User:Blue maple tree/International Jewish Labor Bund

History of the International Jewish Labor Bund
Before World War Two, the Bund contributed heavily to the modernization of Jewish life as well as promoting the idea that Jews were not bound to a territory and instead were connected through history, language and culture. Many historians believe that this original Bund was lost to the effects of the holocaust in Poland, the demise of the Jewish Working Class and therefore the demise of the Yiddish infrastructure. However it was slowly reestablished by Bundists who escaped and survived World War Two as the International Jewish Labor Bund. They reconstituted the Bund in order to carry on fighting for the basic Bund principle that the Jewish problems can only be solved in places where Jews actively live through a democratic socialism that brings together Jews and non Jews. They established a World Coordinating Committee with the executives in New York City and the Secretariat in Paris. This committee perpetuates a worldwide victory over democracy and socialism wherever Jewish communities exist.

After 1947, Bund organizations were developed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, England, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Batyam, Bar Sheva, Natanya, Tiberius, Migdal-Ashkelon, Kfar Yavne, Ramat-Hasharon, Kiryat-gat, Lubl-Ramle, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Mexico City, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, and Paterson.

In 1997 commemorative events were organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bund in New York City, London, Warsaw, Paris (citation 7 on additional wiki) and Brussels, where the chairwoman of the Belgian chapter, herself 100 years old, was present(citation 8 on original wiki).

Bund Beliefs vs Zionist Beliefs
Bundists teach international justice which combines the Jewish claims with respect for the rights of other groups as opposed to the Zionist ideals which proposes nationalistic justice that ignores the suffering of other people. They promote and offer faith in humanity which severely contradicts the fear of non-jews that Zionism promotes. The Bund also advocates for greater cooperation with non Jews, especially the underprivileged and those who are suffering. Bundists also believe in a concept called Doykeit in Yiddish and here-ness in English. The Bundist principle of Doykeit relates to their beliefs in non-zionism. It is the belief that national cultural autonomy of different groups of minorities within states is composed of many different minority groups. Another Bundist principle, called Veltlekhkeit in Yiddish, loosely translates to secularism in English. It exists as a modern alternative to traditional religious obscurantism of communities in the Russian Empire and Poland before World War Two. Veltlekheit sees religion as an individual and private matter but does not exist to promote anti religion ideologies. Following the Veltlekhkeit principles, the Bund envisioned a uprising and revolution of the oppressed against the oppressors. They aimed at liberating all victims of capitalism, regardless of country, nation or race. The Bund placed their faith in a socialist revolution where the goal was to liberate all of human kind from political, economical and national oppression-included in this was anti semitism.

World Conference section:
The third Bund World Conference in Montreal 1955, had a more positive outlook on Israel than Bundist groups in the past. They acknowledged the development of  an Active Bund Organization inside Israel. At this meeting they affirmed the existence of Israel while continuing to reject the Zionist identification of Israel as the homeland for all Jews and the international center of Jewish life.

Summary of the International Jewish Labor Bund ideology:
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 (source 9 in original article).


 * 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.

Press
There have been three publishing houses established across the world that have published a total of 50 volumes printed in Yiddish. These houses exist as Unser Tsait in New York City, Shloyme Mendelson Farlag in Mexico City and Idbuch in Buenos Aires. There were also many smaller volumes published across the world. Unser Tsait was published in Yiddish. In 1957, for the sixtieth years of existence of the Bund, the IJLB published a commemorative book in Yiddish and English with photographs, Der Bund Un Bilder, 1897-1957 (citation 21 in original wiki article).

Unser Shtine: a Yiddish daily based out of Paris and circulated in all European Jewish Communities

Foroys: A bi-weekly paper based out of Mexico

Unser Gedank: A bi-weekly based in Buenos Aires

Unser Gedank: A monthly based in Melbourne, Australia

Lebnsfragen: A monthly based in Tel-Aviv. Lebnsfragen was published in Yiddish.

The Bund in the United States
After World War Two, New York City became an epicenter of Yiddish life and the Bund played a very minor role in that. However, although small, it was also the most confident and vocal of all Bund organizations, frequently declaring its antipathy towards capitalism and mainstream politics. They also voiced support for civil rights and ending racial discrimination, and later on opposed the American intervention in Vietnam.

The Bund in the US before 1945
At the turn of the 20th century the jewish labor movement held significant influence on the American political and cultural arenas as well as on the Jewish streets. It played an important role and had largely visible contributions in the American Jewish communities. The mass emigration of thousands of Bundist exiles from the failed Russian Revolution in 1905 heightened the presence of American Yiddish Socialism in America. These Bundist migrants emphasized the inherent cultural value of yiddish and promoted practicing jewish culture in communities that largely focused on rapid assimilation into western culture. However even with this Bundist presence in America, there was not a formal Bund organization established for the first half of the century. This was because the major epicenters of Bundist thought (Russian and then Poland) felt American conditions did not suit a Bund organization. Antisemitism was a defining characteristic of Jewish life in the Czarist Autocratic Russia where it was much less prominent in the democratic United States. This caused American Jews desire to assimilate with Western culture to skyrocket, proving different from their Russian Jewish counterparts. In Russia, Jews had been separated from Russians in all regards of life and therefore prevented them from wanting to assimilate with the Russian culture and become “Russian”. Before 1945, there were many attempts to establish a local Bund Organization and none were successful.

The establishment of the Jewish Labor Bund in the United States
A formal Bund organization was established in New York in 1946 due to damage to the Bund organizations in Europe. In Europe the Bund was physically and structurally damaged by the Nazis and overall Soviet Communism. The Polish Bund in particular was permanently damaged and became very weak soon after. Thousands of members of the Polish Bund escaped for the West and the American Jews began to realize the new, irreversibly altered, Bund reality. The Polish Bund would not survive the onslaught of the communist dominion and because of this the central administration point of Bund Organizations was formed in New York and a world conference of Bundist groups from across the globe was also established.

Emmanuel Nowogrodski was the secretary of the Bund World Coordinating Committee and he advocated for limiting support for the Polish Bund and instead focusing efforts into strengthening local socialism and building up the local socialist mass movement. American Jews felt a greater sense of duty to this cause in response to the fate of their European Jewish counterparts and became aware that now, the presence of Jewish life in all capitalist countries was in peril. At this point in time Zionism in the United States was at its peak strength and had a combined membership of about half a million people. This is vastly larger than the Bundist membership of a couple thousand, although an accurate number is hard to pin down as there are minimal records.

In November 1946 the Medem Club and the American Representation came together and established the first Bund Organization in New York. They promoted that the task of American Jews was to aid Jewish communities across the world but the only way they could do that was to first secure and strengthen their existence in the United States. Another, less official goal of the postwar Bund was to provide comfort to those whose lives had been destroyed by the holocaust and to ease their resettlement in America. Branches of the Bundist organization group were established in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Toronto and Montreal.

The end of the International Jewish Labor Bund in the United States:
The International Jewish Labor Bund slowly fizzled out after it's reestablishment in the United States in 1946. This was primarily due to the decision to try and reinstate models of the Russian and Polish Bunds on new and developing Jewish Communities. The conditions of these young Bunds in the United States were not capable of absorbing the ideals that exists in the Russian and Polish pre-war Bunds. In order to have had a successful restoration of the Bund in the post war United States, they would have needed to develop new ideals that reflected the social, political and cultural aspects of each individual community. The Bund in the United States was intense about maintaining and recreating the pre-war Bund legacy into the post war Bund years. Therefore they focused on promoting socialism, revolution and Yiddish culture in muliti ethnic cultures and overall focused on the global role of the Bund instead of the role of the Bund in individual communities. This focus on the political and theoretical spheres led to the fall of the Bund in the United States and across the globe.