| |
| For an early
example of activism and the power of women in New York
City, look no further than the kosher meat strike of
1902 — a mostly forgotten incident that tore the Lower
East Side apart. “This is an early example of consumer
activism,” says Scott D. Seligman, author of the new
book.
MORE |
Reed Tucker
New York Post
|
The women didn’t know it, but it was the beginning of
the 20th-century’s long list of social-justice battles
for workers’ benefits, suffrage, civil rights. They
would be fought with the methods of the meat war, too —
public outreach, economic boycotts, massive
demonstrations. They would change the face of America.
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Jacqueline
Cutler
New York Daily News
|
The two weeks of urban
unrest...spreading across New York and as far away as
Boston, is chronicled in Seligman’s new book. It’s the
first full-length treatment of a consumer uprising and
Jew-vs.-Jew conflict that in its time would
inspire a generation of farbrente Yidishe meydlekh
– fiery Jewish women – who would stand up for social
justice in the early 20th century.
MORE EN FRANCAIS |
Andrew
Silow-Carroll
New York Jewish Week
|
Seligman’s compelling book is, first and foremost, a
master class in historical storytelling. Immediately
captivating and readily accessible, he restores a
relatively little‑known event outside of Jewish studies
circles to the historical canon. Impressively, he
contextualizes the boycott, routinely siloed within the
confines of Jewish history, into the broader sweep of
American history . . . Perhaps most important, he
centers key women who made it happen and allows them to
speak.
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Hannah Zaves-Greene
American Jewish Archives Journal
|
Seligman, a writer and historian, explores how gender
relations, immigration, trade unions, poverty, and
women’s rights came together in 1902 when Chicago’s Beef
Trust raised prices . . . A well-written narrative
history, this will appeal to historians and social
scientists as well as general readers interested in a
powerful but little-known community action program.
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D. R.
Jamieson, Ashland University
Choice
|
Relying on
primary source materials, Seligman has created a highly
readable and enjoyable account of this little-known
episode in American history. Highly recommended,
especially for those interested in American history and
Jewish history, as well as gender and labor studies.
MORE |
Jacqueline
Parascandola, University of Pennsylvania
Library
Journal
|
Author Scott Seligman has rescued this saga from
obscurity . . . utilizing contemporary accounts, mostly
from the Yiddish press, and genealogical detective work.
The result is a multidimensional exploration of what the
Yiddish newspapers of the time called a modern Jewish
Boston Tea Party. The author — a freelance historian and
genealogist — celebrates the unsung, obscure but
remarkably effective Jewish women who pulled together
the Ladies Anti-Beef Trust Association, a masterwork of
community organizing. Seligman tells a wide-ranging,
thoughtful, and comprehensive story.
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Ira Wolfman
Jewish Book
Council |
Seligman has . . . produced an important contribution to
the scholarship on the Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902, as
well as American Jewish women’s history. He succeeds in
urging the reader to learn about and ponder the lives of
ordinary Jewish women like Sarah Edelson, Caroline
Schatzberg, Paulina Finkel, and dozens of other brave
women activists who, despite the odds, stood up to
powerful corporations, mobilized their neighbors and
local communities, sacrificed their time, effort, and
well-being with no guarantee of success — and, through
patience and persistence, won.
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Aaron Welt
Gotham
Center for New York City History |
| |
| The great kosher meat war became a model of
how ordinary people could accomplish extraordinary
things through organizing. The victories of the Civil
Rights Movement, the women’s movement, and the triumphs
of progressives throughout the 20th century find their
origin in the housewives of the Lower East Side and the
battle for affordable kosher meat.
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Roger Abrams
New York
Journal of Books |
The author’s lively prose brings
this part of American history alive, and the book, at
times, reads almost like a novel. Seligman . . . has
done a service in bringing this little-known part of
American history to our attention, one which
demonstrates that the convergence of activism,
socialism, and unionization prevalent in the early 20th
century remains a staple in protests to this day.
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Mike Maggio
Washington Independent Review of Books |
This is an
excellent analysis of why meat prices jumped. Enter the
“Meat Trust,” a virtual gang of providers in gross
violation of the recently-enacted Sherman Anti-Trust
Act. Price fixing was only part of their operation...As
meat prices rose, the first to suffer was the housewife
who could no longer afford to buy meat for a stew or for
cholent...So, Jewish women started a
boycott...The book details how protest morphed into
violence, destruction of property, arrests, and eager
coverage by local newspapers in Jewish and popular,
Yiddish and English, religious and secular, all looking
for an attention-grabbing story.
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Jay Levinson
London Jewish Tribune |
Seligman has transformed a kosher
meat strike on the lower East Side of New York into an
engrossing, readable story for a wide variety of
readers: those interested in American and Jewish
history, those interested in the history of the labor
movement in the United States and those interested in
the growing political importance women were beginning to
play in the United States.
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Burton
Boxerman
St. Louis Jewish Light
|
[Seligman] manages to turn a
short-lived historical event about beef prices into an
inspiring drama, and he makes a compelling case that its
effects reverberate in consumer protest movements to
this day. Moreover, Seligman does us a valuable service
in pushing scholarship forward, providing this
historical account that connects to so much of today’s
Jewish scholarship on food ethics, activism,
material culture, and women’s history.
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Lisa
Portilla
Journal of Jewish Ethics
|
Seligman’s well-researched book
offers a valuable window into the emergence of
direct-action protest among immigrant women on
Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In defending their
families’ interests, the women boycotters displayed a
high degree of intelligence, boldness, and militancy
that set a new standard for activism among working-class
women.
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Gerald W.
McFarland
Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
|
Seligman’s account of the meat
riots casts striking parallels with what we are seeing
in our present day, especially in the United States,
with the Black Lives Matter protests and the calls to
end police brutality. I especially liked how “The Great
Kosher Meat War of 1902” noted that the event has been
characterized as being similar in motive to The Boston
Tea Party, and thus homing in on an important point: our
country was largely founded through the act of
protesting and speaking out against perceived injustice.
This theme carried through the 19th century, to the 1902
meat riots in New York City, to the Civil Rights
Movement, and still largely exists today. It is
important that events such as the meat riots are
recorded and retold so that the foundations of American
culture are remembered appropriately.
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Megan Weiss
Reader Views
|
The story featured in The Great
Kosher Meat War of 1902 resonates in contemporary
times when women – and men – take to the streets to
protest injustice . . . Seligman writes easy-to-read
prose, making this book perfect for scholars and
non-scholars to appreciate his research. Its
introductory timeline and its list of those connected to
the strike made it easy to keep track of the events and
the people involved. Anyone interested in life on the
Lower East Side during the turn of the last century,
Jewish women’s history or Jewish immigrant life will
enjoy learning about this intriguing episode of Jewish
American history.
MORE |
Rabbi Rachel
Esserman
The Reporter
|
In his new book, master storyteller Scott D. Seligman weaves
together the disparate narratives of New York’s 1902 kosher
meat boycott, America’s first and only chief rabbi, and the
notorious Meat Trust. Deeply researched, engagingly written,
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 takes its delighted
readers back in time to the teeming streets of the Lower
East Side and the rough-and-tumble world of its immigrant
Jews.
|
Pamela S. Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and
Gender History,
American University and
Author,
America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times
to Today |
| |
| The first blow-by-blow account of the kosher meat boycott of
1902 and the Jewish immigrant women who devised and promoted
it. Anticipating both the Consumer Movement and contemporary
Jewish women’s activism, The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902
shows how commerce, labor, food and gender explosively
combined at a tempestuous moment in the history of New York
City. |
| |
|
Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. &
Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish history,
Brandeis University, and Author, American Judaism: A
History. |
| |
| Scott D. Seligman has performed a bit of a miracle in
letting the immigrant Jewish women who led the Great Meat
Boycott of 1902 find their voice today. Seligman shows how
and why women publicly organized America's first consumer
boycott. Launched from New York’s Lower East Side to fight
precipitous Chicago Meat Trust price hikes, their action
spread to other cities, providing a powerful model for future
activism. |
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|
Elissa Sampson, Visiting Scholar and Lecturer, Cornell
University |
| |
Why would a strike led by immigrant women in 1902 be
important today? In this carefully crafted book, Scott D.
Seligman drew from original zaftik (juicy) Yiddish news
sources to bring to life the women brave enough to strike
against their butchers. At the intersection of religion and
politics, their cause gave rise to a mass movement not
unlike those of today that pit human values against crass
commercial interests.
