Frank Wolff
This ground-breaking history of the General Jewish Labour Bund in migration investigates how the organisation transformed itself from a revolutionary protagonist in early twentieth-century Russia to a socialist institution of secular Jewish life and yidishkayt for Jews in North and South America. By following thousands of activists’ paths from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the working-class Yiddish neighbourhoods of New York and Buenos Aires, Frank Wolff traces the networks that connected these revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic, resulting in a richly detailed social history of this seminal transnational movement.
This book was first published in 2014 as Neue Welten in der Neuen Welt: Die transnationale Geschichte des Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbundes, 1897–1947 by Böhlau Verlag, Köln, ISBN 978-3412222116.
Biographical Note
Readership
All interested in Jewish Studies, Jewish history, mass migration to the Americas, the socialist and labour movements, memory studies, transnational social movements, and twentieth-century Eastern European, US and Argentinian history.
Table of Contents
Preface
Editorial Note
List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part 1 Conceptualising the Bund as a Social Movement
1 Bundist Activism
2 Activism Patterns in Eastern Europe: Constituting the Transferable
Part 2 ‘Exalted Moments of Our Romantic Past’: Community Building through Collective Remembrance
3 Remembrance as Activist Practice: Initial Considerations
4 The Bundist Press: From Agitational Publications to Transnational Memorik
5 Memories beyond ‘Me’ and ‘Us’: Bundist Autobiography as Social Formation
6 Preserving Collective Knowledge in Migration: Collective Biography and Questionnaires
7 Preliminary Conclusions
Part 3 Old Masses in New Streets: Transnationalising the Bund
8 Between Here and There: Bundist Gatherings Overseas
9 Reproduction as Creation: Worker Organisation and Secondary Bundism
10 Politics, Economics, Yidishkayt: The Tangled Web of Class Struggle and Cultural Work
11 Passing on Yidishkayt: Transfers and Limits of Bundist Educational Work
12 Relief Funds as Weapons: From Revolutionary Fundraising to Transnational Cultural Work
Conclusion, or: The Ambivalence of Bundist Modernity
Bibliography
Index
