The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, Resistance Fighters and Firebrands

The gripping and inspiring account of Jewish socialist struggles against tsarist pogroms, exploitative sweatshops and murderous Nazis across three continents

The book celebrates Jewish radicalism from the Tsarist Empire to Poland and Germany, from London to New York. Fighting oppression and exploitation took numerous political forms, including left Zionism, Bundism and revolutionary Marxism. This inspiring radical tradition was ultimately checked by the callous indifference of capitalist governments to refugees and the horror of Auschwitz. However, its lessons must be passed on to inform working-class and anti-imperialist struggles in a world in crisis.This book recovers some of that long-neglected history. Before the Second World War, the majority of Jews were working-class and part of a wider struggle alongside their non-Jewish comrades on the left. To illuminate this background, the issue of Jewish identity is analysed along political, cultural and sociological lines. This is essential because, today, the claim of Israel and its apologists to represent Jews everywhere, the growth of the antisemitic far right and the approach of the left to the Jewish question are central issues. A knowledge of the breadth of Jewish resistance aids understanding of these debates.

Donny Gluckstein is the son of an anti-Zionist Jewish Palestinian refugee father and Jewish South African mother. He is the author of several works that touch on the subject matter of this book, including The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class, A People’s History of the Second World War, The Western Soviets and The Tragedy of Bukharin. He edited Fighting on all Fronts: Popular Resistance in the Second World War. Donny lives in Edinburgh (UK) and continues to write books on revolutionary and socialist topics while in retirement.

Janey Stone’s mother sought refuge in Australia from Polish antisemitism in the 1930s. Janey is a lifelong socialist and political activist; she has been a union delegate and participated in the student, anti-Vietnam war and women’s liberation movements. As an anti-Zionist Jew, she has written and presented about resistance to the Nazis in Germany and Poland, and by Jews, and many other topics including women workers, sexual politics, the Middle East and the radical Jewish tradition. Janey is retired and lives in Melbourne (Australia). She has a leadership role in Interventions, Australia’s only independent not-for-profit radical publishing company.