The "Jewish Question" |
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What is Zionism? |
The Jewish Labor Bund began as a socialist political party made up of Jewish workers in Eastern Europe. It hoped to unite Jews within the Russian Empire and work toward a democratic socialist Russia, and for Jews to be granted legal minority status. It was a secular organization, and firmly anti-Zionist. The Bund was in many ways transnationalist, and wanted to remain a Diaspora. |
Political Zionism |
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The Dreyfus Affair |
In 1894, French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason against France, stripped of his rank, and sent to a penal colony in French Guiana. He was also of Jewish descent. What made this event remarkable was that Dreyfus was innocent. The French army staged a cover-up, even to the point of forging documents. When the public found out, France became bitterly divided. Many Jews found the scandal to be very clear evidence of widespread European anti-Semitism. |
Theodor Herzl |
Born in 1860, Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian Jew who worked as a Paris correspondent for a newspaper and reported on the Dreyfus Affair. His coverage of the situation and his observation of anti-Semitic rallies convinced him that a separate state was necessary for the Jewish people. His book, Der Judenstaat, became the basis for modern political Zionism, and Herzl would become a founding father of the World Zionist Organization. |
Labor Zionism |
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The Bund |
The Jewish Labor Bund began as a socialist political party made up of Jewish workers in Eastern Europe. It hoped to unite Jews within the Russian Empire and work toward a democratic socialist Russia, and for Jews to be granted legal minority status. It was a secular organization, and firmly anti-Zionist. The Bund was in many ways transnationalist, and wanted to remain a Diaspora. |
Bundist self-defense group, Odessa, January 1905 |
Bundists exiled to Sibera, Siberia, 1904 |
Zionism vs. The Bund |
Zionists and Bundists in America |
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