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| (the young Emma Goldman) |
Wikipedia reports that Emma Goldman grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family from the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (then part of the Russian Empire). Her mother Taube’s first marriage ended tragically with the husband’s early death from tuberculosis. Emma
later wrote of Taube that “whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had been married at the age of fifteen.”
Taube’s second husband, Abraham Goldman, was Emma’s
biological father.
From the get-go, this second marriage was fraught with difficulties for all concerned. Although Taube already had had two daughters, Emma was her first from this arranged union.
Unfortunately, Abraham had instead wanted a son, and perceived this firstborn daughter to be a sign of failure.
Abraham violently punished disobedient children, and Emma became the most disobedient of all her siblings. During that time, her mother was so emotionally distant that she rarely intervened in these beatings (and in Emma’s case, whippings). When Emma was a young girl, she also witnessed a peasant being whipped in the street – an incident which “traumatized her and contributed to her lifelong distaste for violent
authority.”
Although Emma was also beaten by one teacher, and sexually abused by another – her lifelong love of learning shone
through. After family poverty forced her into childhood labor, she
begged her father to let her return to school. He instead threw her textbook into the fire and shouted, “Girls do not have to learn
much! All a Jewish daughter needs to know is how to prepare gefilte
fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children.” While working in a corset shop, Emma was again sexually abused. Wikipedia explains that she was shocked “at the discovery that the
contact between man and woman could be so brutal and painful.”
In 1885, Emma and her sister Helena emigrated to the United
States. (Emma’s father had withheld his permission for this to occur until
Emma threatened to throw herself into the Neva River.) Ironically, the rest
of the family soon joined them in Rochester, New York after “fleeing the rising antisemitism of Saint Petersburg.”
With all this behind her, it seems no wonder that Goldman
became “a committed atheist” who “viewed religion as another
instrument of control and domination.”
In her essay The Philosophy of
Atheism, she
even described religion as “a whip to lash the people into
obedience, meekness and contentment…”
Although religion doesn’t have to be that way, it
unfortunately often is. In her 993-page
autobiography Living My Life, Goldman
wrote: The people are asleep;
they remain indifferent. They forge
their own
chains and do the
bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs.
Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_My_Life
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