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173 6 Here-ness, There-ness, and Everywhere-ness The Bund and Israel The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 presented a huge challenge to the Bund, which had, for the first fifty years of its existence, been vehemently anti-Zionist. Its hostility to Zionism can be traced back to the very early years of both movements, which were established in 1897, and their struggle continued right through World War II, for their conceptions of how to secure the future for world—or, more specifically, European— Jewry differed radically. Rather than bring together Bundists and Zionists, the situation in Europe in the 1930s and even through the very first years of the war only served to intensify the conflict between the two movements. 1 The birth of the Jewish state following the war appeared an unequivocal triumph for the Bund’s longstanding foe and presented an existential quandary for a movement that staked its future on a decentralized model of Jewish life. Bundists now had to reconsider their position toward Zionism and their relationship to the rapidly growing Palestinian Jewish community. They would have to formulate a response to the rise of Israel as a major factor in the Jewish world. For many, the initial answer was a resounding rejection of Israel. It is no surprise that, after decades of struggle against the very notion of a Jewish state, the newly reconstituted world Bund did not readily embrace the new Jewish world order. Very quickly though, Bundist soul-searching led to a major policy reversal, and in 1955, at its third world conference in Montreal, the world Bund officially endorsed Israel as a positive factor in Jewish life.2 The Bund’s postwar opposition to Zionism, which took place against the backdrop of Zionist predominance in Jewish communities around the world and the eventual establishment 174 T HE INT ER NAT IONA L JE W ISH L A BOR BUND of a Jewish state, was characterized by the question of how to reconcile its antipathy toward Zionism and its support for one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, which was growing in Israel at an exponential rate. The Bund developed a complex relationship with Israel. Heated debates took place in the Bund during the first decade following the war, with the Bund eventually coming to accept Israel as a permanent and creative force in the Jewish world. These debates took place mainly in the Bund’s journals, which became the location of the Bund’s anti-Zionism. Before the war, the Bund’s struggle against Zionism was a true battle for the hearts and minds of millions of Jews on the ground; after the war, the conflict became largely intellectual, especially with the establishment of a Jewish state, a realization of Zionism’s ultimate goal. The resolutions that local branches passed give some indication of the grassroots support that the various positions articulated by Bund leaders maintained, and also underline how Bundism very quickly transformed to accommodate Jewish statehood. Another development of importance was the small Bund organization that appeared in Israel in the early 1950s and for decades served a small community of Yiddish-speaking socialists. It was here that the movement’s anti-Zionism took on a more urgent character, as Bundists were engaged in a daily battle with Zionism on the ground. The rise of the Israeli Bund had an impact on the world Bund’s prompt policy reversal on the question of Israel in the 1950s. My discussion of the Israeli Bund focuses only on the 1950s: it was during these years that the organization forced a serious policy reappraisal on behalf of the world movement, and the movement reached its peak in the latter part of that decade, after a number of waves of Eastern European refugees had bolstered its ranks. (When the Israeli Bund unsuccessfully ran in the Knesset elections, the party came to the realization that political influence was too great a hill for Bundists to climb in a sociopolitical landscape totally dominated by Zionism. Thereafter began the slow decline of the Israeli party, as it shifted to cultural work and struggled to transmit a commitment to Yiddish culture and socialism to a new, Israeli-born generation.) The Bund’s relationship with Israel was complex. Torn between support for the state’s existence and its critical stance vis-à-vis Zionism, the Bund sought a path that could resolve the tension between its doykayt, which did not privilege any Jewish...

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