{"id":13054,"date":"2026-07-06T00:32:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/07\/06\/reclaiming-the-radical-jewish-alternative-to-zionism-today-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T00:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:32:19","slug":"reclaiming-the-radical-jewish-alternative-to-zionism-today-reviews-culture-socialist-worker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/07\/06\/reclaiming-the-radical-jewish-alternative-to-zionism-today-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming the radical Jewish alternative to Zionism today Reviews & Culture – Socialist Worker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The\n

The Bund fought for working class solidarity and were fierce opponents of Zionism<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here Where We Live is Our Country, by Molly Crabapple, outlines a forgotten history of the Bund\u2014a fiercely \u00adsocialist, secular and anti-Zionist \u00admovement of radical Jews in the Russian empire.<\/p>\n

It chronicles the early Bundist leadership. They fought for \u00adworking class unity and \u201cself defence groups\u201d against Pogroms and they \u00adorganised mass strikes during the 1905 Russian Revolution.<\/p>\n

Detailing the role the Bund played in the 1917 Russian Revolution, to the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB) in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Crabapple explores a \u00adradical history of Jewish \u00adculture and resistance.<\/p>\n

The book is rich with details of the lives of individual Bundists who navigated the revolutionary \u00adcurrents of the period.<\/p>\n

One of the clearest lessons that we can take from Crabpapple\u2019s account is how the resistance of the Bund challenges the rhetoric that Zionism advocates today.<\/p>\n

The Bund fought for \u00adinternationalism and for working class solidarity. Crucially, they were fierce opponents of the Zionists. The term Do\u2019ikayt in Yiddish was the foundation for Bundism\u2014fight for \u201c\u00adhereness\u201d, as opposed to the \u201cthere\u201d of Palestine. <\/p>\n

Israel is increasingly able to assert its own interests in the Middle East\u2014think of the genocide in Gaza, the bombing of Lebanon and the \u00adillegal settlements in the West Bank. With this in mind, it is \u00adimportant to continue to restate the radical \u00adalternative to Zionism.<\/p>\n

The conflation of Jewish history and identity with Israel by Zionists and mainstream historians means that Here Where We Live has been published at a significant time.<\/p>\n

Crabapple narrates this history, bringing to it her own emotions, thoughts and views. She paints a picture of the lives of individual Bundists, while telling the story of the organisation as a whole.<\/p>\n

The book brings together the rich life that Jewish \u00adrevolutionaries, socialists and trade unionists had both inside the Bund, \u00adalongside their interactions with other Marxist, \u00adrevolutionary and socialist organisations.<\/p>\n

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The Bund\u2019s political \u00adperspective was defined by the \u00admaterial \u00adexperience of antisemitism, but also of the political questions facing the left during the period.<\/p>\n

Crabapple\u2019s description of the organisation is interspersed with her \u00adcommentary on political questions from the Bundist political viewpoint.<\/p>\n

The Bund\u2019s first \u00adconference after the February 1917 \u00adoutbreak of the Russian Revolution, \u00adcommitted to supporting the First World War and upholding the Provisional Government.<\/p>\n

This was in \u00adcontrast to the Bolsheviks who argued for \u00adrevolutionary defeatism and declared \u201call power to the Soviets\u201d. Bundists rejected Lenin\u2019s politics. After the Bolshevik\u2011led October Revolution, Workers Voice, the Bundist \u00adnewspaper, ran the \u00adheadline \u201cThe coup\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is an implication by Crabapple that the Bundists were correct in their criticism of the Bolsheviks and that the descent to Stalinism was inevitable following the October Revolution.<\/p>\n

The Bund identified as Marxists. And while they would have \u00adidentified as a class\u2011based i\u00adnternationalist \u00adorganisation, they also \u201ccreated a \u00adsecular, socialist but specifically Jewish world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Crabapple outlines in detail the radical movement they \u00adcreated in Poland. There they formed the National Council of Jewish Trade Unions. They challenged \u00adreligious \u00adconservatism in the Jewish \u00adcommunity.<\/p>\n

Bundist women founded Jewish Working Women, an \u00adorganisation that provided day care centres, \u00addisseminated birth \u00adcontrol information and campaigned for free childcare and equal pay.<\/p>\n

In January 1926, the Medem Sanatorium opened in Warsaw\u2014a respite for poor \u00adchildren at risk of \u00adtuberculosis. The director, Victor Gilinsky, believed that adults and \u00adchildren were equal. The children \u00adgoverned themselves\u2014they made their own \u00adnewspaper and elected their own parliament. This is a \u00adradical view of education even today.<\/p>\n

The solidarity between the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the 1930s shows the importance of working class unity in the face of oppression today.<\/p>\n

In 1931 the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party marched together for the first time on May Day. The Polish socialists proposed to send a delegation to protect Jewish \u00adworkers, and in return Jewish groups would \u00adprotect Polish workers.<\/p>\n

Although the Bund declined, believing it important that Jewish groups protected \u00adthemselves, the \u00adsolidarity between the Polish Socialist Party and the Bund \u00adcontinued \u00adthroughout the 1930s and into the Second World War.<\/p>\n

When hundreds of ghettos were set up to hold Jewish people across Poland under Nazi occupation, resistance groups sprung up. The Polish Socialist Party\u2014now underground\u2014said \u201cThe burden of all wars and subjugation \u00adforever falls on the working man, \u00adregardless of nationality.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow degradingly cynical is the fact that the walls of the ghetto being raised by Polish and Jewish labourers are meant to become a \u00adbarrier between them, as if \u00addifferent fates awaited them\u201d<\/p>\n

A key lesson from the Bund was the need for united resistance against fascism.<\/p>\n

In July 1942, the start of the \u00adliquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began, and thousands of Jewish \u00adresidents were sent to the Treblinka death camp.<\/p>\n

By October, the young Bundists still left in the Warsaw Ghetto agreed to join the Jewish Combat Organisation ZOB, a coalition of Bundists, Communists and the left wing Zionist youth movement. Marek Edelman, author of The Ghetto Fights, was the Bundist commander.<\/p>\n

With support from the Polish Socialist Party, they smuggled a small amount of weapons into the Ghetto. The first act of ZOB was to shoot the second in command of the Jewish Police.<\/p>\n

Acts of resistance turned into a full uprising on 19 April 1943. The ZOB, as outlined by Crabapple. While the Nazis expected the fight to last for only a few days, the ZOB fought on for a month in the \u00adbiggest act of Jewish resistance in the Second World War. Their action inspired other uprisings by Jews. <\/p>\n

In the end, the Nazis used \u00adoverwhelming military force to smash the resistance.<\/p>\n

Only a few fighters escaped\u2014including Edelman, who went on to fight in the general Warsaw uprising of 1944. He later became active in the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s. He also supported the cause of Palestinian liberation.<\/p>\n

Where We Live is Our Country provides insight into the politics, life and experience of the Bund\u2014and the fierce bravery of Jewish anti-Zionist resistance to fascism and racism. Throughout the book, Crabapple compares these experiences with the current period\u2014from Black Lives Matter, to the experience of Syrian refugees and to the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In a world where the view of the Israeli government dominates the historical narrative, it\u2019s fitting that Crabapple\u2019s final acknowledgement is to the people of Palestine.<\/p>\n