Kultur Lige

The Kultur Lige (Culture League) was a secular socialist Jewish organization associated with the Jewish Labour Bund, established in Kiev in 1918, whose aim was to promote Yiddish language literature, theater and culture. The league organized various activities, including theater performances, poetry recitals, and concerts in Yiddish with the aim of disseminating Jewish art in Eastern Europe and Russia. Among some notable members of the organization were the scenic designer Boris Aronson (who later worked on Broadway), the artist and architect El Lissitzky, the writer David Bergelson, the sculptor Joseph Chaikov, the writer Peretz Markish, the poet David Hofstein, and Isaac Ben Ryback. Bergelson, Markish and Hofstein were later executed on Joseph Stalin's orders during the Night of the Murdered Poets, in 1952.

Artists like Ryback and Lissitzky who were members of the group tried to develop a distinctively Jewish form of modernism in which abstract forms would be used as a means of expressing and disseminating popular culture.

The manifesto of the group, published in November 1919, stated:

It also listed the "three pillars" of the Kultur Lige as Yiddish education for the people, Yiddish literature, and Jewish art.

In 1919 members of the group, Victor Alter and Henryk Berlewi, organized a major exhibition of Polish-Jewish art in Białystok under the name "First Exhibition of Jewish Painting and Sculpture". The exhibition was targeted at the Yiddish speaking Jewish community, as well as the Polish workers of the city. During the same year, the organization helped to sponsor sixty three Yiddish schools, fifty four libraries and many other cultural and educational institutions.

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