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Molly Crabapple’s Book and Podcast Reignite Interest in the Jewish Bund

The projects revive a sidelined socialist tradition that rejected Zionist nation-building.

Overview

  • Molly Crabapple introduces her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country and appears on the Beyond Israelism video podcast to bring Bund history back into public view.
  • The Bund was a mass Jewish socialist movement that preached doykait, or “hereness,” and built unions, schools, and camps while resisting both fascism and Zionist emigration.
  • Zeteo spotlights Crabapple’s account that most Bundists were killed by the Nazis or repressed under Soviet rule, while figures like Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman carried the tradition forward.
  • Crabapple makes explicit historical parallels to the present, including a quoted comparison that views Gaza through the lens of the Warsaw Ghetto.
  • Commentary Magazine pushes back, calling the project nostalgic and arguing Bundists favored non-territorial Jewish autonomy rather than true anti-nationalism.