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Bundism (Yiddish:בונדיזם,romanized: Bundizm) is aJewishsocialist movement that emerged inEurope in the late 19th century that aimed to promote working class politics, secularism, and foster Jewish political and cultural autonomy. As a part of thatautonomism, it also sought to advocateYiddishism—the promotion and vitalisation of theYiddish language and Yiddish culture—andDoikayt (Yiddish, 'hereness'), the concept that Jews have a right to live and organise where they already reside.
The first organizational manifestation was theGeneral Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia,[note 1] founded in theRussian Empire in 1897. Even with the dissolution of the first Bund in the 1920s, other Bundist organisations had already been established and continued to exist. Largest among them was theGeneral Jewish Labour Bund in Poland ininterwar Poland, which became a major political force withinPolish-Jewish communities.
Whilst it had enjoyed much popularity among Jews in eastern Europe, the Bundist movement was heavily damaged by theSecond World War and byNazism more specifically—many Bundists were murdered duringthe Holocaust. Many Bundists were active in thestruggle against Nazism.
After the war, theInternational Jewish Labor Bund, more properly the "World Coordinating Council of the Jewish Labor Bund", was founded inNew York, with affiliated groups in Argentina,Australia, Canada, France,Israel, Mexico,the United Kingdom,the United States, and other countries. Despite a decline through the late 20th century, the Bundist movement and its ideology has been undergoing a revival in the late 2010s and early 2020s.[1]
During the mid-to-late 19th century easternEurope,Jewish politics was shifting away from the oligarchic politics of thekehilla, and religious conflict towards secularmass politics.[2] Additionally, Jewish political thought expanded to include more general issues beyond Jewish issues alone, being joined by concerns of broader issues such as class issues and economics, as well aspolitical rights and civil rights.[2] This shift was joined by an increased assertiveness from Jewish politics.[2]
One result of these political developments was the formation of the Bundist movement, which began the establishment theGeneral Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia in 1897 within the Russian Empire.[3]
While the Jewish Labour Bund was atrade union as well as a political party, its initial purpose was the organisation of the Jewish proletariat inBelarus, Russia, Poland andLithuania. It was criticised however by individuals likeJulius Martov andVladimir Lenin for "Economism"; a claim rejected by Bundist leaders likeArkadi Kremer andVladimir Medem.[4] Many modern iterations of the Bund have divested from explicit Marxism but retain a public stance of advocating forsocialism and/orsocial justice.
A staunchly secular party, the Jewish Labour Bund took part inkehillot elections in theSecond Polish Republic. The Bundists reviled the religious Jews of the time; even going so far as to refer toYeshiva students, who would live in poverty off charity and learnTorah instead of work, as "parasites."[5] With the rise ofJewish secularism and the reduced political authority of religious institutions over Jewish life, some modern Bundist organizations do not consider this a primary focus.
The Jewish Labour Bund was not initially interested in theYiddish languageper se as anything more than a vehicle to exhort the masses of Jewish workers inEastern Europe. Soon however, the Bund saw the language and the larger Yiddish culture as valuable, andpromoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language in its own right.[6][7] To some extent, the promotion of Yiddish was part and parcel of the Bund's opposition to theZionist movement and its project of revivingHebrew.[8][9] This preference for Yiddish over Hebrew also related toclass struggle—Hebrew (prior to itsrevival) was mostly spoken by wealthy educated Jewish men andrabbis; Yiddish was a common language ofAshkenazi Jews.[4][9][10]
It was also promoted in opposition to theRussification policies of the Russian Empire; once again with a class element asupwardly-mobile, middle class Jews adopted Russian as their main language.[4][7] With thedecline of Yiddish as a spoken language, many Bundists now support therevitalisation of Yiddish as an explicit project (e.g., Bundist organisations inAustralia sponsoring non-political Yiddish cultural centres for this purpose).[11]
The concept ofDoikayt (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., theLand of Israel, to secure Jewish life. Today this often manifests in the form ofNon-Zionism orAnti-Zionism and a focus on local politics.[12]
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 theAustro-Marxist concept ofnational 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:[13][14]
"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".[15]
The Jewish Labour Bund, as an organization, was formed at the same time as theWorld Zionist Organization. The Bund eventually came to strongly opposeZionism, arguing thatimmigration to Palestine was a form ofescapism and that the Zionists had a Utopian vision which was unachievable in a "backward" place like Turkey.[16] After the 1936Warsawkehilla elections,Henryk Ehrlich accusedZionist leadersYitzhak Gruenbaum andZe'ev Jabotinsky of being responsible for recent anti-Semitic agitation in Poland by their campaign urging Jewish emigration.[17]
The Bund was againstthe 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 atwo 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, theArbeter-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.[18] 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 theInternational 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.[19]
The World Coordinating Council of the Jewish Labour Bund was quietly disbanded by a number of Bundists and representatives of related organizations, includingThe Workers Circle and theCongress for Jewish Culture in the early 2000s.
The Melbourne-basedJewish Labour Bund (founded in 1929) is considered the largest and most active existent organisation of the Bund.[11] It organises a mix of events highlightingleft-wing ideals (especially inAustralia), concern for Jewish rights in Australia and abroad, and the preservation ofYiddish culture.[20] It is the largestNon-ZionistJewish organisation in Australia. The Melbourne Bund also maintains the only existing wing of the BundistSKIF Youth Organisation.[11][20] The Australian Bund today has ties to both theAustralian Labor Party andAustralian Greens, and has campaigned in favour of progressive social issues such as the rights of migrants,[21] and in favour of a "Yes" vote in theVoice Referendum.[22] It does not consider itself Anti-Zionist, and has not participated in either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine rallies in Australia.[1]
The early 21st-century has witnessed a revival in the ideas of the Bund (sometimes called "neo-Bundism").[23] As such somenew social movements have adopted the aesthetics and ideology of the Bund; often addingdecolonial thought as an adaptation of Doikayt.[1] One example of this is the Berlin-basedJewish Antifascist Bund (German:Jüdischer antifaschistischer Bund); an organisation of left-wing German Jews and Israeli immigrants that seeks to redefine the debate aroundAntisemitism in Germany away from support for Israel and posits that Antisemitism is "firmly anchored in the centre of German society".[24] The organisation regularly takes part inNakba Day demonstrations and positions itself as Anti-Zionist.[24][25] In addition, as a result of their protests against theGaza war a group of Jewish Students based out ofBinghamton University formed the "New Yiddish Bund of Binghamton" in coordination with theDemocratic Socialists of America in October 2023.[1] 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.[1] The group has drawn criticism from the aforementioned groups however, for its focus on Anti-Zionism and a lack of discussion oflabour issues.[1]
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)Today we are witnessing a revival of the ideas of the Jewish Labor Bund, an organization which had been a powerful force in Russian and Polish Jewish communities during the first half of the 20th century. The Bund focused on doikayt ("hereness"), libertarian socialism, and support for secular Jewish culture and the Yiddish language. The activity of those with this new interest, sometimes called "neo-Bundism," alongside those with unbroken links to prewar Bundists, has led to a new visibility of interest in Bundist ideas in both political and cultural circles. And because Bundism offers an alternate historical vision of Jewish identity to Zionism, this development is sometimes a controversial one.
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