Introduction: The Diaspora as Normative Good; Alternative to Zionism
I think in the fallout of the deep division around Zionism in Jewish communities today, learning about and fostering a Jewish diasporism may offer a home to those who feel out of touch, or driven out, or opted out of the Jewish establishment.
-Hitzonim
I’ve been gripped for some time by the idea of a permanent Jewish diaspora as a normative good in Jewish culture. Longtime readers will know that the earliest iteration of this blog was titled, Notes from the Diaspora.
I connect with the idea of a diasporism in deep ways. Diaspora may have a simple and direct meaning to refer to communities that are living outside of an ancestral homeland, but I connect with an expansive notion of diaspora that includes issues beyond residence, including the sense that conceptually, I am also in a diasporic existence outside of mainstream Jewish identity and discourse.
By promoting a diaspora, I mean to apply this term both with respect to where Jews live, prizing a Jewish culture within multi-ethnic and multicultural states and with respect to broad notions of belonging within our own Jewish identity markers and conceptual boundaries. Fleshing this out is the sustained discourse of this blog.
In this political moment, diasporism is also an alternative to Jewish nationalism that includes sovereignty and territorial maximalism, i.e., Revisionist Political Zionism, that seeks a Jewish State for Greater Israel. During the preceding ten months, following October 2023, Zionists have worked to conflate Judaism, Jewish Identity, and Zionism as a single package of commitments. Exploring the diasporic alternatives to Zionism is a history that I see missing from mainstream discourse.
I am no expert to rehearse all of this history, but despite, or perhaps in spite of, a non-traditional Jewish identity, the idea of promoting a multicultural Jewish diasporism that reflects the local communities in which we live is attractive. In fact, it is my contention that those of us who exist outside of the Jewish status quo may be in the best position to nurture the repair of a fractured Jewish community, divided over attitudes toward the nation-state of Israel.
I think in the fallout of the deep division around Zionism in Jewish communities today, learning about and fostering a Jewish diasporism may offer a home to those who feel out of touch, or driven out, or opted out of the Jewish establishment. I’m not necessarily endorsing as such, but I think Jewish folk like me whose identities are forged more by our choices than by inner-familial and institutional pressures are equipped to speak up when traditional power structures and ideologies are challenged.
Today I am summarizing a book that is now out of print–I’m so happy that I got my hands on a copy!–that is not a book at all but a printed speech from historian, Marvin Zuckerman, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Labor Bund: 1897-1997.
Because this post is the first in a new direction here at Hitzonim, I’ll tease that the next two books I plan to discuss are histories that will further flesh out Jewish modernity, Jewish labor movements, and encounters with Zionism, including Leora Batnitzky’s How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought and Enzo Traverso’s The End of Jewish Modernity. After that, we’ll explore a few titles dealing explicitly with diasporism, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Setting the Stage for the Bund
I figured that a good place to start is with the Bund, a socialist Jewish labor movement in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. I say this is a good place to start because the Bund and its agitating for Jewish rights and culture is a movement that confronted Zionism, the other major European Jewish social movement of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. These are not the only two of such important late-modernity European Jewish movements, but these are two of the most influential.
I don’t want to suggest that either Zionism or the Bund were each a reaction to the other, but there was shared discourse. As you’ll see in today’s post, the Bund are instrumental in the Russian revolution of 1905, and they were instrumental in organizing self-defense against pogroms in Eastern Europe, so the story of the Bund raises important history.
The Bund, formally known as “The General Jewish Labor Bund of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia,” was a secular Jewish socialist organization established in Vilnius in 1897. It emerged as a response to the oppressive conditions faced by Jewish workers and ongoing assault on Jewish communities within Eastern Europe. The Bund quickly became a leading force in the fight for Jewish civil rights, cultural autonomy, and social democracy.
Maybe as an aside, I’ll say that one consequence of Israel’s disproportionate military response in Gaza, collective punishment of Palestinians, and the ongoing Occupation is that an objective discussion of Jewish suffering throughout Europe strikes us as wholly inappropriate in light of the plausible genocide against Palestinians. While those conversations of European antisemitism may be inappropriate when deployed as any sort of justification for the state’s “self defense,” in the decades preceding the establishment of the state, systemic antisemtism was a cultural norm throughout much of Europe.
Experiencing such violence and oppression does not justify the displacement and killing of a native population. Period. All I mean to assert is that the historical conditions of Jews in Europe were truly terrible, and that history is not inseparable from the history of Jewish nationalist movements and neither is it separate from poplar European political philosophy that prized nationalism and national identity.
At its core, the Bund was committed to the rights of workers and opposing exploitation. It played a significant role in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was actively involved in self-defense against pogroms. The Bund promoted the Yiddish language and culture and established a modern Yiddish education system.
The Bund’s philosophy was rooted in the belief that Jews should fight for their rights and social justice wherever they lived, rather than pursuing a separate nation-state. This stance put them at odds with the Zionist movement, which advocated for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. For the Bund, Yiddish language, culture, and literature was the common identity of Jewish people, showing their Eastern European bias; for Zionists, it was the modern Hebrew language and Western European national identity that grounded their philosophy.
Despite its eventual suppression by totalitarian regimes, or “the two great destroyers,” as Zuckerman describes them, Nazism and Communism, the Bund’s legacy of promoting social justice, equality, and Jewish pride endures as a testament to its historical significance and the enduring relevance of its values. I want to especially lift up the Bund’s commitment to Do-i-kayt (Yiddish), or here-ness, as an affirmation of a diasporic identity for the global Jewish population, to struggle for rights and principles of collective liberation, wherever we are.
The Jewish Labor Bund on the Occasion of its 100th Anniversary: A Book Summary
Zuckerman’s speech advances in this way. The General Jewish Labor Bund, founded in Vilnius in 1897, was a pivotal movement in East-European Jewish life, advocating for Jewish honor, cultural autonomy, social democracy, and workers’ rights. Despite facing existential risk from Nazism and communism, the Bund’s legacy includes its significant role in the 1905 Russian revolution, its defense against pogroms, and its promotion of ethics and democratic values.
Key figures like Vladimir Medem emphasized the Bund’s support system for Jews, while I.L. Peretz found his socialism in biblical prophets.
I’ll pause to point out that Medem’s family converted to Lutheranism to escape persecution, yet Medem rediscovered his Jewish heritage later in life and organized his adult life and politics around his recovered identity. There are traces of a recovered identity that form my being, so this biographical clue about Bundhist leader Medem is affirming to me.
The Bund’s stance was distinct from Zionism; it focused on Jewish rights and socialism within the diaspora rather than a nationalistic agenda. The Bund argued for Jewish civil rights and a socialist world, opposing the idea of a complete Jewish migration to Palestine.
The Bund’s ‘do-i-kayt’ program, meaning ‘hereness,’ highlighted the importance of addressing Jewish issues in their current locations. During the pre-war and Holocaust years, the Bund mobilized against Polish antisemitism and played a crucial role in resisting the Nazis, including their integral role in organizing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a significant act of Jewish resistance during World War II, where the Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland fought against the deportation to death camps, between April 19, 1943, and May 16, 1943.
The Bund’s Values: Lessons for Today
The Bund live on! I think their enduring lessons do, too, but because we’re summarizing a book, well, really a speech, let me conclude with where Marvin Zuckerman leaves us. Paraphrasing his last few paragraphs, Zuckerman heralds the Bund for carving out a way to celebrate and work toward protecting Jewishness in the here and now, because we are here. This is the doikayt program, and this especially resonates with me.
Zuckerman looks to social democracy as more relevant now than ever, and he was speaking in 1997! I would say when I type these words today, in 2024, I find social democracy yet even more relevant still! The Bund articulated a brand of social democracy that was designed to be the antidote to the world’s injustice, poverty, and inhumanity. It was a flexible, pragmatic social democracy that valued justice and common sense over dogma and state nationalism. Democracy of this style has prevented the collapse of democratic industrial nations and has extended social justice and decency to the Labor class globally.
Though secular, the Bund drew from a shared religious heritage for its rich moral compass, a collective history, and communal celebrations. We’ll read in future book discussions that this secular yet collective relationship with the sacred components of Jewish identity is a common theme of Jewish modernity.
I’ll leave you with this Bund song, Di Shvue, or The Oath, in Yiddish, of course! The English translation of the first verse goes:
Brothers and sisters of work and need,
All who are scattered like far-flung seed –
Together! Together! The flag is high,
Straining with anger, red with blood,
So swear together to live or die!
Do you like this new approach to summarize a book and contextualize its relevance? I hope you do! Maybe boost out the post or share with a friend!
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