On March 25, 1911, a fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, resulting in 146 deaths and many injuries, most of them young, recently immigrated Jewish women. To the Jewish community, the unprecedented scope of the tragedy and its horrors were evocative of the pogroms that had been to date the greatest disaster to befall Jewry in modern times.

The anarchist movement was based on a struggle against the tyranny of capitalism, on social equality and individual liberty, and on the promotion of positive communitarian ideals. American Jewish women were at the forefront of this movement and were active participants in labor organization.