Bundism

Bundism was a secular Jewish socialist movement whose first organizational manifestation was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Russia (Yiddish: אַלגעמײנער ייִדישער אַרבעטער־בונד אין ליטע, פוילין און רוסלאַנד, romanized: Algemeyner yidisher arbeter-bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland), founded in the Russian Empire in 1897.

The Jewish Labour Bund was an important component of the social democratic movement in the Russian empire until the 1917 Russian Revolution; the Bundists initially opposed the October Revolution, but ended up supporting it due to pogroms committed by the Volunteer Army of the anti-communist White movement during the Russian Civil War. Split along communist and social democratic lines throughout the Civil War, a faction supported the Soviet government and eventually was absorbed by the Communist Party.

Bundist movement continued to exist as a political party in independent Poland in the interwar period as the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, becoming a major political force within Polish-Jewish communities. Bundists were active in the anti-Nazi struggle, and many of its members were murdered during the Holocaust.

After the war, the International Jewish Labor Bund, more properly the "World Coordinating Council of the Jewish Labor Bund", was founded in New York, with affiliated groups in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries.

Though extant after the war and undergoing a revival in the 21st century, according to David Kranzler, the movement and its relatives (e.g. the Gordonia youth movement) were relatively unsuccessful in accomplishing their goals in Europe, though they were popular.

Ideology

Marxism

While the Jewish Labour Bund was a trade union as well as a political party, its initial purpose was the organisation of the Jewish proletariat in Belarus, Russia, Poland and Lithuania. It was criticised however by individuals like Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin for "Economism"; a claim rejected by Bundist leaders like Arkadi Kremer and Vladimir Medem. Many modern iterations of the Bund have divested from explicit Marxism but retain a public stance of advocating for socialism and/or social justice.

Secularism

A staunchly secular party, the Jewish Labour Bund took part in kehillot elections in the Second Polish Republic. The Bundists reviled the religious Jews of the time; even going so far as to refer to Yeshiva students, who would live in poverty off charity and learn Torah instead of work, as "parasites." With the rise of Jewish secularism and the reduced political authority of religious institutions over Jewish life, some modern Bundist organizations do not consider this a primary focus.

Yiddishism

The Jewish Labour Bund, while not initially interested in Yiddish per se as anything more than a vehicle to exhort the masses of Jewish workers in Eastern Europe, soon saw the language and the larger Yiddish culture as valuable and promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language in its own right; to some extent, the promotion of Yiddish was part and parcel of the Bund's opposition to the Zionist movement and its project of reviving Hebrew. This preference for Yiddish over Hebrew also had an aspect of class struggle: Hebrew (prior to its successful revival) was mostly spoken by educated Jewish men; Yiddish was a nearly universal language of Ashkenazi Jews. It was also promoted in opposition to the Russification policies of the Russian Empire; once again with a class element as upwardly-mobile, middle class Jews adopted Russian as their main language. With the decline of Yiddish as a spoken language, many Bundists now support the revitalisation of Yiddish as an explicit project (e.g., Bundist organisations in Australia sponsoring non-political Yiddish cultural centres for this purpose).

Doikayt

The concept of Doikayt (Yiddish: דאָיִקייט, lit. 'hereness', from דאָ do 'here' plus ־יק -ik adjectival suffix plus ־קייט -kayt '-ness' suffix), is and was central to the Bundist ideology, expressing its focus on solving the challenges confronting Jews in the country in which they lived, versus the "thereness" of the Zionist movement, which posited the necessity of an independent Jewish polity in its ancestral homeland, i.e., the Land of Israel, to secure Jewish life. Today this often manifests in the form of Non-Zionism or Anti-Zionism and a focus on local politics.

National-cultural autonomism

The Jewish Labour Bund did not advocate ethnic or religious separatism, but focused on culture, not a state or a place, as the glue of Jewish nationhood, within the context of a world of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic countries. In this the Bundists borrowed extensively from the Austro-Marxist concept of national personal autonomy; this approach alienated the Bolsheviks and Lenin, who was derisive of and politically opposed to Bundism.

In a 1904 text, Social democracy and the national question, Vladimir Medem exposed his version of this concept:

"Let us consider the case of a country composed of several national groups, e.g. Poles, Lithuanians and Jews. Each national group would create a separate movement. All citizens belonging to a given national group would join a special organisation that would hold cultural assemblies in each region and a general cultural assembly for the whole country. The assemblies would be given financial powers of their own: either each national group would be entitled to raise taxes on its members, or the state would allocate a proportion of its overall budget to each of them. Every citizen of the state would belong to one of the national groups, but the question of which national movement to join would be a matter of personal choice and no authority would have any control over his decision. The national movements would be subject to the general legislation of the state, but in their own areas of responsibility they would be autonomous and none of them would have the right to interfere in the affairs of the others".

Opposition to Zionism

Before the creation of the State of Israel

The Jewish Labour Bund, as an organization, was formed at the same time as the World Zionist Organization. The Bund eventually came to strongly oppose Zionism, arguing that immigration to Palestine was a form of escapism. After the 1936 Warsaw kehilla elections, Henryk Ehrlich accused Zionist leaders Yitzhak Gruenbaum and Ze'ev Jabotinsky of being responsible for recent anti-Semitic agitation in Poland by their campaign urging Jewish emigration.

After 1947

The Bund was against the UNGA vote on the partition of Palestine and reaffirmed its support for a country under the control of superpowers and the UN. The 1948 New York Second World Conference of the International Jewish Labor Bund condemned the proclamation of the Zionist state. The conference was in favour of a two nations’ state built on the base of national equality and democratic federalism.

A branch of the Jewish Labour Bund was created in Israel in 1951, the Arbeter-ring in Yisroel – Brith Haavoda, which even took part in the 1959 Knesset elections, with a very low electoral result. Its publication, Lebns Fregyn, remained in publication until June 2014. It was one of the last surviving left-wing Yiddish-language publications. The organisation dissolved in 2019, with its assets being transferred to the Zionist-Yiddishist organisation Beit Shalom Aleichem.

The 1955 Montreal 3rd World Conference of the International Jewish Labor Bund decided that the creation of the Jewish state was an important event in Jewish history that might play a positive role in Jewish life, but felt that a few necessary changes were needed. The conference participants demanded that:

• a) the authorities of Israel should treat the state as property of the Jews of the world;
• b) but it would mean that the affairs of the Jewish community in Israel should be subordinate to those of world Jewry.
• c) the policy of the state of Israel would be the same toward all citizens regardless of their nationalities.
• d) Israel should foster peace with the Arabs. This required halting territorial expansion and resolving the Palestinian refugee problem.
• e) Yiddish should be taught at all educational institutions and would be promoted in public life.

The World Coordinating Council of the Jewish Labour Bund was quietly disbanded by a number of Bundists and representatives of related organizations, including The Workers Circle and the Congress for Jewish Culture in the early 2000s.

Contemporary developments

The Melbourne-based Jewish Labour Bund (founded in 1929) is considered the largest and most active existent organisation of the Bund. It organises a mix of events highlighting left-wing ideals (especially in Australia), concern for Jewish rights in Australia and abroad, and the preservation of Yiddish culture. It is the largest Non-Zionist Jewish organisation in Australia. The Melbourne Bund also maintains the only existing wing of the Bundist SKIF Youth Organisation. The Australian Bund today has ties to both the Australian Labor Party and Australian Greens, and has campaigned in favour of progressive social issues such as the rights of migrants, and in favour of a "Yes" vote in the Voice Referendum. It does not consider itself Anti-Zionist, and has not participated in either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine rallies in Australia.

The early 21st-century has witnessed a revival in the ideas of the Bund (sometimes called "neo-Bundism"). As such some new social movements have adopted the aesthetics and ideology of the Bund; often adding decolonial thought as an adaptation of Doikayt. One example of this is the Berlin-based Jewish Antifascist Bund (German: Jüdischer antifaschistischer Bund); an organisation of left-wing German Jews and Israeli immigrants that seeks to redefine the debate around Antisemitism in Germany away from support for Israel and posits that Antisemitism is "firmly anchored in the centre of German society". The organisation regularly takes part in Nakba Day demonstrations and positions itself as Anti-Zionist. In addition, as a result of their protests against the Israel-Hamas War a group of Jewish Students based out of Binghamton University formed the "New Yiddish Bund of Binghamton" in coordination with the Democratic Socialists of America in October 2023. The group published a manifesto in November of that year seeking to gain international support and cooperation, centreing Bundism as an alternative to Zionism within the modern Jewish diaspora. The group has drawn criticism from the aforementioned groups however, for its focus on Anti-Zionism and a lack of discussion of labour issues.

Bundist members of parliaments or governments

• Moshe Gutman, member of the Central Council of Ukraine in 1917, then minister without portfolio in the short-lived autonomous Belarusian National Council (1917–1918) and Belarusian People's Republic (1918–1919)
• Noah Meisel (1891–1956) member of the Saeima between 1922 and 1931 (twice reelected); Daugavpils city council member
• Moisei Rafes (1883–1942), member of the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly and also of the Central Council of Ukraine; member, as General controller, of the General Secretariat of Ukraine (the chief executive body of the Ukrainian People's Republic from 28 June 1917 to 22 January 1918)
• Aleksandr Zolotarev (1879–1938), successor of Moisei Rafes
• Szmul Zygielbojm (1895–1943), member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile (March 1942 until his suicide in May, 1943)
• Emanuel Scherer (1901–1977), member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile after Szmul Zygielbojm's suicide; secretary general of the International Jewish Labor Bund (1961–1977)
• Michal Shuldenfrei (1887–1965), member of the Sejm in 1947-1948
• Josh Burns (b. 1987), Labor member for Macnamara in the Parliament of Australia (2019–present), former Chair of the Australian Bund's youth wing SKIF.

See also

• Jewish Social Democratic Workers Association "Zukunft"

Further reading

In English

• Yosef Gorni, Converging alternatives: the Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985, SUNY Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-7914-6659-9
• Jonathan Frankel, Jewish politics and the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tel-Aviv, Tel Aviv University, 1982 (21 pages)
• Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and politics: socialism, nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-521-26919-3
• Jack Lester Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe : The Bund at 100, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny—Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy, New York, New York University Press, May 2001, ISBN 0-8147-4258-0
• Jack Lester Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland, Syracuse University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-8156-3226-6
• Bernard K. Johnpoll, The politics of futility. The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1967
• N. Levin, While Messiah tarried : Jewish socialist movements, 1871–1917, New York, Schocken Books, 1977, ISBN 978-0-8052-0616-6
• N. Levin, Jewish socialist movements, 1871–1917 : while Messiah tarried, London, Routledge & K. Paul (Distributed by Oxford University Press), 1978, ISBN 978-0-7100-8913-7
• Y. Peled, Class and ethnicity in the pale: the political economy of Jewish workers' nationalism in late Imperial Russia, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-333-41255-8
• Antony Polonsky, "The Bund in Polish Political Life, 1935-1939", in: Ezra Mendelsohn (ed.), Essential Papers on Jews and the Left, New York, New York University Press, 1997
• C. Belazel Sherman, Bund, Galuth nationalism, Yiddishism, Herzl Institute Pamphlet no.6, New York, 1958, ASIN B0006AVR6U
• Henry Tobias, The origins and evolution of the Jewish Bund until 1901, Ann Arbor (Michigan), University Microfilms, 1958
• Henry Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from Its Origins to 1905, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1972
• Enzo Traverso, From Moses to Marx - The Marxists and the Jewish question: History of a debate 1843-1943, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1996 (review)
• A.K. Wildman, Russian and Jewish social democracy, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1973

Documents

• "The resolution of the tenth conference of the Bund, April 1917"

In French

• Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et La Vôtre - Le Mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939-1949, 2002, ISBN 2-204-06981-7 (French review)
• Alain Brossat, Le Yiddishland révolutionnaire, Paris, Balland, 1983 ISBN 2-7158-0433-4
• Élie Eberlin, Juifs russes : le Bund et le sionisme. Un voyage d'étude., Paris, Cahiers de la quinzaine (6e cahier de la 6e série), 1904, 155 pages ASIN B001C9XEME
• Vladimir Medem, Ma vie, Paris, Champion, 1969 (Memories of a Bund leader)
• Henri Minczeles, "La résistance du Bund en France pendant l'occupation", Le Monde juif 51:154 (1995) : 138-53
• Henri Minczeles, Histoire générale du Bund, Un mouvement révolutionnaire juif, Éditions Denoël, Paris, 1999, ISBN 2-207-24820-8
• Claudie Weill, Les cosmopolites - Socialisme et judéité en Russie (1897–1917), Paris, Éditions Syllpse, Collection "Utopie critique", févr. 2004, ISBN 2-84797-080-0 (presentation)
• Enzo Traverso, De Moïse à Marx - Les marxistes et la question juive, Paris, Kimé, 1997
• Union progressiste des Juifs de Belgique, 100^e anniversaire du Bund. Actes du Colloque, Minorités, Démocratie, Diasporas, Bruxelles, UPJB, 1997, ISSN 0770-5476
• Nathan Weinstock, Le Pain de misère, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe - L'empire russe jusqu'en 1914, Paris, La Découverte, 2002, (Vol. I) ISBN 2-7071-3810-X
• Nathan Weinstock, Le Pain de misère, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe - L'Europe centrale et occidentale jusqu'en 1945, Paris, La Découverte, (Vol. II) ISBN 2-7071-3811-8
• movie: Nat Lilenstein (Dir.), Les Révolutionnaires du Yiddishland, 1983, Kuiv productions & A2 (French review)

In German

• Arye Gelbard, Der jüdische Arbeiter-Bund Russlands im Revolutionsjahr 1917, Wien : Europaverlag, 1982 (Materialien zur Arbeiterbewegung ; Nr. 26), ISBN 978-3-203-50824-5
• Gertrud Pickhan, "Gegen den Strom". Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund, "Bund" in Polen, 1918-1939, Stuttgart/Munich, DVA, 2001, 445 p. (Schriftenreihe des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts, Leipzig), ISBN 3-421-05477-0 (French review)