United Jewish Peoples' Order - History

History

The UJPO evolved out of the Yiddish language Arbeiter Ring. In 1925 Communist and other radical members of the Ring were expelled and formed the Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society (or Labour League) in Toronto and the Canadian Workers' Circle in Montreal and Winnipeg. In 1945 these organizations merged to form the UJPO.

At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, the UJPO had more than 2,500 members nation-wide with branches being established in Hamilton and Niagara Falls Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta and Vancouver, British Columbia, among others.

The UJPO was persecuted during the Cold War. On January 27, 1950, the group's Montreal headquarters was padlocked by police acting under the Quebec government's Padlock Law which permitted the forced closure of subversive organizations. The police carted away boxes of seized books, files and organizational material. In 1951, the UJPO was expelled from the Canadian Jewish Congress for opposing German rearmament despite being, at the time, the largest Jewish fraternal organization in Canada. The UJPO would not be readmitted into the Canadian Jewish Congress until 1995.

The UJPO broke with the Communist Party (known at the time as the Labour-Progressive Party) during the party's crisis in 1956 after long-time UJPO and party stalwart J. B. Salsberg returned from a visit to the Soviet Union and reported his findings of anti-Semitism and suppression of Jewish culture.

A resolution was passed at the UJPO's December 1956 congress stating:

For many years we accepted uncritically all developments in the Soviet Union. This was wrong. There were members who questioned the sudden disappearance of Jewish writers and cultural institutions. Their questioning was rejected and dismissed without justification. Developments and events in the Soviet Union, shall be examined and our attitude to them determined on the basis of full, free discussion in the organization

The UJPO provided for its members "a social world outside the increasingly commodified life" according to Ester Reiter

Originally groups of immigrant workers, the UJPO and its precursors provided mutual fraternal assistance, medical help and financial aid to its mostly working class membership as well as providing a "rich cultural and political milieu with shules (schools), choirs, mandolin orchestras and wind orchestras, sports groups, dance and theatre groups, lectures, symposia and panels on social and political events."

In 1959 about one-third of the membership of UJPO left including long-time UJPO leader J.B. Salsberg, feeling that the organization was not critical enough of the Soviet Union, and started a new organization called the "New Fraternal Jewish Association".

The Toronto branch of the UJPO was located for many years at 83 Christie Street in Toronto alongside Christie Pits. In the years following World War II the Jewish community moved north along Bathurst Street and so did the UJPO which in 1960 moved to its current location at the Winchevsky Centre located in the Bathurst and Lawrence area. The old Christie Street location is now occupied by the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Toronto.