Philip “Fishl” Kutner, chairman of the only remaining local branch of the Workmen’s Circle, slowly walked through the restored double parlor of the Steiner Street Victorian where circle meetings were once held and Jewish culture thrived.
He gazed at the ornate gold-framed mirror hanging above the carved wooden fireplace, and he took in the Wedgwood-style molding that surrounded the main room of the historic San Francisco mansion now known as the Chateau Tivoli, a bed-and-breakfast.
“They had classrooms and theater. Everything was here. The whole building was used,” said Kutner, 71.
The setting seemed almost too posh and overstuffed for the Workmen’s Circle, known in Yiddish as the Arbeter Ring. The progressive fraternal organization was launched in 1900 in New York City to provide assistance to immigrants and the labor force as well as to promote Jewish culture and social justice.
The circle grew quickly, becoming an integral organization within the mostly Yiddish-speaking, left-wing Jewish community. At its height in 1924, the Circle numbered 85,000 members in the United States and Canada.
“People in the Workmen’s Circle were fighters,” said Anne Koffman, 87, charter member of Northern California’s sole remaining chapter, the Maury Savin Branch 1054, named after its late co-founder.
While Koffman was growing up in upstate New York, her family was immersed in the circle.
“All my life I heard about the Workmen’s Circle. The members were very free-thinking, socialistic,” she said. “I understood that it was about labor, and I agreed with it. It was a big part of our lives.”
During the Depression era, three Yiddish-speaking branches were headquartered at the Steiner Street address.
Now there are none.
The San Francisco branches owned the building from 1930 until 1960, when it sold for $27,000. “At the tail end, they barely used it,” said Kutner. “It started to go down after World War II. By 1960, it was rundown and the membership was dwindling.”
With local participation declining during and following World War II, a few members of the biggest San Francisco branch decided it was time to form an English-speaking branch. In 1948, Branch 1054 was born.
The 1054 is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend with a banquet tomorrow night and a conference and luncheon Sunday at the Grosvenor Hotel in South San Francisco.
“This is a professional conference. Anybody who is interested or doing research on the labor movement would be fascinated,” said Kutner. “We’re not going to sit around and talk about old times.”
The good old days of the Workmen’s Circle grew out of the bad old pre-union days for laborers.
For many Eastern European Jewish immigrants who arrived in the early part of the century, the American Dream was an illusion. They lived in tenements and were exploited in sweatshops. Health care was a luxury. An ocean didn’t distance Jews from anti-Semitism.
“The idea of the Workmen’s Circle was to deal with this secular Yiddish society,” said Kutner. “They were interested in combining their efforts to help widows and orphans. Liberal attitudes were fostered because the members were [pro-]labor.”
The San Francisco group was less radical than its Eastern counterparts, Kutner said, “because you didn’t have the sweatshops here and there was no ghetto here. The Hebrew Free Loan was already started and you had a different clientele. You didn’t have the number of orphans and widows that you had back East. However, the liberal attitude toward labor was there.”
In addition, members of San Francisco’s English-speaking group were primarily children of immigrants, “not the immigrants themselves.”
Esther Savin, 77, Maury’s wife, who was raised in Oakland, calls herself “a Workmen’s Circle baby.”
Like many circle parents, hers took her to meetings instead of hiring a babysitter. The group’s philosophy gradually sank in.
“The theme of the Workmen’s Circle was based on Jewish principles I knew: not to exist on the backs of others, opposition to racism, and respect for humanity.
“There was a strong reason for the Workmen’s Circle to exist,” she added. “They helped expose the sweatshops and get the labor organized. Once that happened, the conditions changed overnight.”
Nathan Miron, 76, a member of the 1054, says his father was active in New York’s Lower East Side branch. “It was like the Red Cross of the labor force,” he said. “They loaned money to new immigrants, even just $5 or $10 to get by. My father was in a baker’s union and when there was a strike, the union couldn’t afford to give the strikers benefits but the Workmen’s Circle helped out. Nothing was ever signed but every penny was paid back.”
Miron fondly recalled the branch meeting site as a hangout where men played pinochle. “Once a week I would go with my father and be an errand boy,” he said. “I used to get all kinds of goodies and earn 15 to 20 cents in tips. It was like a whole day’s pay.”
Koffman said her father, a glove-cutter and Workmen’s Circle delegate, would routinely collect donations to send to striking workers, such as Pennsylvania coal miners.
“He would get 10 cents here and 10 cents there. He would add two dollars of his own money just to be able to send $5 because children had no milk.”
Her mother also helped raise money for workers through bake sales.
In 1946, when Koffman moved to San Francisco, she had lost touch with the organization. But suddenly she felt the need to join the fledging 1054. “This city was totally lacking in Jewish consciousness. People didn’t admit to being Jews. Some didn’t take the High Holidays off,” she said.
In its first couple of years, the 1054 struggled to increase membership from the initial 15, peaking at 350 in 1985, as it absorbed members from now-defunct branches.
“We went up and down in the first few years,” said Esther Savin, who met husband Maury at a meeting of another branch a few years earlier. “We were determined we were not going to go down the tubes the way the other San Francisco branches had.”
The turning point came when financial secretary Maury Savin and another charter member, Bill Silverstein, negotiated Kaiser health-plan coverage for group members; at the time, the medical organization hadn’t been offering group medical insurance to fraternal organizations.
The branch has 300 members today, most of whom joined initially because of the Kaiser benefits, according to Kutner.
“I joined for one reason: Kaiser,” said branch trustee Ernest Rosenthal of San Francisco. “Then I got more involved. I enjoy being together with other members and doing things for the organization. It’s really sad that the Workmen’s Circle has gotten so much smaller.”
In the United States and Canada, membership is at 25,000 — less than a third of its 1924 figures. While the liberal principles remain the same, the types of members and priorities have changed with the times.
“Members are in a different economic position now,” said Kutner. “Most of our members are college educated and professionals, but we still try to help the downcast and working people.”
The local branch supports Israel, civil rights issues and organizations, as well as AIDS organizations. A Maury Savin scholarship fund is also in place. “The agenda is heavy on education,” said Kutner.
Perhaps the biggest emphasis both nationally and locally is to promote Yiddish cultural activity. “It’s the only national fraternal organization that pushes Yiddish today,” he said.
“That’s the reason I joined,” said Kutner, who teaches two weekly Yiddish classes and publishes a national Yiddish newsletter, in addition to the branch’s newsletter, Der Arbeter, in English. “It’s important to retain the Yiddish culture and language because that is the culture of the Holocaust survivors.”
Kutner added that some people join because of their interest in keeping Yiddish alive. “There is a slow but definite increase in interest in Yiddish,” he said.
On the other hand, the most well-attended branch events, Kutner admits, are food-oriented, such as the annual picnic and the Chanukah party.
As Kutner looked through a group of vintage posters in Yiddish promoting cultural events held at the Steiner Street mansion in the 1930s, he found himself caught up in the nostalgia. He translated one announcing a dramatic recital by an actress named Batami. Tickets for the 1931 program, sponsored by the Yiddish Literary Dramatic Club, cost 50 cents.
He looked at the picture of the performer, a brunette with a Clara Bow hairstyle, and said, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”