved over the years, moving from a rigid political agenda toward a policy of greater political tolerance. By the 1920s, the magazine had become, according to one critic, ""the central address for Jewish writers in the entire diaspora."" The present collection gathers together articles from the journal's inception through 1914, representing the work of the first two generations of Jewish immigrants to America. This volume provides us with an invaluable account of American Jewish intellectual thought at the turn of the century, allowing us to trace the process by which this intellectual elite, with its imported Russian cultural identity, adjusted to the ever-evolving milieu of a new nation.