Jewish left
Encyclopedia
The term "Jewish left" describes Jews who identify with or support left wing, occasionally liberal
causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the "Jewish left," however. Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights
movement, anti-racist work, and anti-fascist organizing of many forms in Europe
, the United States
and modern-day Israel
.
The Jewish people have a rich history of involvement in socialism
, Marxism
, and Western liberalism
. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been of Jews, for instance, Karl Marx
, Moses Hess
, Herbert Marcuse
, Murray Bookchin
, Saul Alinsky
, Tristan Tzara
, Leon Trotsky
, Leon Blum
, Judith Butler
, Noam Chomsky
, Eric Hobsbawm
, Harold Laski
, Betty Friedan
, Abbie Hoffman
, or Howard Zinn
, who were born into Jewish families and have various degrees of connection to Jewish communities, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition or the Jewish religion in its many variants. It also includes such people as rabbis Michael Lerner
and Arthur Waskow
: religiously devout and culturally identified Jews. It includes as well many secular, cosmopolitan
people who nonetheless remain connected to Jewish culture, such as Rosa Luxemburg
, Emma Goldman
, Rose Schneiderman
, Muriel Rukeyser
and Susan Sontag
. Views regarding Zionism
among those either identified or self-identified as being among the Jewish left can be quite varied, and are often independent of their other political and social views.
While there is a slight increase of Jews "on the left" connecting their politics to their spirituality
, this is a somewhat new phenomenon, when contrasted with the long history of secular socialist and communist Jewish activist history (e.g., The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
) as well as Jewish anarchist
activism which was not only explicitly secular but had from time to time denounced religion. From the late 1880s through the mid-1950s, there was a range of Jewish left newspapers (and other publications) in Yiddish
that covered the spectrum of Jewish left-wing political and cultural expression in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as both North and South America, and in Mandate Palestine's Yishuv
, as well as the early years of the State of Israel.
can be traced to Jewish
religious texts, including the Tanakh
and later texts, which include a strong endorsement of hospitality to "the stranger" and the principle of redistribution of wealth in the Biblical idea of Jubilee
— as well as a tradition of challenging authority, as exemplified by the Biblical Prophet
s.
In the twentieth century, Jewish theologians — notably Abraham Joshua Heschel
, Arnold Jacob Wolf
, Arthur Waskow
and Mordecai Kaplan
, more recently Michael Lerner and Daniel Boyarin
— have emphasised these social justice aspects of the religion.
, led by thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn
, as well as the support of many European Jews such as Ludwig Börne
for republican
ideals in the aftermath of the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars
. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a movement for Jewish Emancipation
spread across Europe
, strongly associated with the emergence of political liberalism, based on the Enlightenment
principles of rights
and equality under the law. Because liberals represented the political left of the time (see left-right politics
), emancipated Jews, as they entered the political culture of the nations where they lived, became closely associated with liberal parties. Thus, many Jews supported the American Revolution
of 1776, the French Revolution
of 1789, and the European Revolutions of 1848
; while Jews in England
tended to vote for the Liberal Party
, which had led the parliamentary struggle for Jewish Emancipation
— an arrangement called by some scholars “the liberal Jewish compromise”.
in the late nineteenth century, a Jewish working class
emerged in the cities of Eastern
and Central Europe
. Before long, a Jewish labour movement
emerged too. The Jewish Labour Bund – General Jewish Labor Union
– was formed in Vilna in Lithuania
in 1897. Distinctive Jewish Anarchist and socialist organisations formed and spread across the Jewish Pale of Settlement
in the Russian Empire
. There were also a significant number of people of Jewish origin who did not explicitly identify as Jews per se but were active in anarchist, socialist and social democratic as well as communist organizations, movements and parties.
As Zionism
grew in strength as a political movement, socialist Zionist parties were formed, such as Ber Borochov
’s Poale Zion
.
There were non-Zionist left-wing forms of Jewish nationalism, such as territorialism
(which called for a Jewish national homeland, but not necessarily in Palestine
), autonomism
(which called for non-territorial national rights for Jews in multinational empires) and the folkism
, advocated by Simon Dubnow
, (which celebrated the Jewish culture
of the Yiddish-speaking masses).
As Eastern European Jews migrated West from the 1880s, these ideologies took root in growing Jewish communities, such as London
’s East End, Paris
's Pletzl
, New York
’s Lower East Side
and Buenos Aires
. There was a lively Jewish anarchist scene in London, a central figure of which was, perhaps ironically, the non-Jewish German thinker and writer Rudolf Rocker
. The important Jewish socialist movement in the United States, with its Yiddish-language daily, The Forward
, and trade unions such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Important figures in these milieux included Rose Schneiderman
, Abraham Cahan
, Morris Winchevsky
and David Dubinsky
.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a major role in the Social Democratic parties of Germany
, Russia
, Austria-Hungary
and Poland
. Historian Enzo Traverso
has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the innovative forms of Marxism
associated with these Jewish socialists. These ranged from strongly cosmopolitan
positions hostile to all forms of nationalism
(as with Rosa Luxemburg
and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky
) to positions more sympathetic to cultural nationalism (as with the Austromarxists or Vladimir Medem
). Again, it is probable that most of these figures would not have considered themselves to be part of an explicitly "Jewish" left, but the significant number of Jews active in diverse movements and parties "on the left" is relevant.
, celebrating the fall of a regime that had presided over antisemitic pogroms, and believing that the new order in what was to become the Soviet Union would bring improvements in the situation of Jews in those lands. Many Jews became involved in Communist parties, constituting large proportions of their membership in many countries, including Great Britain
and the U.S. There were specifically Jewish sections of many Communist parties, such as the Yevsektsiya
in the Soviet Union
. The Communist regime in the USSR pursued what could be characterised as ambivalent policies towards Jews and Jewish culture, at times supporting their development as a national culture (e.g., sponsoring significant Yiddish language scholarship and creating an autonomous Jewish territory
in Birobidzhan
), at times pursuing antisemitic purges, such as that in the wake of the so-called Doctors' plot
. (See also Komzet
.)
With the advent of fascism
in parts of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, many Jews responded by becoming actively involved in the left, and particularly the Communist parties, which were at the forefront of the anti-fascist movement. For example, many Jewish volunteers fought in the International Brigades
in the Spanish Civil War
(for instance in the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade
and in the Polish-Jewish Naftali Botwin Company). Jews and leftists fought Oswald Mosley
's British fascists at the Battle of Cable Street
. This mass movement was influenced by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
in the Soviet Union.
In World War II
, the Jewish left played a major part in resistance to Nazism
. For example, Bundists and left Zionists were key in Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
.
middle class
Jews in Central and Western Europe began to search for sources of radicalism in Jewish tradition. For example, Martin Buber
drew on Hassidism in articulating his anarchist philosophy, Gershom Scholem
was an anarchist and a kabbalah
scholar, Walter Benjamin
was equally influenced by Marxism
and Jewish messianism
, Gustav Landauer
was a religious Jew and a libertarian communist, Jacob Israël de Haan
combined socialism with Haredi Judaism, while left-libertarian Bernard Lazare
became a passionately Jewish Zionist in 1897 but wrote 2 years later to Herzl – and by extension to the Zionist Action Committee, "You are bourgeois in thoughts, bourgeois in your feelings, bourgeois in your ideas, bourgeois in your conception of society.". In Weimar Germany, Walther Rathenau
was a leading figure of the Jewish left.
, socialist Zionism - first developed in Russia by the Marxist Ber Borochov and the non-Marxists Nachman Syrkin
and A. D. Gordon
- became a powerful force in the Yishuv
, the Jewish settlement in Palestine
. Poale Zion, the Histadrut
labour union and the Mapai
party played a major part in the campaign for an Israeli state
, with socialist politicians like David Ben-Gurion
and Golda Meir
amongst the founders of the nation. At the same time, the kibbutz
movement was an experiment in practical socialism.
In the 1940s, many on the left advocated a binational state in Israel/Palestine, rather than an exclusively Jewish state. (This position was taken by Hannah Arendt
and Martin Buber
, for example). Since independence in 1948, there has been a lively Israeli left, both Zionist (the Labour Party, Meretz
) and anti-Zionist (Palestine Communist Party
, Maki
). The Labour Party and its predecessors have been in power in Israel for significant periods since 1948.
There are two worldwide groupings of left-wing Zionist organizations. The World Labour Zionist Movement, associated with the Labor Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Labour Party (Avoda), the Habonim Dror
Labor Zionist youth movement, the TAKAM
kibbutz federation, the Histadrut
and the Na'amat
. The World Union of Meretz, associated with what was historically known as the Socialist Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Meretz party, the Hashomer Hatzair
Socialist Zionist youth movement, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation
and the Givat Haviva research and study center. Both movements exist as factions within the World Zionist Organization
, as well as regional or country-specific Zionist movements; the two roughly correspond to the interwar split between the Poale Zion Right (the tradition that led to Avoda) and the Poale Zion Left (Hashomer Hatzair, Mapam, Meretz).
and Forward newspaper in New York, the Bund in Melbourne, Australia, or Labour Friends of Israel
in the UK.
Meanwhile, the 1960s-1980s saw a resurgence in interest in cultural heritage and ethnic identity, prompting a renewal of interest among assimilated Jews in the West in Jewish working class culture and the various radical traditions of the Jewish past. This led to a growth in a new sort of radical Jewish organisations, interested in Yiddish culture, Jewish spirituality and social justice. For example, in the decade of 1980–1992 one organization, New Jewish Agenda
, functioned as a national, multi-issue progressive membership organization with the mission of acting as a "Jewish voice on the Left and a Left voice in the Jewish Community." The Jewish Socialists' Group
in Britain and Rabbi Michael Lerner
's Tikkun
have continued this tradition, while more recently groups like Jewdas
and Heeb Magazine
have taken an even more eclectic and radical approach to Jewishness. In Belgium
, the Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique
is, since 1969, the heir of the Jewish Communist and Bundist Solidarité movement in the Belgian Resistance
, embracing the Israeli refuseniks
cause as well as of the undocumented immigrants in Belgium.
In the U.S. in the last decade, the Jewish vote has gone to Democrats
by 76-80%http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html in each election, leading to the reasonable conclusion that the majority of American Jews remain in at least some way more supportive of the liberal to left side of the political spectrum vs. the conservative to right side of the spectrum.
governmental system based on proportional representation
, left-wing political parties and blocs in Israel have been able to elect members of the Knesset
with varying degrees of success. Over time those parties have evolved, with some merging, others disappearing, and new parties arising.
Israeli left-wing parties have included:
Notable figures in these parties have included: Shulamit Aloni
, Uri Avnery
, Yossi Beilin
, Ran Cohen
, Matti Peled
, Amnon Rubinstein
, and Yossi Sarid
.
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the "Jewish left," however. Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
movement, anti-racist work, and anti-fascist organizing of many forms in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and modern-day Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
The Jewish people have a rich history of involvement in socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and Western liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been of Jews, for instance, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Moses Hess
Moses Hess
Moses Hess was a Jewish philosopher and socialist, and one of the founders of Labor Zionism.-Life:Hess was born in Bonn, which was under French rule at the time. In his French-language birth certificate, his name is given as "Moises"; he was named after his maternal grandfather...
, Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
, Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left." He is often noted...
, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, Leon Blum
Léon Blum
André Léon Blum was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.-First political experiences:...
, Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
, Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
, Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
, or Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
, who were born into Jewish families and have various degrees of connection to Jewish communities, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition or the Jewish religion in its many variants. It also includes such people as rabbis Michael Lerner
Michael Lerner (rabbi)
Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...
and Arthur Waskow
Arthur Waskow
Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.-Education and early career:...
: religiously devout and culturally identified Jews. It includes as well many secular, cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
people who nonetheless remain connected to Jewish culture, such as Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman was a prominent United States labor union leader, socialist, and feminist of the first part of the twentieth century...
, Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism...
and Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
. Views regarding Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
among those either identified or self-identified as being among the Jewish left can be quite varied, and are often independent of their other political and social views.
While there is a slight increase of Jews "on the left" connecting their politics to their spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
, this is a somewhat new phenomenon, when contrasted with the long history of secular socialist and communist Jewish activist history (e.g., The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
The Workmen’s Circle or Arbeter Ring is a Yiddish language-oriented American Jewish fraternal organization committed to Social Justice, Jewish Community, and Ashkenazic Culture...
) as well as Jewish anarchist
Jewish anarchism
Jewish anarchism is a general term encompassing various expressions of anarchism within the Jewish community.- Secular Jewish Anarchism :Many people of Jewish origin, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, Murray Rothbard or David D. Friedman have...
activism which was not only explicitly secular but had from time to time denounced religion. From the late 1880s through the mid-1950s, there was a range of Jewish left newspapers (and other publications) in Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
that covered the spectrum of Jewish left-wing political and cultural expression in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as both North and South America, and in Mandate Palestine's Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
, as well as the early years of the State of Israel.
Jewish religious values and social justice
A range of left-wing values vis-à-vis social justiceSocial justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
can be traced to Jewish
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
religious texts, including the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
and later texts, which include a strong endorsement of hospitality to "the stranger" and the principle of redistribution of wealth in the Biblical idea of Jubilee
Jubilee (Biblical)
The Jubilee year is the year at the end of seven cycles of Sabbatical years , and according to Biblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the territory of the kingdoms of Israel and of Judah; there is some debate whether it was the 49th year The Jubilee...
— as well as a tradition of challenging authority, as exemplified by the Biblical Prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
s.
In the twentieth century, Jewish theologians — notably Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century.-Biography:...
, Arnold Jacob Wolf
Arnold Jacob Wolf
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf was an important American Reform Rabbi, and a longtime champion of peace and progressive politics.-Biography:...
, Arthur Waskow
Arthur Waskow
Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.-Education and early career:...
and Mordecai Kaplan
Mordecai Kaplan
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan , was a rabbi, essayist and Jewish educator and the co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein.-Life and work:...
, more recently Michael Lerner and Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin is an historian of religion. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. Trained as a Talmudic scholar, in 1990 he was appointed Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California,...
— have emphasised these social justice aspects of the religion.
Enlightenment and Emancipation
Jewish leftism arguably has its philosophic roots in the Jewish Enlightenment, or HaskalahHaskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
, led by thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah is indebted...
, as well as the support of many European Jews such as Ludwig Börne
Ludwig Börne
Karl Ludwig Börne was a German political writer and satirist.-Early life:Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on May 6, 1786, at Frankfurt am Main, son of Jakob Baruch, a banker. His grandfather had been a government bureaucrat.-Education:Börne and his brothers were privately tutored by Jacob...
for republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
ideals in the aftermath of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a movement for Jewish Emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
spread across Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, strongly associated with the emergence of political liberalism, based on the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
principles of rights
Rights
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory...
and equality under the law. Because liberals represented the political left of the time (see left-right politics
Left-Right politics
The left–right political spectrum is a common way of classifying political positions, political ideologies, or political parties along a one-dimensional political spectrum. The perspective of Left vs. Right is a binary interpretation of complex questions...
), emancipated Jews, as they entered the political culture of the nations where they lived, became closely associated with liberal parties. Thus, many Jews supported the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
of 1776, the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
of 1789, and the European Revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...
; while Jews in England
History of the Jews in England
The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William I. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times...
tended to vote for the Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
, which had led the parliamentary struggle for Jewish Emancipation
Emancipation of the Jews in England
The Emancipation of the Jews in England was the culmination of efforts in the 19th century over several hundred years to loosen the legal restrictions set in place on England's Jewish population...
— an arrangement called by some scholars “the liberal Jewish compromise”.
The emergence of a Jewish working class
In the age of industrialisationIndustrialisation
Industrialization is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one...
in the late nineteenth century, a Jewish working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
emerged in the cities of Eastern
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
and Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
. Before long, a Jewish labour movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
emerged too. The Jewish Labour Bund – General Jewish Labor Union
General Jewish Labor Union
The General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, active between 1897 and 1920. Remnants of the party remain active in the diaspora as well as in Israel...
– was formed in Vilna in Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
in 1897. Distinctive Jewish Anarchist and socialist organisations formed and spread across the Jewish Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. There were also a significant number of people of Jewish origin who did not explicitly identify as Jews per se but were active in anarchist, socialist and social democratic as well as communist organizations, movements and parties.
As Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
grew in strength as a political movement, socialist Zionist parties were formed, such as Ber Borochov
Ber Borochov
Dov Ber Borochov was a Marxist Zionist and one of the founders of the Labor Zionist movement as well as a pioneer in the study of Yiddish as a language....
’s Poale Zion
Poale Zion
Poale Zion was a Movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in various cities of the Russian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.-Formation and early years:Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the Jewish diaspora in the...
.
There were non-Zionist left-wing forms of Jewish nationalism, such as territorialism
Territorialism
Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...
(which called for a Jewish national homeland, but not necessarily in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
), autonomism
Jewish Autonomism
Jewish Autonomism was a non-Zionist political movement that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of its major proponents was a historian and activist Simon Dubnow, who also called his ideology folkism....
(which called for non-territorial national rights for Jews in multinational empires) and the folkism
Folkspartei
The Folkspartei was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part to several elections in Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Shoah.-Ideology:...
, advocated by Simon Dubnow
Simon Dubnow
Simon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist...
, (which celebrated the Jewish culture
Cultural Judaism
Cultural Judaism, often confused with Secular Judaism, is a stream of Judaism that encourages individual thought and understanding in Judaism. Its relation to Judaism is through the history, culture, civilization, ethical values and shared experiences of the Jewish people...
of the Yiddish-speaking masses).
As Eastern European Jews migrated West from the 1880s, these ideologies took root in growing Jewish communities, such as London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
’s East End, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
's Pletzl
Pletzl
The Pletzl is the Jewish quarter in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. The Place Saint-Paul and the surrounding area were, unofficially, named the Pletzl when the neighborhood became predominantly Jewish because of an influx of immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century and the...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
’s Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
and Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. There was a lively Jewish anarchist scene in London, a central figure of which was, perhaps ironically, the non-Jewish German thinker and writer Rudolf Rocker
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...
. The important Jewish socialist movement in the United States, with its Yiddish-language daily, The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
, and trade unions such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s...
and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Important figures in these milieux included Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman was a prominent United States labor union leader, socialist, and feminist of the first part of the twentieth century...
, Abraham Cahan
Abraham Cahan
Abraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.-Early years:...
, Morris Winchevsky
Morris Winchevsky
Morris Winchevsky Morris Winchevsky Morris Winchevsky (Leopold Benzion Novokhovitch; Pseudonym: Ben Netz (Hebrew: 'Son of Hawk'; 1856–1932) was a prominent Jewish socialist leader in London and the United States in the late 19th century....
and David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky was an American labor leader...
.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a major role in the Social Democratic parties of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, Russia
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...
, Austria-Hungary
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
and Poland
Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania
The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania was a Marxist political party founded in 1893. Its original name was the "Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland" and it eventually became part of the Communist Workers Party of Poland...
. Historian Enzo Traverso
Enzo Traverso
Enzo Traverso is an Italian historian who has been living and working in France for over 20 years and has written on issues relating to the Holocaust and totalitarianism...
has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the innovative forms of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
associated with these Jewish socialists. These ranged from strongly cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
positions hostile to all forms of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
(as with Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
) to positions more sympathetic to cultural nationalism (as with the Austromarxists or Vladimir Medem
Vladimir Medem
right|250px|thumb|Picture of Medem from the Medem Library in ParisVladimir Davidovich Medem, né Grinberg , , was a Russian Jewish politician and ideologue of the Jewish Labour Bund...
). Again, it is probable that most of these figures would not have considered themselves to be part of an explicitly "Jewish" left, but the significant number of Jews active in diverse movements and parties "on the left" is relevant.
In Soviets and against fascism
As with the American revolution of 1776, the French revolution of 1789 and the German revolution of 1848, many Jews worldwide welcomed the Russian revolution of 1917Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, celebrating the fall of a regime that had presided over antisemitic pogroms, and believing that the new order in what was to become the Soviet Union would bring improvements in the situation of Jews in those lands. Many Jews became involved in Communist parties, constituting large proportions of their membership in many countries, including Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and the U.S. There were specifically Jewish sections of many Communist parties, such as the Yevsektsiya
Yevsektsiya
Yevsektsiya , , the abbreviation of the phrase "Еврейская секция" was the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party. Yevsektsiya was established to popularize Marxism and encourage loyalty to the Soviet regime among Russian Jews. The founding conference of Yevsektsiya took place on October 20,...
in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Communist regime in the USSR pursued what could be characterised as ambivalent policies towards Jews and Jewish culture, at times supporting their development as a national culture (e.g., sponsoring significant Yiddish language scholarship and creating an autonomous Jewish territory
Jewish Autonomous Oblast
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast is a federal subject of Russia situated in the Russian Far East, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast of Russia and Heilongjiang province of China. Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan....
in Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan is a town and the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Trans-Siberian railway, close to the border with the People's Republic of China....
), at times pursuing antisemitic purges, such as that in the wake of the so-called Doctors' plot
Doctors' plot
The Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders...
. (See also Komzet
Komzet
Komzet was the Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land in the Soviet Union. The primary goal of the Komzet was to help impoverished and persecuted Jewish population of the former Pale of Settlement to adopt agricultural labor...
.)
With the advent of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in parts of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, many Jews responded by becoming actively involved in the left, and particularly the Communist parties, which were at the forefront of the anti-fascist movement. For example, many Jewish volunteers fought in the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
(for instance in the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
and in the Polish-Jewish Naftali Botwin Company). Jews and leftists fought Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
's British fascists at the Battle of Cable Street
Battle of Cable Street
The Battle of Cable Street took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 in Cable Street in the East End of London. It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police, overseeing a march by the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, and anti-fascists, including local Jewish, socialist, anarchist,...
. This mass movement was influenced by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
in the Soviet Union.
In World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Jewish left played a major part in resistance to Nazism
Resistance during World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
. For example, Bundists and left Zionists were key in Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa
The Jewish Combat Organization was a World War II resistance movement, which was instrumental in engineering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ŻOB took part in a number of other resistance activities as well...
and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
.
Radical Jews in Central and Western Europe
As well as the movements rooted in the Jewish working class, relatively assimilatedJewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
Jews in Central and Western Europe began to search for sources of radicalism in Jewish tradition. For example, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
drew on Hassidism in articulating his anarchist philosophy, Gershom Scholem
Gershom Scholem
Gerhard Scholem who, after his immigration from Germany to Palestine, changed his name to Gershom Scholem , was a German-born Israeli Jewish philosopher and historian, born and raised in Germany...
was an anarchist and a kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
scholar, Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
was equally influenced by Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and Jewish messianism
Messianism
Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. Many religions have a messiah concept, including the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Muslim Mahdi and Isa , the Buddhist Maitreya, the Hindu Kalki and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant...
, Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of communist anarchism and an avowed pacifist. Landauer is also known for his study and translations of William Shakespeare's works into German...
was a religious Jew and a libertarian communist, Jacob Israël de Haan
Jacob Israël de Haan
Jacob Israël de Haan was a Dutch Jewish literary writer and journalist who was assassinated in Jerusalem by the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah for his anti-Zionist political activities and contacts with Arab leaders. He is believed to be the first victim of Zionist political violence...
combined socialism with Haredi Judaism, while left-libertarian Bernard Lazare
Bernard Lazare
Bernard Lazare was a French Jewish literary critic, political journalist, polemicist, and anarchist. He was also among the first Dreyfusards.-Youth:...
became a passionately Jewish Zionist in 1897 but wrote 2 years later to Herzl – and by extension to the Zionist Action Committee, "You are bourgeois in thoughts, bourgeois in your feelings, bourgeois in your ideas, bourgeois in your conception of society.". In Weimar Germany, Walther Rathenau
Walther Rathenau
Walther Rathenau was a German Jewish industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic...
was a leading figure of the Jewish left.
Socialist Zionism and the Israeli left
In the twentieth century, especially after the Second AliyahSecond Aliyah
The Second Aliyah was an important and highly influential aliyah that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 40,000 Jews immigrated into Ottoman Palestine, mostly from the Russian Empire, some from Yemen....
, socialist Zionism - first developed in Russia by the Marxist Ber Borochov and the non-Marxists Nachman Syrkin
Nachman Syrkin
Nachman Syrkin was a political theorist, founder of Labour Zionism and a prolific writer in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English language....
and A. D. Gordon
A. D. Gordon
Aaron David Gordon , more commonly known as A. D. Gordon, was a Zionist ideologue and the spiritual force behind practical Zionism and Labor Zionism. He founded Hapoel Hatzair, a movement that set the tone for the Zionist movement for many years to come. Influenced by Leo Tolstoy and others, it is...
- became a powerful force in the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
, the Jewish settlement in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. Poale Zion, the Histadrut
Histadrut
HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael , known as the Histadrut, is Israel's organization of trade unions. Established in December 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine, it became one of the most powerful institutions of the State of Israel.-History:The Histadrut was founded in...
labour union and the Mapai
Mapai
Mapai was a left-wing political party in Israel, and was the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger into the Israeli Labor Party in 1968...
party played a major part in the campaign for an Israeli state
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, with socialist politicians like David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
and Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
amongst the founders of the nation. At the same time, the kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
movement was an experiment in practical socialism.
In the 1940s, many on the left advocated a binational state in Israel/Palestine, rather than an exclusively Jewish state. (This position was taken by Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
and Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, for example). Since independence in 1948, there has been a lively Israeli left, both Zionist (the Labour Party, Meretz
Meretz-Yachad
New Movement-Meretz , previously known as Meretz, then Yachad, and then Meretz-Yachad is a left-wing, Zionist, social democratic political party in Israel....
) and anti-Zionist (Palestine Communist Party
Palestine Communist Party
The Palestine Communist Party was a political party in British Mandate of Palestine formed in 1923 through the merger of the Palestinian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Palestine...
, Maki
Maki (historical political party)
Maki was a communist political party in Israel. It is not the same party as the modern day Maki, which split from it during the 1960s and later assumed its name.-History:...
). The Labour Party and its predecessors have been in power in Israel for significant periods since 1948.
There are two worldwide groupings of left-wing Zionist organizations. The World Labour Zionist Movement, associated with the Labor Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Labour Party (Avoda), the Habonim Dror
Habonim Dror
Habonim Dror is a Jewish Labour Zionist youth movement formed by the merger in 1982 of the Habonim and Dror youth movements. Habonim Dror's sister movement in Israel is Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, the Working and Studying Youth.-Ideology:...
Labor Zionist youth movement, the TAKAM
Takam
Takam is the name of the king of goats, a male goat, in the folklore of Azarbaijan, Iran. Takam's effigies are made out of wood and ornamented with coloured glass beads and cock's tail feathers...
kibbutz federation, the Histadrut
Histadrut
HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael , known as the Histadrut, is Israel's organization of trade unions. Established in December 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine, it became one of the most powerful institutions of the State of Israel.-History:The Histadrut was founded in...
and the Na'amat
Na'amat
Na'amat is an Israeli women's organization affiliated with the Labour Zionist Movement. Na'amat was founded in 1921.-Etymology:Na'amat is an acronym for Nashim Ovdot U'Mitnadvot , lit. "Working and Volunteering Women."-History:...
. The World Union of Meretz, associated with what was historically known as the Socialist Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Meretz party, the Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...
Socialist Zionist youth movement, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation
Kibbutz Movement
The Kibbutz Movement is the largest settlement movement for kibbutzim in Israel. It was formed in 1999 by a partial merger of the United Kibbutz Movement and Kibbutz Artzi.-United Kibbutz Movement:...
and the Givat Haviva research and study center. Both movements exist as factions within the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
, as well as regional or country-specific Zionist movements; the two roughly correspond to the interwar split between the Poale Zion Right (the tradition that led to Avoda) and the Poale Zion Left (Hashomer Hatzair, Mapam, Meretz).
Contemporary Jewish left
As the Jewish working class died out in the years after the Second World War, its institutions and political movements did too. The Arbeter Ring in England, for example, came to an end in the 1950s and Jewish trade unionism in the US ceased to be a major force at that time. There are, however, still some survivals of the Jewish working class left today, including the Jewish Labor CommitteeJewish Labor Committee
The Jewish Labor Committee is an American secular Jewish organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities, and Jewish interests within unions. The organization is headquartered in New York City, with local/regional offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago...
and Forward newspaper in New York, the Bund in Melbourne, Australia, or Labour Friends of Israel
Labour Friends of Israel
Labour Friends of Israel is a lobby group promoting support within the British Labour Party for a strong bilateral relationship between Britain and Israel. It also seeks to strengthen ties between the British and the Israeli Labour party...
in the UK.
Meanwhile, the 1960s-1980s saw a resurgence in interest in cultural heritage and ethnic identity, prompting a renewal of interest among assimilated Jews in the West in Jewish working class culture and the various radical traditions of the Jewish past. This led to a growth in a new sort of radical Jewish organisations, interested in Yiddish culture, Jewish spirituality and social justice. For example, in the decade of 1980–1992 one organization, New Jewish Agenda
New Jewish Agenda
New Jewish Agenda was a multi-issue membership organization active in the United States between 1980 and 1992 and made up of about 50 local chapters...
, functioned as a national, multi-issue progressive membership organization with the mission of acting as a "Jewish voice on the Left and a Left voice in the Jewish Community." The Jewish Socialists' Group
Jewish Socialists' Group
The Jewish Socialists' Group is a Jewish socialist collective in Britain, formed in the 1970s.-History:The Jewish Socialists' Group is a Jewish socialist collective in Britain, that was founded in Manchester/Liverpool in 1974-1977 as lobby group campaigning against the fascist National Front and...
in Britain and Rabbi Michael Lerner
Michael Lerner (rabbi)
Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...
's Tikkun
Tikkun (magazine)
Tikkun is a quarterly English-language magazine, published in the United States, that analyzes American and Israeli culture, politics, religion and history from a leftist-progressive viewpoint, and provides commentary about Israeli politics and Jewish life in North America...
have continued this tradition, while more recently groups like Jewdas
Jewdas
Jewdas is a radical Jewish diaspora group based in London, although many of the founder members trace their roots back to Jewish communities in Iceland and other Scandinavian countries. It has a successful satirical-communal website and stages Jewish events in London and around...
and Heeb Magazine
Heeb Magazine
Heeb was a Jewish magazine aimed predominantly at young Jews. The name of the magazine is a variation of the ethnic slur "hebe", an abbreviation of Hebrew. However, in this case, the word "heeb" seeks to function as empowerment for the Jewish community, thus eliminating the hatred associated with...
have taken an even more eclectic and radical approach to Jewishness. In Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, the Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique
Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique
The Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique is a Belgian Jewish organization set up in 1939 as Solidarité juive by antifascist Jews in Belgium, becoming in 1946 Solidarité juive, aide aux victimes de l'oppresseur nazi...
is, since 1969, the heir of the Jewish Communist and Bundist Solidarité movement in the Belgian Resistance
Belgian resistance
Belgian resistance during World War II to the occupation of Belgium by Nazi Germany took different forms. "The Belgian Resistance" was the common name for the Netwerk van de weerstand - Réseau de Résistance or Resistance Network , a group of partisans fighting the Nazis...
, embracing the Israeli refuseniks
Refusal to serve in the Israeli military
Refusal to serve in the Israeli military includes both refusal to obey specific orders and refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces in any capacity due to pacifist or anti-militarist views or disagreement with the policies of the Israeli government as implemented by the army, such as the...
cause as well as of the undocumented immigrants in Belgium.
In the U.S. in the last decade, the Jewish vote has gone to Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
by 76-80%http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html in each election, leading to the reasonable conclusion that the majority of American Jews remain in at least some way more supportive of the liberal to left side of the political spectrum vs. the conservative to right side of the spectrum.
Contemporary Israeli left
Operating in a parliamentaryParliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
governmental system based on proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...
, left-wing political parties and blocs in Israel have been able to elect members of the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
with varying degrees of success. Over time those parties have evolved, with some merging, others disappearing, and new parties arising.
Israeli left-wing parties have included:
- MapamMapamMapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook and represented...
- Meretz-YachadMeretz-YachadNew Movement-Meretz , previously known as Meretz, then Yachad, and then Meretz-Yachad is a left-wing, Zionist, social democratic political party in Israel....
- Progressive List for PeaceProgressive List for PeaceThe Progressive List for Peace was a left-wing political party in Israel formed from an alliance of both Arab and Jewish left-wing activists.-History:...
- Ratz
- Left Camp of IsraelLeft Camp of IsraelThe Left Camp of Israel was a left-wing political party in Israel. It was also known as Sheli , an acronym for Peace for Israel .-Background:...
- HaOlam HaZeh – Koah Hadash
Notable figures in these parties have included: Shulamit Aloni
Shulamit Aloni
Shulamit Aloni is an Israeli politician and left-wing activist. She is a prominent member of the Israeli peace camp, founded the Ratz party and was leader of the Meretz party and served as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993.-Biography:...
, Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81...
, Yossi Beilin
Yossi Beilin
Dr. Yosef "Yossi" Beilin is a left-wing Israeli politician and a former Knesset member, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and Justice Minister, representing both the Labor Party and Meretz-Yachad, of which he served as chairman between 2003 and 2006. He is best known for his involvement with the...
, Ran Cohen
Ran Cohen
Ran Cohen is an Israeli politician and former Knesset member for Meretz-Yachad. He is a resident of Mevaseret Zion and married with four children....
, Matti Peled
Mattityahu Peled
Mattityahu "Matti" Peled was a well-known Israeli public figure who was at various periods of his life a professional military man who reached the rank of Aluf in the IDF and was a member of the General Staff during the Six Day War of 1967; a notable scholar who headed the Arabic Language and...
, Amnon Rubinstein
Amnon Rubinstein
Amnon Rubinstein is an Israeli law scholar, politician, and columnist. A member of the Knesset between 1977 and 2002, he served in several ministerial positions. He is currently dean of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a patron of Liberal International.-Early life:Rubinstein was born...
, and Yossi Sarid
Yossi Sarid
Yossi Sarid is a left-wing Israeli news commentator and former politician. He served as a member of the Knesset for the Alignment, Ratz and Meretz between 1974 and 2006...
.
See also
- Australian Jewish Democratic SocietyAustralian Jewish Democratic SocietyThe Australian Jewish Democratic Society , a secular organisation, was formed in Melbourne Australia in 1984 to promote free discussion and action on Jewish and general social and political issues. It grew out of a profound concern at the continuing Israeli-Arab conflict, though some of its...
- CosmopolitanismCosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
- Internationalism (politics)Internationalism (politics)Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
- History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet UnionHistory of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet UnionThe vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest populations of Jews in the diaspora. Within these territories the Jewish community flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of...
- Jewish BolshevismJewish BolshevismJewish Bolshevism, Judeo-Bolshevism, and known as Żydokomuna in Poland, is an antisemitic stereotype based on the claim that Jews have been the driving force behind or are disproportionately involved in the modern Communist movement, or sometimes more specifically Russian Bolshevism.The expression...
- Anti-ZionismAnti-ZionismAnti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
- Anti-globalization and antisemitism
- Jewish political movementsJewish political movementsJewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside of the Jewish community...
- Jewish rightJewish rightThe term Jewish right refers to Jews who identify with or support right-wing or conservative causes. The Jewish right is not a monolithic designation. Its application ranges from advocacy of religious morals to conservative politics...
- Jewish anarchismJewish anarchismJewish anarchism is a general term encompassing various expressions of anarchism within the Jewish community.- Secular Jewish Anarchism :Many people of Jewish origin, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, Murray Rothbard or David D. Friedman have...
- Jewish right
- NeoconservatismNeoconservatismNeoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....
- Jewish Communist Party (Poalei Zion)
- Independent Australian Jewish VoicesIndependent Australian Jewish VoicesIndependent Australian Jewish Voices is an Australian Jewish advocacy organisation that opposes some of the current Israeli government's policies...
- Independent Jewish VoicesIndependent Jewish VoicesFor the Canadian group see Independent Jewish Voices . For the Australian group see Independent Australian Jewish Voices.Independent Jewish Voices is an organization launched on 5 February 2007 by 150 prominent British Jews such as Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, historian Eric Hobsbawm, lawyer Sir...
- J StreetJ StreetJ Street is a nonprofit liberal advocacy group based in the United States whose stated aim is to promote American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. It was founded in April 2008....
- Judaism and politicsJudaism and politicsThe relationship between Judaism and politics is a historically complex subject and a frequent source of disagreement among Jews.-Biblical Models:There are many models for political leadership in the Hebrew Bible...
- "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-SemitismProgressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism is a 2006 essay released by the American Jewish Committee, authored by Alvin H. Rosenfeld , with an introduction by the AJC's executive director, David A. Harris...
" - Christian leftChristian leftThe Christian left is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice....
- Anti-fascismAnti-fascismAnti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
- List of Jewish American activists
- Jewish feminismJewish feminismJewish feminism is a movement that seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of women within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience and leadership for Jewish women...