Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_movement>, the settlement house <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_house> movement, the women's rights <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights> movement, anti-racist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racist> work, and anti-fascist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascist> organizing of many forms in Europe <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe>, the United States <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> and modern-day Israel <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel>.[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_left#cite_note-1> The Jewish people have a rich history of involvement in socialism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism>, Marxism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism>, and Western liberalism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism>. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been of Jews 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.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a movement for Jewish Emancipation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Emancipation> spread across Europe <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe>, strongly associated with the emergence of political liberalism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_liberalism>, based on the Enlightenment <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment> principles of rights <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights> and equality under the law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_under_the_law>. Because liberals represented the political left of the time (see left-right politics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution> of 1776, the French Revolution <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution> of 1789, and the European Revolutions of 1848 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848>; while Jews in England <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England> tended to vote for the Liberal Party <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)>, which had led the parliamentary struggle forJewish Emancipation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_the_Jews_in_England>[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_left#cite_note-2> — an arrangement called by some scholars “the liberal Jewish compromise”.[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_left#cite_note-3> In the age of industrialisation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialisation> in the late nineteenth century, a Jewish working class <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class> emerged in the cities of Eastern <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe> and Central Europe <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe>. Before long, a Jewish labour movement <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement> emerged too. The Jewish Labour Bund –General Jewish Labor Union <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Jewish_Labor_Union> – was formed in Lithuania <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania>, Poland, and Russia in 1897.[4] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_left#cite_note-4> Distinctive Jewish socialist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist>organizations formed and spread across the Jewish Pale of Settlement <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement> in the Russian Empire <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism> grew in strength as a political movement, socialist Zionist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Zionist> parties were formed, such as Ber Borochov <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ber_Borochov>’s Poale Zion <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poale_Zion>. There were non-Zionist left-wing forms of Jewish nationalism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_nationalism>, such as territorialism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Territorialist_Organization> (which called for a Jewish national homeland, but not necessarily inPalestine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)>), autonomism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomism> (which called for non-territorial national rights for Jews in multinational empires) and the folkism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkspartei>, advocated by Simon Dubnow <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Dubnow>, (which celebrated the Jewish culture <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Judaism> of the Yiddish <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish>-speaking masses). As Eastern European Jews migrated West from the 1880s, these ideologies took root in growing Jewish communities, such as London <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London>’s East End <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_End>, Paris <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris>'sPletzl <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pletzl>, New York <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York>’s Lower East Side <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side> and Buenos Aires <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Rocker>. The important Jewish socialist movement in the United States, with its Yiddish-language daily, *The Forward <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forward>*, and trade unions such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ladies%27_Garment_Workers%27_Union> and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamated_Clothing_Workers>. Important figures in these milieux included Rose Schneiderman <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Schneiderman>, Abraham Cahan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Cahan>, Morris Winchevsky <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Winchevsky> and David Dubinsky <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dubinsky>. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a major role in the Social Democratic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic> parties of Germany <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany>, Russia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Social_Democratic_Labour_Party>, Austria-Hungary <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Austria> and Poland <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democracy_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland_and_Lithuania>. HistorianEnzo Traverso <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Traverso> has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the innovative forms of Marxism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism> associated with these Jewish socialists. These ranged from strongly cosmopolitan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism> positions hostile to all forms of nationalism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism> (as with Rosa Luxemburg <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg> and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky>) to positions more sympathetic to cultural nationalism (as with the Austromarxists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austromarxists> or Vladimir Medem <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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. 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 1917 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_revolution_of_1917>, celebrating the fall of a regime that had presided over antisemitic pogroms <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_parties>, constituting large proportions of their membership in many countries, including Great Britain <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain> and the U.S. There were specifically Jewish sections of many Communist parties, such as the Yevsektsiya <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevsektsiya> in the Soviet Union <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 anautonomous Jewish territory <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast> in Birobidzhan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birobidzhan>), at times pursuing antisemitic purges, such as that in the wake of the so-called Doctors' plot <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot>. (See also Komzet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komzet>.) With the advent of fascism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascist> movement. For example, many Jewish volunteers fought in the International Brigades <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brigades> in theSpanish Civil War <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War> (for instance in the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_Brigade> and in the Polish-Jewish Naftali Botwin Company <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naftali_Botwin_Company>). Jews and leftists fought Oswald Mosley <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley>'s British fascists at the Battle of Cable Street <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street>. This mass movement was influenced by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Anti-Fascist_Committee> in the Soviet Union. In World War II <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II>, the Jewish left played a major part in resistance to Nazism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II>. For example, Bundists and left Zionists were key in Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBydowska_Organizacja_Bojowa>and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising>.[*citation needed <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>*] As well as the movements rooted in the Jewish working class, relatively assimilated <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_assimilation> middle class <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class> Jews in Central and Western Europe began to search for sources of radicalism in Jewish tradition. For example, Martin Buber <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber> drew on Hassidism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassidism> in articulating his anarchist philosophy, Gershom Scholem <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershom_Scholem> was an anarchist and a kabbalah <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah> scholar, Walter Benjamin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin> was equally influenced by Marxism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism> and Jewish messianism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianism>, Gustav Landauer <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer> was a religious Jew and alibertarian communist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_communist>, Jacob Israël de Haan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Isra%C3%ABl_de_Haan> combined socialism with Haredi <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi> Judaism, while left-libertarian <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarian> Bernard Lazare <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lazare> became a passionately Jewish Zionist in 1897 but wrote 2 years later to Herzl – and by extension to the Zionist Action Committee <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Action_Committee>, "You are bourgeois <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois> in thoughts, bourgeois in your feelings, bourgeois in your ideas, bourgeois in your conception of society.".[5] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_left#cite_note-5> In Weimar Germany <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Germany>, Walther Rathenau <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Rathenau> was a leading figure of the Jewish left. In the twentieth century, especially after the Second Aliyah <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Aliyah>, socialist Zionism - first developed in Russia by the Marxist Ber Borochov and the non-MarxistsNachman Syrkin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachman_Syrkin> and A. D. Gordon <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._D._Gordon> - became a powerful force in the Yishuv <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishuv>, the Jewish settlement in Palestine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)>. Poale Zion, the Histadrut <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histadrut> labour union and the Mapai <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapai> party played a major part in the campaign for an Israeli state <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel>, with socialist politicians like David Ben-Gurion <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion> and Golda Meir <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golda_Meir> amongst the founders of the nation. At the same time, the kibbutz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz> movement was an experiment in practical socialism. In the 1940s, many on the left advocated a binational state <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binational_state> in Israel/Palestine, rather than an exclusively Jewish state. (This position was taken by Hannah Arendt <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt> and Martin Buber <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber>, for example). Since independence in 1948, there has been a lively Israeli left, both Zionist (the Labour Party <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Party_(Israel)>, Meretz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meretz-Yachad>) and anti-Zionist <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionist>(Palestine Communist Party <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Communist_Party>, Maki <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maki_(historical_political_party)>). 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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Labour_Zionist_Movement&action=edit&redlink=1>, associated with the Labor Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Labour Party (Avoda) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Party_(Israel)>, the Habonim Dror <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habonim_Dror> Labor Zionist youth movement, the TAKAM <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TAKAM&action=edit&redlink=1> kibbutz federation, the Histadrut <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histadrut> and the Na'amat <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%27amat>. The World Union of Meretz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meretz>, associated with what was historically known as the Socialist Zionist tendency, is a loose association of the Israeli Meretz party, the Hashomer Hatzair <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashomer_Hatzair> Socialist Zionist youth movement, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_Movement> and the Givat Haviva <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Givat_Haviva> research and study center. Both movements exist as factions within the World Zionist Organization <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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). Contemporary Jewish left[edit <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jewish_left&action=edit§ion=8> ] As the Jewish working class died out in the years after the Second World War <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World_War>, its institutions and political movements did too. The Arbeter Ring <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 Committee <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Labor_Committee> and *Forward* newspaper in New York, the Bund in Melbourne, Australia, or Labour Friends of Israel <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Socialists%27_Group> in Britain and Rabbi Michael Lerner <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lerner_(rabbi)> 's Tikkun <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_(magazine)> have continued this tradition, while more recently groups like Jewdas <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewdas>and Heeb Magazine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heeb_Magazine> have taken an even more eclectic and radical approach to Jewishness. In Belgium <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium>, the Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_des_progressistes_juifs_de_Belgique> is, since 1969, the heir of the Jewish Communist and Bundist Solidarité movement in the Belgian Resistance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Resistance>, embracing the Israeli refuseniks <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusal_to_serve_in_the_Israeli_military> 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 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)> by 76-80% [1] <https://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. On Monday, August 8, 2016 at 7:40:23 PM UTC-5, gtheist957 wrote: > > Wait wait I got this oh shit JEWS!!!??? > > On Aug 8, 2016 11:44 AM, "plainolamerican" <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> We know who promotes communism and why. >> >> -- >> -- >> Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. >> For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum >> >> * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ >> * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. >> * Read the latest breaking news, and more. >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "PoliticalForum" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected] <javascript:>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
