Home > Today's Workmen's Circle

The Workmen's Circle / Arbeter Ring is a national organization
with members across North America. Created a century ago by
Jewish immigrants in New York City, The Workmen's Circle engaged hundreds of thousands of Jews in mutual support and community building, with an inclusive commitment to social justice, and a big tent approach to Jewish culture and heritage. Yesterdays network of lyceums, health clinics, and schools has evolved into todays nationwide calendar of cutting-edge arts programming, our award winning summer camp, our leadership in the Jewish community on social justice issues, and our welcoming national network of multigenerational Jewish communities and educational centers/shules. Today's Workmen's Circle is the organization for everyone who feels at home being Jewish, secular, and progressive.

Mission Statement

The Workmens Circle / Arbeter Ring fosters Jewish identity and participation in Jewish life through Jewish, especially Yiddish, culture and education, friendship, and the pursuit of social and economic justice.

Historic Overview

Towards the end of nineteenth century, Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States reached explosive proportions.  Having endured the hardships of a sometimes harrowing journey across the Atlantic, many among the newly arrived were dumbfounded 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 new culture. Recognizing the importance of facing these challenges with a unified front, and feeling the resonance of traditional and deeply-held Jewish values emphasizing community and social justice, a convocation of progressive-minded immigrants gathered in 1900 to found Der Arbeter Ring, in English, The Workmen's Circle.

Over the past century, we at the Workmen's Circle have undergone significant changes in outlook and program, but have remained passionately committed to the principles at the living core of our organization: Jewish community, the promotion of an enlightened Jewish culture, and social justice.  Our social institutions for years played a crucial ameliorative role in the lives of American Jews; through our camp, our schools, and through our lively communities across the country, we continue to play such a role today.  Yiddish was once the primary language of the majority of our members; we are today widely known and respected as a central force in the renaissance of fascination and creativity in Yiddish culture that includes literature, music, theater, and more.  Historically, the Workmen's Circle raised a crucial voice in the struggles of American labor; today we work fiercely to remain a bulwark in the fight for the dignity and economic rights of immigrants, fairness in labor practices, decent health care for all Americans in short, for the very promises that brought our organizations founders to this nation in the first place.

Highlights in the History of the Workmen's Circle

2000-Present: Facing The Future

• WC/AR publishes the magazine Jewish Currents
• We celebrate our centennial
• The WC/AR Foundation is established to support Jewish Community,Yiddish Culture and Social Justice Activism.
• Camp Kinder Ring is accredited by The Association of American Camps and has been recognized with awards from The Foundation for Jewish Camping.

1980-2000: Approaching Our Second Century

• We endorse Single-Payer Universal Health Care
• We organize Childrens March on Washington, lobbying for Gun-Control Legislation
• Establish Centers for Social and Economic Justice and for Cultural Jewish Life

1950-1980: Cultural Innovations

• Produce the first free public Yiddish Music Festivals in city parks (precedent-setting public ethnic music festivals in New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal)
• Build multi-care home/hospitals for seniors
• Co-found The National Conference for Soviet Jewry
• Collaborate on founding The A. Phillip Randolph Institute for civil rights and labor activism
• Establish The Jewish Cultural Experience at Circle Lodge

1930-1950: Fighting For Equality And Justice

• Organize the first (anywhere) Holocaust commemoration honoring The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising precursor to Holocaust Remembrance Day
• Establish The Jewish Labor Committee to rescue European Jews
• Organize mass rallies and demonstrations against Fascism

1900-1930: Building A Community

• Establish the I.L.Peretz School/Shule System
• Open WC/AR summer camps across North America, first as Camp Kinderland, later Camp Kinder Ring.
• Build tuberculosis sanitoriums
• Provide healthcare and insurance benefit network for members, becoming the Red Cross of the Labor Movement.
• Establish Labor Lyceums offering adult education to immigrants and workers across North America

National Executive Board of the
Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, Inc.

President: Peter Pepper
Vice President: Robert Kaplan
Treasurer: Maddy Braun