Original By: Henryk Ehrlich

Translation By: Foroys

Edited and Formatted By: Philadelphia Jewish Labor Bund

This essay, originally published in 1938 in the Yiddish newspaper Di Tsukunft (The Future) was a response by Henryk Ehrlich, a leader in the Jewish Labor Bund, to Professor Simon Dubnow. Professor Dubnow was critical of the Jewish Labor Bund’s antagonism to Zionist parties, arguing instead that all Jews should put their disagreements aside in response to the fascist threat. In his response, Ehrlich lays out why, as a Jewish Socialist party, the Bund views Zionism as antithetical to Jewish liberation.

At the time the essay was written, the Jewish Labor Bund was becoming one of the most popular Jewish political parties in Poland, and their ideals of Jewish workers helping to building a socialist worker’s republic wherever they might live was one of the most powerful arguments against Zionism’s claim of liberation in a distant promised land.

Today, the arguments laid out by Ehrlich serve not only as all too accurate predictions of what the Zionist project became, the connections between Zionism and antisemitism, and finally, a powerful reminder that the modern Zionist hegemony in Jewish life was not always there, but is only able to exist because of the continued silencing of opposition.

This translation was provided by the Foroys Blog, which published from 2016 to 2019, and has been reformatted to a digital booklet by the Philadelphia Branch of the International Jewish Labor Bund then republished here.

Is Zionism a Liberating Democratic Movement?

An answer to Prof. Simon Dubnow

Professor Dubnow is making an attempt to start a public conversation with the Bund about a series of important problems in Jewish life. In the name of the “Bundist Friend”, to whom he addressed his letter, I would like to return professor Dubnow’s wish and in the most positive form to respond to his argument.

The Bund is the strongest Jewish party in Poland today in general, and not just the strongest Jewish Socialist party. Over the last two years, all elections to city councils and kehillas showed this. Nobody doubts this in Poland, neither our opponents nor our friends. Our opponents are hoping that this is a passing phenomenon. Let them! Everybody comforts themselves however they can. But that does not change the fact.

Before we tread into the subject: let’s put authorities to rest. Because first of all, against names such as Leon Blum, Emile Vandervelde, and Eduard Bernstein, I can juxtapose names of no less honorable members of the Socialist International, such as Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, Victor Adler, and Fyodor Dan, who adhere to the Bundist standpoint on the question of Zionism. And second, that is not an argument at all. I have the greatest respect for Comrade Vandervelde, and today – maybe even greater than ever: but what can he know about Zionism, about our internal Jewish problems in general? Let’s rather mend our disagreements with our own forces, without the help of authorities.

And now – to the subject:

Mr. Dubnow is expressing a wish that the Bund “should renounce its old negative disposition toward klal yisroel, and become an organic part of the Jewish people to the same degree, as English or French Social Democracy is organically bound to her people, creating a common front with all progressive elements.”

I don’t know what made Professor Dubnow think that the “Bund” does not feel organically bound to the Jewish people, but rather, as he formulated it in another part of his letter, that the Bund does not act as a part of the Jewish people, but as a part of the “Jewish proletariat.” Professor Dubnow clarifies that he has heard this wording “on behalf of several party leaders of the Bund.” If so, then I can assure him that his informants are not worth a penny, as far as informants go, and that in no way would Mr. Dubnow ever hear from any Bundist leader, current or former, what was relayed to him on behalf of Bundist leaders. In Professor Dubnow’s writing about the Bund, one can hear the echoes of the caricatures of the Bund, which were disseminated by our bitter enemies in the first years of the existence of our party. And it is truly disappointing that Prof. Dubnow, who in his historical writings would not make the smallest assertion without rooting it in documents, thinks it is acceptable to rely on the word of mouth when deciding his attitude towards a movement that plays such a big role in Jewish life as the Bund.

No, Professor Dubnow has been misinformed. It has never occurred to the Bund to think that the fate of the Jewish working- class can be torn away from the fate of the Jewish people. The Bund has therefore always and continuously considered itself an organic part of the Jewish people. Its true ambition, just like the ambition of every vital socialist party, is to be the flag-bearer and the fighter for the broadest Jewish masses, i.e. for the large majority of the Jewish people, which we identify with the Jewish people as a whole. As for the small minority of Jews, who live off of abuse and are ready to associate Jewish interests with the interests of their own wallets - we renounce them without any qualms.

Throughout its entire history, the Bund has had in mind the interests of the Jewish people defined as such. When the Bund, as a part of the revolutionary movement in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, carried out its fight for freedom, for full national rights, for Socialism; when its armed squads fought against the tsarist pogromshiks; when during the Beilis trial, it called for the broader Jewish masses to actively protest, – it did so not just in the interests of the Jewish proletariat in the narrow sense of the word.

And today, when the Bund organizes the Jewish workers, employees, craftsmen, peasants, and the working intellectuals to fight for their economic, political, and national rights; when full of stubbornness and despite the most difficult obstacles, it has built a far-reaching network of Yiddish-language secular school systems; when in today’s most bitter time, it organizes systematic, ongoing, one of a kind in the Jewish society, giant cultural activities among the Jewish masses; when it mobilizes the same masses to fight, to revolt for their rights (March 17, 1936, October 10th, 1937); when it therefore takes measures to ensure that the Jewish masses would not be left defenseless against the Fascist elements, which threaten their very physical existence – when the Bund does all of this, the Bund does not do it just for the Jewish factory and sweatshop workers, but for the entire, vast suffering Jewish masses, for all whom we call the Jewish people.

Professor Dubnow is therefore mistaken, when he thinks that we “isolate ourselves” from the Jewish masses. Quite the opposite: we seek an ever so close and intimate connection with them, and as the facts show – not without success.

But Mr. Dubnow is indeed correct, when he insists that we isolate ourselves from the Jewish bourgeois parties. In regards to that, we are stubborn Jews. But first – let’s lay out the subject of this quarrel.

Mr. Dubnow talks in the above-cited sentence both about klal yisroel and about the “united front” with all “progressive elements." However, those are two different things. “Klal yizroel” does not exclude anyone from “klal” (from the community). Klal yisroel bases itself on a coarsely-refined “principle”: “we are who we are, but [above all] we are Jews." But Mr. Dubnow, just like us, is ready to avoid the “Agudah." But if Mr. Dubnow is ready to refuse cooperating with such a significant movement in the Jewish society as the “Agudah," then he is betraying his own “klal yisroel” principle.

But “klal yisroel” is employed only once in Professor Dubnow’s letter. In general, he talks about “a common front with all progressive elements” and about “a unification of democratic and progressive elements." He thereby touches on a question, which already has a long history of discussions in the international labor movement, a question, which to this day is being passionately debated there.

But let’s leave this side of the question aside. It was certainly not Mr. Dubnow’s intention to invite his Bundist friend to a debate about the intimate internal problems of the international proletarian movement. What interests Mr. Dubnow is the Jewish side of the question: to accept that “a common front with all progressive elements” is a good thing. Why do we, Bundists, refuse to work together with Zionists? Why don’t we want to see “a liberating democratic movement” in it? Why do we we continue fighting this movement, as we did up to now?

And this is the key question, with which Professor Dubnow turns to his “Bundist friends," and to which I will try to give an answer.

Professor Dubnow thinks that the way the Bund currently views Zionism was appropriate 40 years ago, but not today. I have an impression that this statement is somewhat too subjective. This is because not only 40 years ago, but even much later, Mr. Dubnow himself viewed Zionism differently than today. Oh, certainly, he still has reservations, and very earnestly: “one must fight,” he says, “the negation between the galuth [diaspora culture] and Zionism, the disrespect for the galuth, and the “God’s chosen people” attitude from the Zionists, which is simply a dangerous negation of the whole world.” Once upon a time, the same reservation was enough to ascertain Dubnow’s negative view of Zionism. But apparently, the same thing happened to him as to many others in the Jewish world, namely – the Hitlerist flood has washed away the belief in the galuth; and anyway, the long-standing warning that Zionism is a danger for the Jews around the whole world has lost in his eyes the greater part of its former strength. And in exactly the same way as the other newly arrived pro-Zionists, he is nearly just as enthusiastic and uncritical about Zionism as Zionists themselves are amongst each other (and not only amongst each other).

Professor Dubnow has never been active in politics. For a long time already, and for a number of unrelated reasons, he has found himself completely outside of political life. And in the ivory tower prison of his loneliness, he lives in the company of the spirits of Jewish history and of abstract ideas of Jewish social movements, stripped of their real clothes. Mr. Dubnow talks about the Bund in categories that have very limited connection with reality. And this is also how he talks about Zionism. We are however dealing not with “platonic ideas” about Zionism, but with a living and breathing Zionist reality.

None of us deny that Zionists have demonstrated achievements in Palestine. We only have two “smallest” warnings to formulate to them:

1. What has been built there, was built on sand, both with respect to economics and politics. From there stems the economic catastrophe, in the literal sense of the word, that Palestine is living through right now. From there stems the dull and hopeless corner, which Zionism has politically maneuvered itself into.
2. What was built there cost the international Jewish community a fortune (around a hundred million pounds), and it is worth not less than it cost, approximately. Zionists have mastered the art of monopolizing for themselves the help of almost the entire Jewish community around the world. They have even managed to suck millions out of Polish Jews, who are themselves in an enormous need for help.

But these are the smallest of our complaints to Zionists, they do not constitute the reason for our bitter struggle against Zionism and our unwillingness to politically collaborate with the Zionist party.

So what are the main arguments that we have used against Zionism, throughout the decades of the Bund’s existence? We have said that Zionism is not and cannot be the solution to the Jewish question; that by sowing the illusion that Zionism is the answer among the Jewish masses, Zionism diverts their attention and energy away from the goals of their own struggle; and that due to its disdaining attitude towards galuth and contempt towards the Yiddish language, it is a stumbling stone that stands in the way of the development of Jewish culture.

Over the years, Zionism has transmogrified itself into being in an open alliance with our blood-enemy – anti-Semitism. Zionism has practically always derived its inspiration from the persecutions endured by Jewish people, from political reactionism above all. Throughout the 40 years of Zionism’s existence, the following rule has practically always held: the darker the world, the brighter it gets in the Zionist tent; the worse for Jews, the better for Zionists.

What can a Jewish Palestine be in the best case scenario?

A small kingdom of a tiny Hebraist tribe within the Jewish people. When Zionists speak to the non-Jewish world, they are outstanding democrats, and they present the conditions in today’s and future Palestine as exemplary of liberty and progress. But if a Jewish state is to be founded in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be: an eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs), unending fighting for every little piece of land, for every scrap of work, against the internal enemy [Editor's note: Palestinians], and a tireless struggle for the eradication of the language and culture of the non-Hebraized Jews of Palestine. Is this the kind of climate, in which freedom, democracy, and progress can flourish? Is this not the climate, in which reactionism and chauvinism typically germinate? Today, even truly Zionist publicists, upon visiting the Holy Land, admit that clericalism has excessive influence there, despite Zionist manual workers playing such a distinguished role in the Zionist organization.

The eventual Jewish state can play a role neither as an immigration center (the natural growth of the Jewish population in Poland alone has climbed significantly higher than the capacity of Palestine), nor as a spiritual center for the Jewish masses from the “galuth-lands." Zionists themselves have already significantly compromised on their ambitions: in a memorandum submitted by representatives of the Jewish Agency to the Council of the League of Nations during its September 1937 meeting, they already referred to Palestine only as a partial solution to the Jewish question. But even that, in light of the above-stated facts, is nothing more than a delusion, bluff.

We have always – and in fact, together Professor Dubnow – regarded as a crime the Zionists’ contempt towards the “galuth," their willingness to sacrifice the interests of multimillion Jewish masses of the world for the sake of the “chosen” Jews in Palestine.

It would not be even even a tiniest exaggeration to say that observing Zionist politics from the recent years, one often gets the impression that those people have simply lost their minds, that being in a state of deep despair, they are willing to rescue a gleam of the Zionist illusion at the cost of committing against the Jewish masses one crime after another!

The leaders of the Zionist movement have started openly playing the anti-Semitic card! Wondering in their heads today is the wild idea of helping countries with anti-Semitic regimes form a bloc as allies of Zionism, hoping that these powers will help Zionists “exert pressure” on the British government. Should Professor Dubnow reread Supplement No. 1 of the memorandum (aide-memoire), which the Jewish Agency has submitted to the members of the League of Nations in September 1937, he would become convinced of this himself. And in order to avoid angering the representatives of those countries, Zionists make an effort to keep quiet, to consciously keep quiet, about all of the oppression that the Jewish masses have endured there.

September 1937 was a time, when the specter of denaturalization, of loss of citizenship, was looming over the Jewish population of Romania. September 1937 was when the Jews of Warsaw were getting through painful days. And September 1937 was when the Polish representative in Geneva (incidentally, not for the first time) issued a statement that Jews must leave Poland.

This is when the most prominent representatives of the Jewish Agency and of the World Jewish Congress have received their “offices” in the corridors of the League of Nations. But not a word on the issue of protecting Jewish masses in Europe was dropped by these fine gentlemen during those days. And the Polish Foreign Minister, Józef Beck, after a conference with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, was able to give a statement to the press, in which he said that he and the leader of the Zionist movement, Dr. Weizmann, have come to a complete and cordial understanding in regard to the problems related to Jewish emigration.

There is a Zionist journalist in Geneva, who gathered up the courage to cry out to the Zionist leaders: “you see what is going on,” – quoting approximately, – “so, at least, give an announcement in the press, with a reminder that the Balfour declaration consisted of two parts; and if the first part talks about a national home for Jews in Palestine, it is stated in the second half that the national home in Palestine can in no way cause a deterioration of the political situation for Jews in their old homes.”

However, the representatives of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress, whose ranks Professor Dubnow would like the “Bund” to join, refused to do even that. Because that would make the leaders of countries with anti-Semitic politics unhappy.

And with even more cynicism, the Zionist leaders – Mr. Chaim Weizmann just like Mr. Moshe Shertok, Mr. Nahum Goldmann the just like Mr. Marc Yarblum – have responded:

“It is hopeless: if there is a conflict between the interests of the Jewish state and of the Jews in galuth, the latter must be sacrificed.”

The attitude of the Zionist delegations in Geneva (because the delegation from the World Jewish Congress is also a Zionist delegation) was met with surprise even in Zionist circles. The Zionist Israelitisches Wochenblatt, which is published in Zurich, has declared with bitterness that they have heard cries of woe from all sides, but the pain of the Jewish masses was not expressed in any shape or form during the September session of the League of Nations. Because “Palestine ties everyone’s hands… One marvels at the representative of the Jewish Agency, Nahum Goldmann,” – writes the Genevan correspondent of this newspaper, – “how he can hold his diplomatic talks with a straight face. The Revisionists have only a couple of days ago held secret negotiations with the Polish delegation. Now Weizmann has also had a conversation with the Polish foreign minister, Beck, who is also in agreement about increasing immigration into Palestine.”

“And yet,” – writes the newspaper in a different place, – “nobody can ask a foreign minister for the favor of fighting for Palestine, and to simultaneously reproach him for the anti-Semitic policies that his government executes.”

But the things that Zionists do on the international arena are the same as what they do in the countries that the Jewish masses inhabit. I can cite examples from various places, but I’d like to limit myself to facts from Poland alone.

Who doesn’t remember Yitzhak Gruenbaum’s [Editor's note: a leader of the Zionist movement in interwar Poland, later Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs] infamous comment from 1927 about the “million extra Jews” that must be removed from Poland? Who doesn’t remember his no less infamous words from 1928, that “the Jews pollute the air in Poland”? The Polish anti-Semites remember these words excellently, and from time to time, even these days, refresh the memory of their readers and listeners about it.

But 1927, 1928 – those were heavenly years in comparison with our times. Of course, the motto “Żydzi, do Palestyny!” (“Jews – to Palestine!”) was not only popular among Zionists, but also among anti-Semites. But in Polish society at the time, who actually doubted our rights as citizens of the country?

However, as eight fateful years had passed, the year 1936 arrived: the year of [pogroms in] Przytyk and Mińsk-Mazowiecki, and a number of other events of a similar sort. The openly fascist camp in Poland was no longer preaching, but actively bringing a campaign of economic extermination into life; demanding forced mass-emigration, and ghettos and Nuremberg laws for the “temporarily” remaining inhabitants; both with word and with deed it has preached physical violence as a way to hasten their exodus from Poland. In that year, even the head of the government let slip a phrase that was to become famous: “economic struggle, certainly yes (owszem)!” The Jewish masses felt threatened in their basic civil and human rights. And they mobilized to fight for those rights. The strike on March 17th, as well as the mass-campaign of organizing a congress dedicated to countering anti-Semitism, were expressions of this mobilization.

It was at the same time when three Zionist celebrities descended upon Poland, each of them representing a different direction inside the Zionist camp: David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, and Vladimir Jabotinsky. Each of them, in the manner of a statesman, invited the entire Polish press to a press-conference, and each of them assured in his own manner that the Polish anti- Semites were 100% correct!

The only solution to the Jewish question in Poland, – declared the Poale Zionist Ben-Gurion, – is in fact emigration. The Jews do in fact stand in the way of the Polish peasant and the wife of a Polish sergeant, – declared the General Zionist, Mr. Gruenbaum; the Jews must in fact evacuate from Poland, and the sooner – the better, – declared the Jewish “Duce," Jabotinski.

Each of those declarations resounded over the heads of the Jewish population of Poland like thunder in the sky. But when it came to the anti-Semitic press, all three statements were heralded as the highest expression of political wisdom. The Zionist publicists from Poland, except for the hopeless fools, choked on the declarations of their idols, actually unable to swallow or spit them out. But the anti-Semitic press has declared Ben-Gurion, Gruenbaum, and Jabotinsky as the greatest and the only national politicians of the Jewish people. The anti-Semitic Czas opened its columns wide for Duce’s armor-bearer; the anti-Semitic Kurier Warszawski has portrayed Jabotinsky’s book Di Yidishe Melukhe (“The Jewish State”) as almost the biggest literary event of our time. What more do you want?

The glorious Julius Streicher [Editor's note: a prominent member of the Nazi party] republished Gruenbaum’s words and added a comment of his own:

“This Gruenbaum is a respectable Jew.”

That was 1936, and today is 1938. Whatever we might think about the internal state of international fascism, their external influence today has significantly increased, thanks to criminal and suicidal policies of Western European Democracies. Everybody feels this, including us here in Poland. And nothing stopped the meeting of the high council of an organization (commonly known as Ozon), which practically took the place of the former government party in Poland that was dissolved in 1935. It was at this session that a program relating to the Jewish question was adopted, which is in full agreement with the obstinate anti-Semites from the so-called National Camp [translator’s note: i.e. the Polish version of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws was outlined].

The Jewish population of Poland has been declared a “foreign group” that with its very existence “weakens the normal development of the Polish national and government strength, and stands in the way of the evolution currently taking place in Poland.” Therefore, they want to reduce the Jewish participation in the economic life of the country, to reduce the number of Jews in schools, to shield Polish culture against Jewish influence. All of this is only a partial solution to the Jewish question. Their “fundamental solution” is emigration: to Palestine and elsewhere, because Palestine alone is too small.

That is, in short, their program. The response of the press to this program was in the well-known style of anti-Semitic incitement. And only one idea in Jewish life has found “respectful recognition” both from the authors of the program and from its commentators: Zionism.

Such “compliments” cannot add any appeal to Zionists. But every objective person must admit, when faced with everything said above, that “the compliments were well-deserved!”

Does Professor Dubnow believe that all of this is just a “beauty defect” on the charming face of Zionism? Small imperfections in the operations of the Zionist mechanism? Does Mr. Dubnow really think that the aspect of Zionism that he himself describes as “a danger to the world Jewry," as well as all of the facts that I have cited above, are nothing but an unfortunate coincidence? A tactical error that can be corrected by good advice and good intentions?

If this is what Professor Dubnow thinks, then clearly he operates in terms of fictions, and that real and effective Zionism is foreign to him. Zionism has all along been a Siamese twin of anti- Semitism and every kind of nationalist chauvinism. Zionism has always regarded the law of force, of nationalist reactionism, as the normal law of history, and on this law it has built its interpretations of Jewish life. Throughout its 40 years of existence, Zionism has always appeared lost and helpless in front of any victorious liberation movement.

Oh, certainly: if the future of humanity should indeed belong to Fascism, then the historical perspective painted by Zionism will be proven correct, and then what awaits us in galuth is really only death and annihilation. But then, death and annihilation will be the fate of tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of others aside from us; then death and annihilation would be the fate of the entire human civilization and culture. Would Zionism be able to save us alone from the fascist deluge? It is ridiculous to even think about it! But if so, their only “historical achievement” will remain their “theoretical” justification of anti-Semitism.

I have intentionally avoided talking about the often hateful and openly reactionary role that Zionism plays in internal affairs in Poland or in Romania. I set aside some gems, such as the “solemn assurances” that “the Jews have never fought against Fascism," recently given to Mussolini by Zionist representatives from the World Jewish Congress. I have striven to describe exclusively the political role of Zionism in Jewish life (their cultural role is a chapter of its own). And I think that after everything said here, Professor Dubnow and everyone else cannot expect us to regard Zionism as a “liberating democratic movement," “a large popular has embraced all other (?) progressive, democratic, and socialist parties (?)," or that we will be amazed at the pathetic, Zionist- lexicon-sounding words about the “reviving of the Palestinian center as the greatest wonder in Jewish history.”

Professor Dubnow is correct in saying that we need to strive our best to bring all forces together to fight “against the reactionary, hostile world that has lately posed a danger to all people." But for this fight, we must look for partners other than the Zionists. Today, this is not just the opinion of the Bund – this is the opinion of the broadest circles of the Jewish masses in Poland, and of the disappointed, embittered Jewish masses in Palestine.

(Di Tsukunft, New York, October 1938)