The Bund and Communism: When Jewish Workers Reject Zionism – Dr David Glanz – 24 May 2026

Zionists claim they have always spoken for Jews. But in the first four decades of the twentieth century, the majority of working class Jews looked instead to socialism — via the Bund or the communist parties — and Jewish working-class opposition to Zionism continues today in different forms across Jewish communities worldwide. This seminar traces that history through the radicalisation of Russia's Pale of Settlement, where five million Jews faced pogroms, quotas and poverty; the General Jewish Workers' Union (the Bund, founded 1897) and its principle of doikayt — "hereness", the choice to fight oppression where you live rather than colonise someone else's land; Theodor Herzl's 1903 deal with the Tsarist Interior Minister to trade away Jewish revolutionary politics for a Palestine charter; the Bund's mass support in interwar Poland; and the Bolshevik revolution's abolition of the Pale and brief Yiddish cultural renaissance, undone by the Stalinist counter-revolution. He closes on the US Jewish left, where socialism was "hegemonic" before the Cold War — half the US Communist Party membership in the 1930s was Jewish, and in 1935 Robert Gessner branded Vladimir Jabotinsky "a Jewish Hitler" — and argues that anti-Zionist Jewish workers can once again play that role today. 🎙 Dr David Glanz: Jewish anti-Zionist and Palestine solidarity activist for almost fifty years; member of Anti-Zionism Australia, Solidarity Australia, Free Palestine Melbourne, and Jews for a Free Palestine; founder of MEAA Members for Palestine; and longtime refugee rights and anti-fascist organiser. Presentation followed by audience discussion. Introduced by Dr Keren Tova Rubinstein. Seminar 5 in our Anti-Zionist Open Learning series. Recorded Sunday 24 May 2026, Kathleen Syme Library, Carlton, Naarm/Melbourne. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional custodians of the unceded land on which this seminar took place. Sovereignty was never ceded. From here to Palestine, the struggle against settler colonialism is one struggle. 🔗 AntiZionismAustralia.org 🔗 instagram.com/Anti.Zionism.Australia #Palestine #AntiZionism #Zionism #FreePalestine #TheBund #Doikayt #Bolsheviks #RussianRevolution #JewishLeft #Yiddish #Naarm #Melbourne #IsraelPalestine #SettlerColonialism #Nakba