Jules Rabin (born Yehuda Moishe Rabinovitz; April 6, 1924) is an American peace activist, writer, educator, and baker. He is known for his practice of nonviolent resistance during major protest movements spanning more than six decades including protests in favor of reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons, protests in favor of the civil rights movement, and protests in opposition to the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, he moved from New York City to rural Vermont as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He taught at Goddard College for nine years.
After leaving Goddard, he and his wife Helen started Upland Bakers, an artisan baker of sourdough bread which is credited with contributing to the renaissance of European-style hearth bread in the United States. In subsequent decades, he has been a noticeable presence in the state capitol of Vermont, protesting in opposition to the Iraq War. He has advocated on behalf of the Palestinians for more than two decades, and has actively participated in public protests in opposition to the Gaza war.
Early life and education
Yehuda Moishe Rabinovitz was born on April 6, 1924, and grew up in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts,. as the youngest of five children. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. Rabin grew up in poverty in a working class family. His father sorted metal in a junkyard and the family ran a store with the help of their children. His uncle, a Marxist, took him to his first protest—a rally in support of Black labor organizer Angelo Herndon after his conviction for insurrection—when he was eight years old. Rabin recalls that his uncle followed the tradition of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, which rejected rabbinic authority.Wallach, Steven (August 3, 2002). "Cover Story: Jules Rabin's conscience" . Rutland Herald. Retrieved March 22, 2025.
Rabin would finish at Boston Latin School before attending Harvard, completed a semester then joined the United States Army, to train as a German language for World War II. He was not deployed. After war's end, he returned to Harvard and completed a BA in 1946. He graduated cum laude despite never completing his undergraduate thesis as he grew tired of it.Goodman, David (April 10, 2024). The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman. VTDigger podcast. Event occurs from 36:29 to 38:07. He shortened his name to Rabin before attending graduate school (anthropology) at Columbia University. He never finished his thesis ("a foolish theoretical subject"), or complete his doctorate studies.
Peace Walk (1960—1961) Rabin originally participated with the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) in the earliest of the American-Soviet Peace Walks known as the "San Francisco to Moscow Walk for Peace" from 1960 to 1961. His work with the group was as a photographer alongside a documentary film crew headed by Hilary Harris,Goodman, David (April 10, 2024). The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman. VTDigger podcast. Event occurs from 27:55 to 29:30. which later released a short documentary film about the movement titled The Walk (1962),Minnion, John; Bolsover, Philip (1983). The CND Story: The First 25 Years of CND in the Words of the People Involved. Allison & Busby. p. 151. . . for which Rabin received credit.10th Sydney Film Festival. (June 1963). The Walk p. 15. Retrieved April 6, 2025. Rabin eventually joined the movement himself. The group marched across the United States calling for nuclear disarmament, traveling to Britain, Belgium, and West Germany. They were permitted to travel to Moscow via East Germany and Poland. The attempt at citizen diplomacy was widely covered by most major media outlets. The Associated Press reported that Rabin and other peace activists had tea with Nina Kukharchuk-Khrushcheva, the First Lady of the Soviet Union, in Moscow, in October 1961. The group discussed disarmament, and asked the First Lady to consider setting a good example for other nations by disarming their weapons. She politely declined."Mrs. Kruschev Said Russia Isn't Building Bomb Shelters". Associated Press. Great Bend Daily Tribune. Great Bend, Kansas. October 5, 1961.
Upon his return, he documented his experience in an essay for Liberation magazine in November 1961 titled "How We Went". In the essay, Rabin describes the peace walk with mixed results. They were able to reach people in many countries, but the ideological barrier with the Soviets was impenetrable. "We proposed that they undertake unilateral disarmament and that in the spirit of individual responsibility, each Soviet citizen who regarded war as intrinsically evil should on his own initiative abstain from all phases of military activity, including civilian labor in armaments industry." In response, the peace delegation was laughed at by the Russians. "The Soviets", writes Rabin, "are determined to maintain their position of military strength—in defense, as they habitually allege, of the peace and of their territorial integrity—as long as their appeal for complete and general disarmament, multilaterally implemented, goes unheeded...As persons affected by the Gandhian and Christian traditions of nonviolence, we Peace Walkers found this disharmony of the Soviet position harsh to our ears. How can one simultaneously protest that one loves peace and avow implacable hatred and annihilation of a prospective enemy?"
Civil Rights, Vietnam War (1961—1968)
After completing the American-Soviet Peace Walk, Rabin returned to the United States and settled in Greenwich Village, where he met his future wife Helen at a New York meeting for a General Strike for Peace in 1961. Helen was then working at the Greenwich Village Peace Center in her downtime while pursuing her studies at Barnard College. They began having picnics at Washington Square Park and going to dances together. Both protested in favor of the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War (1955–1975). In 1964, he spoke out in the journal Science along with other academics during the so-called Ingle incident, when physiologist Dwight Ingle expressed prejudicial beliefs about Black Americans. That same year, Jules and Helen were first arrested together as a couple while protesting against discriminatory hiring at the New York World's Fair. Also in 1964, Rabin's public opposition to the Vietnam War was first entered into the Congressional Record by Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR). Morse was one of the few American politicians to oppose the war at the time.
By 1965, Rabin was working at the Village Peace Center and collaborating with writers like Grace Paley. Rabin's first hand accounts of the 1966 anti-Vietnam War marches in New York City was covered by Liberation magazine and WIN Peace & Freedom Through Nonviolent Action in the United States and in the pacifist magazine Peace News in Britain. He notes the increasing theatricality and use of large, oversized puppets by Peter and Elka Schumann with their Bread and Puppet Theater in the anti-war protests beginning in late 1965. Coverage by Peace News refers to the "carnival"-like atmosphere, an idea that would later become known as tactical frivolity. Just before the Summer of Love the next year, Rabin observes the mood of the crowd compared to his 1961 peace walk, speaking to what he perceived as the "gospel of love that walked with us in the clear autumn sun". Rabin also mentions that he carried his child [Hannah] on his shoulders during the protest, and that she enjoyed herself due to the float-like spectacle of the protest-turned-parade. By April 1966, Peace News reported that the American use of puppets in anti-war protests documented by Rabin had found its way to the Easter March at Trafalgar Square, noting the use of a puppet design by satirical cartoonist Gerald Scarfe depicting then-president Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1968, along with hundreds of other prominent Americans, Rabin signed the "Writers & Editors War Tax Protest" as a form of resistance to the war tax, with signers "refusing to pay" a proposed income tax surcharge that president Johnson said was needed in August 1967 to fund weapons and equipment to continue fighting the war in Vietnam.. The signatures appeared in the New York Post on January 30 of that year, with Rabin's name listed between writer Thomas Pynchon and mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took notice and created a case file on the protest. At some point, Rabin began supporting RESIST, a group that was formed to provide grants to grassroots activist organizations involved in the anti-war movement, but records indicate he was inactive by 1976.
Goddard College (1968—1977)
In 1968, Rabin and his wife Helen moved from New York City to Marshfield, Vermont, in part, due to the influence of the back-to-the-land movement. In Vermont, he taught anthropology at Goddard College in the small town of Plainfield, for nine years. Goddard, a progressive college originally founded by Christian universalists, was known for using evaluations instead of grading, and took its inspiration from educational reformer John Dewey (1859–1952). Fifty miles away from Burlington, the most populous city in the state, Goddard was built on an old dairy farm in the mountains. It drew members of the counterculture who sought to pursue the freedom afforded by a liberal curriculum and independent study. Among one of Rabin's notable students at Goddard was playwright David Mamet.
With the backdrop of the 1973 oil crisis looming large, Rabin taught classes in an experimental social ecology studies program under environmental philosopher Murray Bookchin in 1974, considered the only program of its kind at the time. The program was said to explore "alternative technologies, a no-growth economics, organic agriculture, urban decentralization, the politics of ecology, and the design and construction of experimental models of wind, solar and methane-powered energy production." In 1977, Rabin's job was eliminated by the college.
Upland Bakers (1978—2002) In 1971, Jules took a sabbatical from Goddard and traveled to Europe with Helen. They spent ten days visiting a commune known as the Community of the Ark in southern France."Baking Bread in a Hand-Made Oven". The Blade. Toledo, Ohio. Christian Science Monitor Service. March 12, 1986. p 24. The Ark was located in a small village known as La Borie Noble in the mountains of Occitanie, between Beziers and Millau. A small community of more than 100 people, the people in the Ark lived a simple life similar to peasants from the 18th century. Key to their diet and culture was the baking of country-style bread (pain de campagne) in a masonry oven, producing large round loaves (miche). "They didn't speak of bread as holy, but they treated it as a holy object", Rabin recalled.