Jews out of place

Jews out of place

Credit: the author, Jimmy Wales, Molly Crabapple, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, 2026.

In 1896, Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, published Judenstaat (The Jews’ State). By the following year, he had supporters enough to found the First Zionist Congress.

However, his book proposed Palestine or “the Argentine”. Herzl believed Argentina’s government would benefit from granting a portion of land for organised settlement in a vast and fertile land, unlike Palestine.

Herzl:

“While popular anti-Semitism, rooted in Catholic precepts, has always existed, government-sponsored anti-Semitism has been rare in Argentina.”

“Is Palestine or Argentina to be preferred? The Society will accept the territory that is offered to it which corresponds to the more favorable conditions.

“Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland. The very name alone would be a powerfully moving rallying cry for our people.”

Six month later, in the Hebrew translation (Warsaw, 1896) he deletes Argentina as an option. However, by then, some hundreds of Jews had already founded Moisesville as the New Jerusalem. Their descendants live there today.

Herzl wrote that the reason for choosing Palestine was the historical Jewish presence and enormous emotional pull.

The resistance to Zionism was also founded in 1897—the General Jewish Labor Bund, created in the Russian Empire states of Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

The Bund was founded to promote political, civil, social and human rights for everyone, not just Jews. Note that those rights did not aspire to a homeland or any form of nationalism.

Wiki: The Bund’s roots were in underground circles of revolutionary study active in the late 1800s, where Jewish workers and intellectuals held discussions in socialist theory and organized in groups such as the “Jewish Social Democrats,” one of the first Jewish labor movements.

Of all Jewish political parties of the time, the Bund was the most progressive regarding gender equality, with women making up more than one-third of all members.

As a strictly secular organization, the Bund renounced the quasi-religious aspect of the Zionist project and its use of the Hebrew language. The Bund was all Yiddish, socialist and antiZionist.

Bund’s position was strongly anti-Zionist from its inception, espousing espoused veltlekhkeit or secularism. Bund philosophy was based upon the notion of doikayt, or hereness, which affirmed that Jews should advance Jewish culture where they lived, rather than supporting what Bundists considered an anti-Semitic idea of Jews as strangers.

Ponder that. This is a hugely important distinction, one which could end antiSemitism. Be here now, instead of being separate, the other. Separation is what a homeland is all about, dividing one from others by nationalism. Perhaps Jews need antiSemitism as a common enemy to hold them together.

Bundist opposition to Zionism was multifaceted; Vladimir Medem viewed Zionism as not only an unrealistic fantasy, but also as the equivalent of the bourgeois capitalist nationalism of the non-Jewish world and the antithesis to proletarian struggle.

The Bund called for a Binational Jewish Arab state in Palestine. They criticized the Zionist attitude towards the Arabs of Palestine. Zionism discouraged the use of Yiddish in Palestine, and some Zionist ideological currents professed the "Negation of the Diaspora," claiming that Jewish existence was only possible in the land of Israel.

Bundists advocate for a concept of international justice that integrates Jewish claims with respect for the rights of other groups. The Bund emphasizes collaboration with non-Jewish communities, particularly those who are underprivileged or experiencing hardship. As a Socialist Jewish political organization, Bundists are committed to class struggle and national rights.

The Jewish American Bund was a socialist party, concerned with uniting other American labor parties and the Jewish Left. The organization saw the US Democratic Party as pro-capitalist, and often chose to support independent, socialist candidates that supported workers in local and national elections. In the case there was no candidate that represented the views of the party, members were encouraged to vote freely or not vote at all!

The Bund’s programme is eminently sensible.

In 1958, the Jewish Labor Bund released a pamphlet commemorating the organization's 60th birthday. In it, the Bund summed up its ideology in seven points.

1. Jews are dispersed throughout the World, and are a distinct nationality, though without a common state. They will remain in this situation in the foreseeable future. They cannot be remade into a one-state nation.

2. The State of Israel does not represent the entire Jewish People. It does not solve the Jewish problem. Even now, the population of Israel is less than 15 percent of the world's Jewry. Consequently, Israeli leaders are not in a position to assert Zionist claims of leadership over world Jewry, and their policies of Hebraization of Jewish life and of downgrading all Jewish communities outside of Israel (including those in democratic countries, such as the U.S.A) as places of exile are harmful and fallacious.

3. The key to the safety and the future of the Jews in Israel is peace with the Arabs. To achieve it, concessions on both sides are needed. Israel should recognize the moral right of the Arab refugees to repatriation and compensation. The Arab nations should recognize the existence of Israel. The United Nations should do their utmost to put an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict which invites Russian penetration into this turbulent region and is a menace to world peace.

4. The overwhelming majority of the Jewish people live outside of Israel; almost half of all Jews live in the United States. Jewish problems must be solved in the countries in which the Jews live.

5. Assimilation is an escape for individuals, not a solution for a whole people with a distinctive national culture and identity. Pluralism is the life-blood of real democracy, and this principle applies to national and cultural life within countries as well.

6. Jewish national problems arising within the countries where Jews reside can be solved on the basis of freedom and democracy – more securely, by democratic Socialism – which will guarantee Jews the rights of freedom and equality, including the right to a free, autonomous self-determination to maintain their own Jewish identity and national culture. Within the Jewish community the Bund strives for a secularized Jewish culture in the Yiddish language.

7. Two criteria of Jewish policies – one for Israel, another for the Diaspora – should not be followed. Wherever Jews live – whether as a national minority throughout the world or as a majority in Israel – Jewish policy, certainly Jewish Socialist policy, should be based on the same principles of freedom, democracy, international justice and brotherhood. Reconciliation of the claims of the Jewish people with the rights of other people is the essence of the Bund approach to Jewish problems, an approach which brings into harmony the Bund's Jewish national program with the spirit of democratic Socialist internationalism.

So what do I think? As events in Palestine have proved since 1909, I think Jews chose the wrong place.