Yom Kippur Ball, invented 15th of September, 1888 at the Berner Street Club

[seanr]

The Yom Kippur balls were anti-religion events held by Jewish radicals. Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement and is typically austere focussing on the holiest day of on repentance, forgiveness, and seeking atonement for sins. Therefore, the marking of Yom Kippur as a lavish entertainment was offense to Orthodox Jewish tastes. From Wikipedia:

The Yom Kippur balls were countercultural, antireligious festivities held by Jewish anarchists and socialists on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year and day of atonement. Revelers sang, danced, ate, and heard speeches from famous anarchists. The tradition began in England in 1888 and, under the Pioneers of Liberty, recurred annually from New York the year after. By 1891, six other American cities held their own balls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_balls (emphasis mine)

The source from Wikipedia is Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. United States: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 291. I don't have this source, but it was reprinted in 2020.

The invention of this ball is credited to London, but the format was quickly exported to New York by the following year (was there some connection between Jewish radicals in London and those in New York?*). Confirmation that it was the Berner Street club that held the first of these balls can be found in

The Workers' Friend, the Hebrew Socialist paper of this week, announces that as a protest against the Jewish religion, and the Day of Atonement the Jewish Socialists and Free-thinkers have organised a banquet for to-morrow, which will take place at the International Working Men's Club. Speeches will be delivered in various languages. The announcement has caused much excitement amongst the orthodox Jews, and it is rumoured that a disturbance may take place at the banquet. If so the members of the International Working Men's Club state that they are prepared, and the aid of the police will not be called in to assist in quelling it.

This banquet is unprecedented in Jewish history in the East End of London.

Cork Examiner - Saturday 15 September 1888, page 2

This was precisely two weeks before Elizabeth Stride was murdered in the Yard of the International Working Men's Club. I note the notion that the club members were willing to enforce their own security, without the aid of the Police.

Are old editions of the Arbeter Fraint archived? - it might be interesting to find the original announcement. I'm a little surprised that I had not heard about this before, the intention (and effect) of the Balls was to create tension with the Orthodox community.

* Hinty hinty hint hint, hint hint hint.

[Paddy Goose]

Interesting that.

... old editions of the Arbeter Fraint...

Here's one - https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...-fraint-s-take

[bonestrewn]

Hi, Sean!

This is so fascinating, and I'd never heard of anything like this. I did a quick search and found an article called "A Tempest in Three Teapots: Yom Kippur Balls in London, New York, and Montreal" by Rebecca E. Margolis in Canadian Jewish Studies vol 9 (2001).

She mentions that multiple editors of the Berner St. publication, which she spells as Arbayter Fraynd, moved back and forth between London and New York (she names Johann/Joseph Most and Philip Krantz in particular), and that the publication, prior to the founding of local NY Yiddish publications, "served as the main Yiddish organ of socialist and anarchist propaganda among American anarchists." So it appears there were direct links and active communication between the two immigrant/political communities.

[seanr]

Interesting that.
Here's one - https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...-fraint-s-take

The translated section contains a reference to the Yom Kippur ball, and points out the significance of both locations of the Double Event murders having significance to the local Jewish community (the Radicals at the Berner Street Club and the Great Synagogue).

All doubt also disappears that there must be more than one murderer, otherwise they would not be mad men and would have to have a reason for these murders.
One can also not accept the opinions of our little Jews who began with the first murder to assert that G-d was doing this to punish the Socialists, because they gorged themselves on Yom Kippur. Unfortunately for them, the second murder, even more gruesome than the first, occurred near the Duke Place Synagogue, where Dr. Adler gives his vacuous sermons.

[Kattrup]

The Berner Street Club achieved its objective, and caused the more traditional Jews to protest:

The Star, 17th September 1888:

A Feast on a Fast Leads to a Riot.


While the orthodox Jews of the East-end were on Saturday celebrating the Day of Atonement by fasting and prayer, the Socialist and Freethinking Hebrews held a banquet at the International Working Men's Club, Berner-street, where speeches were made pointing out that the miseries and degradation of the people were not due to any Divine power, but that they were caused by the capitalists, who monopolised all the means of production and paid starvation wages. The orthodox Jews took great umbrage at this banquet, and assembled in Berner-street in great numbers. The windows of the club were smashed, and when three of the men in the club went out to secure the man who did the damage, they were very roughly handled, till about a hundred of their colleagues went to their assistance. The police subsequently dispersed the mob, and guarded the club till a late hour.