The Goldene Medineh? Bund and Jewish Left in the Post-War United States

CHAPTER 5 The Goldene Medineh? Bund and Jewish Left in the Post-War United States

David Slucki*

The Bund in the United States was in a unique and paradoxical situation com- pared to its sibling organizations in other countries. On the one hand, the Bund’s natural center, New York, was the world’s most vibrant location in the production of postwar Yiddish culture and, alongside Israel, the world’s major Jewish political locus. lt also had a proud tradition of Yiddish socialism from the late nineteenth century onward. On the other hand, by the time the Bund sought formally to reestablish itself in the New World, the Socialist Party had run its course and was in retreat. The postwar history of the Bund in America, and in New York in particular, is therefore a study in contradictions. Although it was the intellectual and administrative center of the world Bund, the Bund in the United States was at times far less influential in its local context than were Bund organizations in other countries. And despite the fact that New York became the postwar locus of Yiddish life, the Bund remained but a small fish in a much larger sea of Yiddish press, politics, and culture. On the other hand, it displayed more self-confidence than just about any other Bund organization in the world, as it regularly declared its antipathy toward capitalism and main- stream politics in a climate growing daily more suspicious of leftist ideas. The Bund joined the throng of organizations Voicing support for civil rights and an end to racial discrimination, and, in the 1960s and 1970s, opposed American intervention in Vietnam. I examine here the delicate situation in which the American Bund found itself: torn between expectation and reality; seeking to lead Bundists around the globe, yet struggling to find an audience at home. Bundists sought to under- stand their role as new Americans and how they fit into the broader American socialist landscape. Similarly, they tried to forge a role within the Yiddish- speaking and broader Jewish community, as American Jewry embarked on decades of soul-searching following the Holocaust. The American Bund also

* D. Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945. Toward a Global History, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 105–106, 122–137.

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operated in the context of the global Bundist movement, for which it pro- vided leadership and direction. These were issues that preoccupied the Bund throughout its half century of existence in the United States, particularly in the first two decades after the establishment of the New York Bund, when adher- ents to the prewar movement felt that there was an opportunity to carve out their own niche in the New World. Although they did play an important role in the lives of several hundred (perhaps several thousand) American Jews, and a more peripheral role in the lives of thousands more, their lofty ambitions were never realized. Sadly, their dream of becoming a broadly popular party among even the Yiddish-speaking population was never fulfilled.

The Bund and the Jewish Left

When Bund leaders undertook to formally establish a local organization in New York in 1947, they did so fully realizing that they were joining a lively Yiddish-speaking Left comprising political, cultural, and social organizations. Among these organizations were the Jewish Labor Committee, the Jewish Socialist Verband, and the Arbeter Ring, as well as non-politically- aligned Yiddish organizations like the Congress for Yiddish Culture, YIVO, and the many landsmanshaften. The Bund’s influence on the establishment and ideological path of these organizations in the first half of the twentieth century is substantial, and it is in this context that its relationship with the various elements of the Jewish Left before and after the war needs to be understood. There was also a parallel tradition of tension between Bundists and other organizations, like the world’s largest Yiddish daily newspaper, the Forverts, and the Jewish communist movement, which also grew out of Bundist roots.1 The Bund faced a difficult task when it tried to grow new roots on the Western shores of the Atlantic Ocean. All previous attempts to establish a similar organization had amounted to naught. With no Bund organization in Eastern Europe to overshadow them, however, the new wave of Bundist migrants sought to do as those before them had failed to, and to find a niche

1 Tony Michels gives the most comprehensive account of the Bundist role in the development of the Jewish Left in the United States. See Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2005, 125–178. Jonathan Frankel paved the way for American Jewish labor history with his pioneering Prophecy and Politics, and Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers highlights the importance of the Jewish Left in the development of American culture, including the role of Bundists.

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