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THE PURPOSE of Shuldiner's study is to explore the interplay between socio-political ideology and ethnic/religious tradition among those in the American Jewish labour movement who were active in the first half of the 20th century. His study touches on a number of complex social phenomena, including immigration, urbanization, secularization, assimilation, and inter-and intra-cultural tensions, as well as on the political phenomena of Communism, the labour union movement, and Zionism. In relating these phenomena to a specific group of people and a specific time-period, Shuldiner shows how the Jewish labour movement adapted and redefined traditional religious and ideological beliefs and practices in accordance with emerging secular and socialist ideas. The aim of those in the Jewish labour movement was to change the traditionalist way of life of immigrant Jews without destroying the cohesive "essence" of Jewish culture, however that essence might be defined.
There is, of course, already a body of work on the history of the American Jewish labour movement, but Shuldiner is not treading a worn path. The value of his study lies in his approach to the subject. As a folklorist, his particular interest is neither the historical growth (and decline) of the Jewish labour movement, nor its achievements of influences on the larger labour movements and social-democratic politics of the United States. Rather Shuldiner examines the cultural traditions, the expressive forms and "folk ideology" (to use his term), that both define and are defined by the movement. As a folkloristic study, Shuldiner's work adds an ethnographic dimension to the work already done in this area.
The author's ethnographic approach allows him to explore the strategies by which activists both divorced themselves from the traditional, conservative Jewish culture transported from Europe, while attracting converts to socialist and secularist ideologies of the New World Jewish labour movement. For example, in Chapter Two, Shuldiner examines how the Jewish Labour Movement interpreted biblical and talmudic literature, as well as the secular history of Jews in Europe, to further their political end of radicalizing Jews. Thus, they interpreted the story of Moses as a struggle for freedom from repression -Moses being a radical activist who fought against the conservative forces of Egypt. Activists interpreted the understanding of Jews as "people of the book" to mean that Jews...