Yiddish

Original Paper Wrappers, 8vo, ca. 100 pages. Monthly Bundist periodical ran from Vol. I, Nr, 1 (Oct. 1927) to 1932. 23 cm. In Yiddish. Unobtrusive Bund rubber stamp. Levin (1977) reports that it was in UNZER TSAYT that the very first reports of the Bund's split over the National Question with the Russian Social Democrats were published (in 1927). The Bund in Poland, here providing its unique Polish Jewish Socialist anti-Zionist perspective. “The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Yiddish: ‘algemeyner yidisher arbeter-bund in lite, poyln un rusland’), generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party.... founded in Vilnius on October 7, 1897…..In 1917 the Polish part of the Bund, which dated to the times when Poland was a Russian territory, seceded from the Russian Bund and created a new Polish General Labor Bund which continued to operate in Poland in the years between the two world wars….The Bund sought to unite all Jewish workers in the Russian Empire into a united socialist party, and also to ally itself with the wider Russian social democratic movement to achieve a democratic and socialist Russia. The Russian Empire then included Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and most of present-day Poland, areas where the majority of the world's Jews then lived. They hoped to see the Jews achieve a legal minority status in Russia. Of all Jewish political parties of the time, the Bund was the most progressive regarding gender equality, with women making up more than one-third of all members. The Bund actively campaigned against anti-Semitism. It defended Jewish civil and cultural rights and rejected assimilation. However, the close promotion of Jewish sectional interests and support for the concept of Jewish national unity (klal yisrael) was prevented by the socialist universalism of the Bund. The Bund avoided any automatic solidarity with Jews of the middle and upper classes and generally rejected political cooperation with Jewish groups that held religious, Zionist or conservative views. Even the anthem of the Bund, known as "the oath" (di shvue in Yiddish), written in 1902 by Sh. An-ski, contained no explicit reference to Jews or Jewish suffering. At the heart of the vision of the future of the Bund was the idea that there is no contradiction between the national aspect on the one hand and the socialist aspect on the other. As a strictly secular organization, the Bund renounced the Holy Land and the sacred language (Hebrew) and chose to speak Yiddish….In its early years the Bund had remarkable success, gaining an estimated 30,000 members in 1903 and an estimated 40,000 supporters in 1906, making it the largest socialist group in the Russian Empire…. the Bund was a founding collective member at the RSDLP's first congress in Minsk in March 1898. For the next 5 years, the Bund was recognized as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in the RSDLP, although many Russian socialists of Jewish descent, especially outside of the Pale of Settlement, joined the RSDLP directly….The Bund generally sided with the party's Menshevik faction led by Julius Martov and against the Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin during the factional struggles in the run-up to the Russian Revolution of 1917….In the Polish areas of the [Russian] empire, the Bund was a leading force in the 1905 revolution. At that time the organization probably reached the height of its influence. It called for an improvement in living standards, a more democratic political system and the introduction of equal rights for Jews. At least in the early stages of the first Russian Revolution, the armed groups of the "Bund" were likely the strongest revolutionary force in Western Russia. During the following years, the Bund went into a period of decay….The Bund eventually came to strongly oppose Zionism, arguing that emigration to Palestine was a form of escapism. The Bund did not advocate separatism. Instead, it focused on culture, rather than a state or a place, as the glue of Jewish ‘nationalism.’ …. The Bund also promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew. The Bund won converts mainly among Jewish artisans and workers, but also among the growing Jewish intelligentsia. It led a trade union movement of its own. It joined with the Poalei Zion (Labour Zionists) and other groups to form self-defense organisations to protect Jewish communities against pogroms and government troops. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 the Bund headed the revolutionary movement in the Jewish towns, particularly in Belarus and Ukraine…..In 1921, the Communist Bund [in the USSR] dissolved itself and its members sought admission to the Communist Party....Many former Bundists, like Mikhail Liber and David Petrovsky, perished during Stalin's purges in the 1930s. The Polish Bundists continued their activities until 1948. During the latter half of the 20th century the Bundist legacy was represented through the International Jewish Labor Bund, a federation of local Bundist groups around the world….Among the exiled Bundists who went on with Socialist politics in America was Baruch Charney Vladeck (1886–1938), elected to the New York Board of Aldermen as a Socialist in 1917…[and] 1937 [and] manager of The Jewish Daily Forward…Moishe Lewis (1888–1950)....the father of David Lewis (1909–1981), a leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada….David Dubinsky (1892–1982), though never formally a member of the party, had joined the bakers' union, which was controlled by the Bund, and was elected assistant secretary within the union by 1906…..He later became a member of the Socialist Party of America, helped found the American Labor Party in 1936 and was from 1932 till 1966 the leader of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union…..under the name Max Goldfarb, David Petrovsky (1886–1937) was a member of the Central Committee of the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a member of the Socialist Party of America, and the labor editor of The Forward” (Wikipedia). SUBJECT(S) : Jews -- Poland -- Periodicals. Jewish labor unions -- Periodicals. Socialism and Judaism -- Periodicals. Yiddish literature -- Poland -- Periodicals. OCLC Number: 642969688. OCLC lists only 4 runs (Arizona State, Stanford, LOC, U of Washington), all of which appear to be incomplete. Use wear, paper brwoning but not fragile. Good Condition. (y-1-11)