Nationalising the Bund? Zionist historiography and the Jewish labour movement

Abstract

This article examines the academic historiography on the Jewish Workers' Bund produced by Israeli and Zionist scholars. While the contribution of Israeli scholars to the historiography on the Bund has been significant in both quantity and quality, their works have had to grapple with the tension between the goals of Zionist historiography and the Bund's political and ideological commitments, namely the party's radical opposition to nationalism in general and to Zionism in particular. To various degrees, Israeli scholars sought to “nationalise” the Yiddish-speaking labour movement in Eastern Europe and incorporate it into a coherent narrative of the Jews' past as an “organic” nation. As a result of their authors' ideological and methodological preconceptions, and by portraying it as a nationalist movement, these works often misrepresent the Bund's ideas, policies and activities.