Jewish Bakers Union Local 453

My dissertation, “Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture in East Los Angeles, 1908-1942,” explores the activism of a cohort of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came to Los Angeles in the first decade of the twentieth century.

They focused their efforts in Boyle Heights, a residential subdivision east of the Los Angeles River, where they spearheaded the creation of Yiddish-based unions, left-wing political parties, and fraternal, cultural, and educational organizations. Scholars have long assumed that the development of Yiddish life in Boyle Heights followed the same course as in Jewish communities elsewhere and referred to the neighborhood as "Los Angeles' Lower East Side." Using Yiddish-language newspapers, journals and biographies, the project probed the neighborhood's reputation, showing how the area's particular geography, pattern of settlement, and unique ethnoracial diversity influenced the dynamics of Yiddish-based labor and community organizing in the neighborhood.

I have presented my work on the Jewish Bakers Union at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2013), the Association of Jewish Studies Conference (2013), the North American Labor History Conference (2012), and the Labor and Working-Class Studies Conference (2011).

Gustavo Arellano wrote an article about the Jewish Bakers of Boyle Heights in 2018 for L.A. Taco.

Research from the dissertation also became the basis of my first digital exhibit, “The White Plague in the City of Angels.”

The dissertation is also available online from UCLA.