Social justice, multiculturalism key Jewish issues

What does it mean to be Jewish? That this is a question debated in Jewish circles is testimony to the wide diversity of Jewish identity. Judaism is, of course, a religion, and one who professes Judaism is a Jew. But the various currents of Judaism do not always agree on what professing Judaism means. Moreover, Jews also make up an ethnicity, a people and a culture. Many who identify as Jewish are not religious at all.

Among the non-religious currents of Jewish identity, one that is little known outside small enclaves in the Jewish world is Bundism. The Bund (a Yiddish word meaning “association”) was a Jewish socialist labour movement founded in the Russian Empire in 1897.

After the Russian revolution, the Bund was destroyed in Soviet Russia, but in interwar Poland, it played a major role among many Polish Jewish political factions. A cardinal principle of the Bund was doikayt—a Yiddish word meaning “hereness,” the notion that Jews should strive to become an integral part of the societies in which they live. The Bund advocated ethno-cultural autonomy for Jews and for other ethnic minorities and promoted education in Yiddish, the language of the Polish Jewish masses. These Bundist ideas were a precursor of modern notions of multiculturalism, but in an environment of inter-ethnic hostility and rampant antisemitism, they were radical.

An important rival of Bundism was Zionism. The Zionists rejected the Bundist notion of doikayt and advocated the establishment of an independent Jewish state, where Jews would be free from the growing threat of antisemitism and where Hebrew would replace Yiddish as the national language.The Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939 devastated the Bund together with all Polish Jewish organizations. Most of the Bundist leadership perished in the Holocaust.

While small Bundist organizations continue to function in New York, London, and Melbourne, the Bund is mostly an historical memory. Zionism, which emphasized an independent Jewish national identity, emerged as the dominant Jewish political movement in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The State of Israel was established, and most Jews in the world feel a strong connection to Israel.

But while the Bund no longer plays a significant political role, the concept of doikayt is not dead. To quote Dvora Zylberman of the Melbourne Bund, “It is important to note that the majority Jews across the world today continue to commit to the Bundist ideal of doikayt, whether they are aware of it or not, by choosing to build up and be a part of the Jewish community where they live.”

In these times of ultra-nationalism and religious fundamentalism, some young American and European Jews, partly perhaps nostalgic for a lost Yiddish culture, are drawn to the Bund as the affirmation of a non-nationalist Jewish identity in solidarity with other minorities and with oppressed peoples, including Palestinians. The fight against antisemitism and the struggle for racial equality and human rights are, from their NeoBundist perspective, two sides of the same coin.

It is doubtful that the Bund will be revived as a political force, but the spirit of the Bund persists in a Jewish passion for social justice.

The Bund saw itself as radically secular, but because Judaism is an evolving religious tradition that stresses the importance of action over belief, the line between religious and secular is not always so clear. The blurring of that line is especially true when it comes to issues of social justice. When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a deeply religious man, joined Martin Luther King in a march for civil rights, he famously said he was praying with his feet.

Alan Rutkowski is a member of the Victoria Society for Humanistic Judaism and a founding member the Victoria Jewish dialogue group, If Not Now, When? He has contributed articles to the online edition of the American Journal Jewish Currents