“Bundists and Zionists hated each other from the start. Bundists totally rejected this idea that they should leave their homes in order to colonize Palestine — a land where almost none of them had ever been.”
In her new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country, Molly Crabapple does something both radical and disarmingly simple: she tells a story that was never supposed to be remembered.
Through years of research and her signature visual storytelling, Molly resurrects the world of the Bund – a once mass movement of Jewish socialist revolutionaries who were unabashedly anti-nationalist and insisted that liberation could only come through struggle and solidarity, wherever Jews already lived. They called it “doykait,” or “hereness.” It meant fighting antisemitism not by fleeing, or by building a state elsewhere, but by linking arms with neighbors and refusing to abandon their homes and communities across Eastern Europe. In this new episode of ‘Beyond Israelism’, Molly and Simone Zimmerman revive the Bund’s lost history and political tradition.
“One of the things that Zionism tries to do is it tries to not just take over land and not just take over a culture, but tries to take over history.”
Bundists organized workers, built schools and summer camps, created art and literature, and fought against the competing forces of European fascism and the Zionist movement who were both urging Jews to flee Europe.
While most Bundists were murdered in the Nazi gas chambers and Soviet gulags, some, like Marek Edelman – a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – carried that commitment forward long after the Holocaust, insisting that Jewish identity demanded standing with the oppressed, including with Palestinians. It is for this reason — the Bund’s principled anti-Zionism — that they have been mostly excluded from history.
“It is impossible not to see the liquidation of Gaza in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto...”
Molly’s vivid communing with the past offers a powerful companion to our present. She insists that history is not foreclosed, and that the traditions we inherit are, in part, a matter of choice. In a time of genocide and fascism, the Bund’s ideas could not feel more prescient, and their stories and lessons more urgent to learn from.
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‘Beyond Israelism with Simone Zimmerman’ is a provocative new video podcast series from Tikkun Olam Productions, the team behind the viral and award-winning 2023 film Israelism. In this series, Simone will host bold and inspiring conversations that face, head on, the growing global reckoning with Zionism, the debates over Jewish identity, and the urgent struggle for Palestinian freedom. The episodes will unpack the myths of Zionism; dive deep into the meaning of Palestinian liberation, and through raw and fearless discussions examine the Jewish relationship with Israel.
If you enjoyed this conversation, here are some additional resources:
Order Molly’s book: Here Where We Live Is Our Country
Molly’s op-ed in The Guardian: ‘They tried to smear him as an antisemite – but Mayor Zohran Mamdani walks in a rich Jewish tradition’
More of Molly’s work on her official website: www.mollycrabapple.com
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