When Max Ewart first learned about the history of the Jewish Labor Bund from a podcast in the summer of 2024, he was stunned by the fact that he’d never heard of the organization before. “I was like, ‘What’s this? I’m Jewish. I do labor organizing; how did I not know about this?’ ” he says. “I feel bad for my wife, because it was all that I talked about—it was a rabbit hole of research.”
In 1897, the same year that the First Zionist Congress gathered in Switzerland to build a political program with the goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, a very different Jewish political movement called Bundism was taking root across Eastern Europe. The Bund—a Yiddish word whose noun form means “union” and verb form means “to be together,” “to stay together,” or “to organize together”—opposed both Zionism and assimilation into non-Jewish European culture. As antisemitism became more prevalent across Europe, particularly toward Jewish working-class people, the Bund developed place-based solidarity with socialist movements, including the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Ewart’s family has deep roots in Eastern European Jewish organizing, and he felt that the original Bundists “were my people not only in spirit, but also in blood.” But his elation at this newfound knowledge soon gave way to overwhelming anger. “There’s this entire legacy of Jewish radicalism,” he says. “And none of the mainstream Jewish institutions I was a part of growing up felt that it was necessary to teach me about it or introduce this to me.”
After the 1917 October Revolution, the Bund’s insistence on maintaining a distinct Jewish culture led to a rift with the Soviet Union. While the political party was eventually banned by the Soviet Union, the Bund found a new home in Poland, reaching 100,000 members at its apex in 1938. For decades, Bundism resonated with the masses of Jewish workers in Eastern Europe, while the Zionist vision to colonize Palestine remained a relatively marginal ideology. But after the Holocaust, which left surviving European Jews displaced and vulnerable, support for a Jewish state rose, while “the Bund, meanwhile, seemed to dwindle into irrelevance,” writes Molly Crabapple, artist and author of the forthcoming book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund.
But decades later, as public support for and identification with Israel plummets amid its ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Jewish socialists and trade unionists are reclaiming the Bundist mantle.
In late 2023, a group of Bund enthusiasts published a short declaration calling for the re-establishment of the International Jewish Labor Bund (IJLB). Their declaration linked to an interest form; within six months, more than 600 people had signed up. According to the new IJLB, there are now eight official local Bundist organizing bodies, including six in cities across the United States, one in Vienna, and one in France.
Vienna chapter of the Jewish Labor Bund
The Vienna chapter of the Jewish Labor Bund gathers to watch a documentary titled ‘Bunda'im’ in November 2025.
Resurgent Bund chapters are adopting the organizing framework based on the original Bundist principles: doikayt, Yiddish for “hereness,” which refers to building relationships of mutual solidarity in one’s community; and Yiddishkayt, or “Jewishness,” which means maintaining Jewish culture in the diaspora, particularly the Yiddish language. Ewart believes that doikayt is at the root of the Bund’s resurgence. “To have an organization that’s political philosophy is: ‘Here, where I live, is where I’m going to stand ten toes down and fight.’ That resonates with a lot of people,” Ewart says. “As they learn more about it they’re like ‘Oh fuck yeah. This is me.’ ”
After being ostracized from Jewish spaces for most of his life due to his anti-Zionist politics, Ewart—who now organizes with a local Bund chapter in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area—had found a conception of Jewishness that felt right for him. “I immediately felt this was home,” he says. “I’ve never felt more in touch with my Jewishness than I have these past two years. It’s been truly amazing.”
He isn’t alone. Jews across the world have found resonance with the Bund’s historic opposition to Zionism, emphasis on place-based organizing, and commitment to a revolutionary Jewish culture.
In 2024, Michael Simon started hearing “whispers and murmurs” in his New York City Jewish organizing networks about the revival of an early twentieth-century socialist party called the Jewish Labor Bund. Simon, who grew up in a family critical of Zionism, had a visceral reaction. He felt an intellectual affinity to the history of the Bund, but he feared the Bund’s revival would be stunted by leftist infighting.
“I was terrified,” he says. “Like, ‘I don’t want this to go wrong. This is something I care about. I don’t want it to be a flash in the pan or an embarrassing Shonda.’ ”
But when he got involved with the revived Bund’s New York City chapter in May 2025, Simon soon realized that his fear was unfounded. While the chapter was still finding its footing, he was relieved to join a group of principled organizers dedicated to building an alternative Jewish culture in New York. He’s since become a core organizer for the chapter, serving on an informal steering committee that facilitates meetings and helps the group narrow down on its focus.
Simon says it took roughly a year to establish chapter leadership for the New York City Bund, but eventually, on June 22, 2025, the chapter launched publicly with its first open meeting, and now holds seasonal meetings which typically garner about twenty-five attendees. The chapter has also established an informal five-person steering committee to handle administrative tasks, as well as a monthly reading group.
Creative commons
A rally of the Jewish Socialist Labour Bund, in Moscow, Russia, 1917.
Union solidarity is an area of emphasis for the New York City Bund. The chapter provides support to the Breaking Breads Union, a pre-authorized union at an Israeli-owned chain, Breads Bakery, who are organizing both for better pay and to resist their employer’s support for the Israeli military. As Zionist activists have maligned the workers as antisemitic for making these demands of their employers—who, workers allege, have forced them to bake for Zionist organizations—New York City Bund members have taken the opportunity to visit the bakery and show public support to the union as anti-Zionist Jews. “It sounds small and silly,” says Simon, “but it’s meaningful, especially because they have a lot of Zionist vitriol directed at them.” The chapter is in the early stages of expanding its union solidarity efforts, including long-term aspirations for a strike fund to protect workers from the financial precarity of unionizing their workplaces. Building a durable system for labor solidarity, says Simon, is a piece of their goal to fulfill the more than century-old vision of the original Bundists.
Another product of the Bund’s revival is Der Spekter, an independent publication for Bundist discourse that “came together organically” in April 2024 as new Bund chapters began forming, according to journalist and Der Spekter editorial board member Mark Misoshnik.
Der Spekter, which publishes online, works to continue the legacy of Bundists who fought the suppression of Jewish art and writing since its inception. “The Bund was historically critical to Jewish cultural production,” says Alex Lantsberg, another editor. “Not just the press, but also theater, poetry, and dance.” Der Spekter has published a wide range of work, including Bundist poetry, Bundist political histories, and a comic satirizing the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League.
This work reflects the deeper project of Bundism, which Mishoshnik describes as articulating an alternative Jewish identity to that offered by Zionism. “There is a hunger for Jewishness that isn’t tied to a bloodthirsty, military-industrial nation,” Misoshnik says, “that isn’t about sequestering ourselves and pulling up the ladder behind us.”
Lantsberg draws a historical connection to the Polish Bund, which ran publications during the Nazi occupation of Poland, including covert press operations that were critical to fomenting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. “We take a lot of inspiration from people living through the worst possible experiences and still finding space to resist through writing and art,” he says.
After becoming enamored of Bundist history, Ewart began looking for a Bundist organizing space. He discovered that the re-established Bund had a DMV chapter, though it was mostly dormant at the time. He reached out to a member, and was added to the group’s Signal chat. The chat, he said, consisted mostly Jewish Voice for Peace members who had gotten burnt out from the demands of organizing. Ewart quickly jumped in, organizing a political education session in September 2024 about the history of the Jewish left, inspired partly from his own anger about the erasure of Bundist history.
One attendee, a musician who was fluent in Yiddish, suggested hosting Yiddish singalongs at a local bar; now, the group congregates every other month to sing Yiddish labor songs, and has since expanded its Yiddish programming to include movie nights. “That kind of regular programming was core to our growth,” Ewart says, “because in this incredibly online world, having places where you can meet up in person is important to building community.”
Ewart is now taking Yiddish classes, which has allowed him to reconnect with his grandmother, the last living person in his family who grew up speaking Yiddish. “She’s able to understand the things I say in Yiddish. That’s revolutionary right there.”
In the decades after the Holocaust, Yiddish became a marginalized language at the same trajectory that Hebrew was embraced in Israel. Ewart describes modern Hebrew as “a tool for colonialism,” referencing how the language was originally spoken solely for liturgical purposes, until it later became Israel’s national language, renaming Arabic placenames to Hebrew in an attempt to replace Palestinian history with an unfounded claim to Indigeneity.
During one Yiddish sing-along, a DMV organizer’s friend invited their grandparents. “They were not anti-Zionists, but they grew up speaking Yiddish and they were interested in joining,” Ewart says. “The grandma was struggling with dementia, but immediately, when we started singing, you could see her face light up, and then she started singing too. These songs are eternal.”
The organizer’s grandfather, on the other hand, told the Bund members that he was an “OG labor Zionist” and part of the original movement to establish Kibbutzes in Israel. “I remember the Bund back in the day,” Ewart recalls the grandfather said. “We used to fight all the time.” The organizers responded that they were Bundists. After a short pause, he said: “Well you’ve got good songs.” They laughed together, and kept on singing.
“Zionists exist, but we can try to move them,” says Ewart. “Maybe they don’t agree with us, maybe they’re not going to be able to organize with us, but they can still come sing in Yiddish with us. Whatever small percentage, I’m hopeful that some people can be shifted by this vision of what the future of Jewishness can look like.”