We are driven by two powerful and connected values: the celebration of our culture and the pursuit of social and economic justice.
Our Mission and Vision
The Workers Circle is a nonprofit organization that powers progressive Jewish identity through Jewish cultural engagement, Yiddish language learning, multigenerational education, and social justice activism. For more than a century we have provided this 360-degree approach to building Jewish identity in hopes of creating a better and more beautiful world for all.
Our History
For more than 100 years, the Workers Circle has been at the center of progressive Jewish culture and social action, and we’re continuing that journey in bold new ways.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States reached explosive proportions. Many of the newly arrived immigrants has made great sacrifices and endured many hardships to reach the United States, a land where they thought they would find welcome and have opportunities denied them in their homelands. When they arrived, many were shocked by what greeted them in America: a land of freedom and opportunity to be sure, but one, too, of exploitative labor practices, blighted and overcrowded tenements, ethnic rivalries, and the daunting job of assimilating into an unfamiliar culture. The newcomers recognized the importance of facing these challenges with a unified front, and of keeping traditional and deeply-held Jewish values of community and social justice alive. So a convocation of progressive-minded, Jewish immigrants gathered in 1900 to found Der Arbeter Ring, Yiddish for “the Workers Circle.”
Over the past century, the Workers Circle has shifted from a mutual aid, membership organization to a 501(c3) nonprofit, but we remain passionately committed to our core, living principles: Jewish community, an enlightened Jewish culture, and building and collectively engaging an activist community that fights for social and economic justice and civil liberties for all.
For years, our social institutions played a crucial, ameliorative role in the lives of American Jews, and through our camp, schools, and lively communities across North America, we continue to play that role. Yiddish was once the primary language of our founders and the majority of our members. Today, we are widely known and respected for leading the world’s largest Yiddish language program in the world, which has served as a central force in the renaissance of fascination and creativity in Yiddish culture — including literature, music, and theater. Historically, the Workers Circle raised a crucial voice in the struggles of American labor. Today, we are a bulwark in the fight for the dignity and economic rights of immigrants, safety and fairness in labor practices, strengthening our democracy, fighting white nationalism, and acting as a partner in the fight to end centuries of systemic racism in the United States — in short, working to realize the dreams and promises that brought our organization’s founders to this nation.
Our Values
Everything we do at the Workers Circle is driven by two powerful and connected values: the celebration of our culture and the pursuit of social and economic justice.
Pursuit of social and economic justice
We never forget that we stand on the shoulders of our Eastern European immigrant founders, whose fierce collective engagement allowed them to overcome so many obstacles in their path to freedom and opportunity in the United States. We define our personal and organizational identities by pursuing equality, fighting for human dignity, and making the world a fairer place for all.
When our founders – themselves, people who were different and often excluded in an unfamiliar world – arrived from Eastern Europe, they created the Workers Circle to give their community a powerful voice. We carry on their spirit of inclusion by welcoming and celebrating the diversity of Jewish life and peoplehood in America.
Celebration of our culture
Jewish life can be a celebration and a lens through which to see the world. We find meaning in our history and joy in our art, music, languages, literature, and holidays.
From our founding more than 100 years ago, sharing our culture and history has been at the heart of the Workers Circle. Educational experiences are critical to how we understand the world and how we transform it because, for us, our Jewish identity is intrinsically linked to our passion for social activism.