At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish women on the Lower East Side struggled to support their families by keeping house in dark, crowded, and unsanitary tenement apartments, and by working long hours in factories and sweatshops. Confronted with low wages and unsafe working conditions, as well as rising costs of food and rent, many women responded by joining unions, organizing pickets, and even rioting in the streets.

This talk will trace the footsteps of many of these women, including Clara Lemlich, the young leader of the 1909 garment strike known as the “Uprising of the 20,000.” Just a few years later, after marrying and having children, Clara found that political leaders were not interested in the daily struggles of working-class mothers. So she traded the picket line for a stepladder under the Brighton Beach El and began organizing fellow immigrant Jewish women into the Union of Working-Class Housewives, staging boycotts against the high costs of food and rent. We’ll learn how Jewish women activists like Clara helped shape legislation, built community networks, and laid the groundwork for the modern women’s movement.

Your presenter for this talk is Jennifer Young, an historian and writer, with many years of experience in public history and museum education. She is the former Director of Education at the YIVO Institute, where she ran the Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, and also served as the Digital Curator, where she launched YIVO's first online course, "Discovering Ashkenaz."

She has also worked as an educator at the Tenement Museum and the New-York Historical Society. Jennifer completed doctoral work in history at New York University, holds an M.A. in Anthropology and an M.Ed in Museum Education. She has been giving Jewish history walking tours for the past ten years with Context Travel. Her writing about history has appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Time.com, Kveller, and and Atlas Obscura.

This virtual talk will last approximately one hour, followed by questions and answers, and last approximately just under 90 minutes and is limited to 100 registrants.

The minimum ticket price is $5.00.