‘Here Is Our Homeland’: Revisiting the Jewish Bund’s Defeat and Legacy

A book by Molly Crabapple revisits the history of the Bund, the Jewish socialist movement that opposed Zionism and argued that Jews belonged in the countries where they lived.

The movement offered a different vision of Jewish political life: integration into existing homelands rather than the pursuit of a separate national home. That position placed it at odds with Zionism over where, and how, Jews should build their future.

Crabapple’s account highlights the Bund’s struggle against Nazism and its participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. That resistance forms a central part of a history extending beyond the movement’s ideological battles.

The book also traces the defeat of the Bund and its subsequent retreat from public memory. It brings renewed attention to a movement whose place in Jewish history has been overshadowed.

Revisiting that legacy opens a window onto an alternative political tradition, one that tied Jewish belonging to the places Jews already called home.