RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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The alternative to zionism
Given the dehumanising vision propagated by Israel, how vital it is to highlight the radical, humane and beautiful world of the Bund, says HENRY BELL
IN THE BEGINNING: The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia - the Bund, was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in October 1897 by a group of Jews who were profoundly influenced by Marxism - their goal was to attract East European Jews to the emergent Russian revolutionary movement
[Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
The Bund
Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner
Between the Lines, £22.50
THE late Scottish Marxist Neil Davidson described the political division in Jewish Europe as one between two different responses to the brutality of anti-semitism.
One was to see that the oppression and persecution of Jews necessitated a new society in a Jewish majority state: this was zionism and ended in the catastrophe we see today. The other response was to view the oppression and persecution of Jews as inherent and brutal aspects of capitalist oppression that necessitated a new society for everyone: a society free from capitalism, and from the state. This was socialism, communism, Bundism, and its many lives and legacies continue to exist today, though they are often erased or suppressed.
One such legacy is the beautiful new graphic novel The Bund by Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner.
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