Formed in 1900 by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, The Workmen's Circle at first acted as a mutual aid society, helping its members to adapt to their new life in America.

It provided life insurance, unemployment relief, healthcare, social interaction, burial assistance and general education through its branches throughout the US as well as through its national office.

In the new century, the organization ended its direct health insurance program, streamlined its operations, separated from The Forward, and rededicated its mission to education and promoting Jewish community, secular Yiddish culture and social justice activism.

[3] With the pogroms in the 1880s and succeeding decades, more than 2 million Yiddish-speaking Jews fled Eastern Europe with their families, and most immigrated to the United States, many to New York City.

[4] It immediately provided to its members life insurance, some unemployment relief, healthcare, social interaction such as dances, and financial assistance in obtaining a graveyard plot.

[7] From 1905, greatly increased Jewish immigration to the US, following new pogroms in Russia, brought to America large numbers of politically sophisticated socialist Bundists.

Zhitlowsky and the Bundists succeeded in persuading the organization to establish a range of cultural activities meant to inform and express the secular Jewish spirit, such as the Folksbiene Yiddish theatre troupe (1915), Yiddish book publishing, orchestras, and art expositions sponsored by the branches around the country, Yiddish after school programs for children and teens (beginning in 1918), adult lecture circuits, Camp Kinderland (1923) and the organization's own literary and political journal, The Friend, and Unser Schul (Our School), a monthly pedagogical journal for the teachers in its schools.

In 1917 it adopted the National Fraternal Congress of America mortuary table, and by 1920 it established a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients at Liberty, New York, where members could receive free treatment for nine months.

The organization continued to emphasize Yiddish education and the arts (klezmer music; Folksbiene theatre; choral groups), mutual aid and social interaction.

[7] More generally, as its then-president Dr. Barnett Zumhoff explained to The New York Times in 1985, with the opening up opportunities for Jews in American society, and their move into the middle class and dispersion geographically from cities to suburbs and small towns, the Circle was no longer as essential to the Jewish community as it had been.

Still, the Circle believed that it offered a secular alternative to synagogue attendance and Zionist groups in its preservation of Ashkenazic Yiddish culture.

"[15] In the first decade of the 21st century, the organization ended its direct health insurance program and closed its old age homes, streamlined its operations, separated itself from The Forward, hired a new executive director, Ann Toback, in 2008, reorganized its board and appointed a new president, Madelon "Maddy" Braun, in 2010.

[16] "The plan is to reboot by offering something [the Circle] feels religious Judaism has failed to provide: an education toward a cultural Jewish identity that uses religion as a trigger for activism and connects with a legacy of progressivism and commitment to universal values.

"[3] In 2012, the Circle commissioned a study that showed that one in six American Jews "are actively seeking Jewish expression and engagement outside of synagogue life.

[24][25] Its social justice activism includes opposing unfair labor practices, genocide and racism and supporting comprehensive immigration reform, single-payer universal health care, gun control,[26] strong relations between the US and Israel,[27] humanitarian relief,[28] human rights, environmental conservation, women's equality, an increased minimum wage and separation of church and state.

This name embraces the tenor of the times in gender-neutral fashion and with a nod to the organization's century of activism at the fore of the labor movement, supporting worker rights to this day.