We, Traitors

In this collection of never-before-translated Bundist writing, the largest Jewish socialist party in history explains its opposition to Zionism in its own words. As the threat of violence loomed in the early twentieth century, Bundists doubled down on their politics of solidarity with all oppressed peoples, not just Jews. In return, Zionists called them “traitors.” And as Zionism became hegemonic in the wake of the Holocaust, the Bund’s vast corpus of anti-Zionist writings languished untranslated in Yiddish—until now. This volume presents texts from the most prominent leaders, orators, and thinkers of the Bund: critical travelogues from Palestine and furious takedowns of Zionist propaganda, eyewitness accounts of Zionist violence and groundbreaking visions of a future where Jews, Palestinians, and oppressed peoples everywhere could find liberation through socialism. At a time when people are more hungry than ever to learn about the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, Bundists’ revolutionary fervor and sense of social justice can tempt us to lionize them as heroes. Here, read in their own words for the first time, we can understand Bundists in all their cultural and historical specificity: good and bad, noble and petty, inclusive and exoticizing. One thing, however, becomes absolutely clear: we are not the first ones to fight this fight.