The Jewish left refers to Jewish individuals or organizations that identify with or support left-wing or social liberal causes, consciously as Jews. There is no singular organization or movement that constitutes the Jewish left.
Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights movement, anti-racist and anti-colonialist work, and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist organizations of many forms in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the Ottoman Empire, Algeria, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Africa, Palestine, and the State of Israel."The New Left." Jewish Virtual Library (2008); retrieved 6 June 2015.Naeim Giladi, "The Jews of Iraq": "In many countries, including the United States and Iraq, Jews represented a large part of the Communist party. In Iraq, hundreds of Jews of the working intelligentsia occupied key positions in the hierarchy of the Communist and Socialist parties."Hannah Borenstein, "Savior Story": "The violence of the late 1970s and early 1980s Ethiopia spurred many forms of active and comprehensive resistance. Ethiopian Jews participated widely; many, for instance, were members of the Marxist-Leninist EPRP."
Jews have a history of involvement in anarchism, socialism, Marxism, and Western liberalism. The expression "on the left" encompasses a range of political positions. Many individuals associated with left-wing politics have been Jews born into Jewish families, with varying degrees of connection to Jewish communities, cultures, traditions, or religious practices.
History Jewish leftist thought has roots in the Haskalah, led by thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, as well as in the support of European Jews, including Ludwig Börne, for republican ideals following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the movement for Jewish emancipation spread across Europe and was closely associated with the emergence of political liberalism, which emphasized Enlightenment principles of rights and equality before the law. At the time, liberals were considered part of the political left, and emancipated Jews, as they became more integrated into the political culture of their respective nations, were often associated with liberal political parties. Many Jews supported the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Revolutions of 1848. In England, Jews tended to support the Liberal Party, which had led the parliamentary struggle for Jewish emancipation,Geoffrey Alderman (1983) The Jewish Community in British Politics, Oxford: Clarendon. a political dynamic described by some scholars as "the liberal Jewish compromise".see Sharman Kadish Bolsheviks and British Jews, London: Frank Cass. (1992, e. g., pp. 55–60, 132); Jonathan Hyman Jews in Britain During the Great War, Manchester: University of Manchester Working Papers in Economic and Social History No. 51, October (2001, e. g., p. 11). The phrase was coined by Steven Bayme.
The emergence of a Jewish working class During the late 19th century, industrialisation led to the emergence of a Jewish working class in the cities of Eastern and Central Europe, followed by the development of a Jewish labor movement. The Jewish Labour Bund was established in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia in 1897, and various Jewish socialist organizations formed across the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement.Mendes, Philip. "The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund" , Jewish Currents (Autumn 2013); accessed 8 June 2015. Additionally, individuals of Jewish origin participated in anarchist, socialist, social democratic, and communist movements, though not all explicitly identified as Jewish.
As Zionism developed as a political movement, Labor Zionist parties, such as Ber Borochov's Poale Zion, emerged. Other left-wing Jewish nationalist movements included territorialism, which sought a homeland for the Jewish people but not necessarily in Palestine; Jewish autonomism, which advocated for non-territorial national rights for Jews within multinational empires; and folkism, promoted by Simon Dubnow, which emphasized the cultural identity of Yiddish-speaking Jews.
As Eastern European Jews migrated West from the 1880s onward, these ideological movements took root in growing Jewish communities, including the East End of London, Paris’s Pletzl, New York City's Lower East Side, and Buenos Aires. London had an active Jewish anarchist movement, in which the non-Jewish German writer Rudolf Rocker was a central figure. In the United States, a significant Jewish socialist movement developed, exemplified by the Yiddish-language daily The Forward and trade unions such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Notable figures in these circles included Rose Schneiderman, Abraham Cahan, Morris Winchevsky, and David Dubinsky.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a significant role in the social democratic parties of Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Poland. Historian Enzo Traverso has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the distinct contributions of Jewish socialists to Marxist thought. These ranged from cosmopolitan perspectives opposing nationalism, as seen in the views of Rosa Luxemburg and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky, to positions more accommodating of cultural nationalism, as represented by the Austromarxists and Vladimir Medem.
While the majority of Jewish American socialists have been Ashkenazi Jews, a minority have been Sephardic Jews. Sephardic socialists were active in Jewish socialist politics in Chicago and New York City. In Chicago beginning in 1917, Sephardic Jews joined the Chicago Socialist Party's Spanish Section alongside Mexican Catholics and other Spanish speakers. The Spanish Section was founded by the Salonican-born Jewish socialist Raphael Hasson, who also helped found the Greek Federation of the Communist Party of America. In New York City, Salonican Jews published socialist publications including La Vara and La Bos del Pueblo (The Voice of the People). In New York City, there was a Sephardic Branch of the Workers' (Communist) Party. After moving to New York City, Raphael Hasson attempted unsuccessfully to found a Ladino-speaking section of the Workmen's Circle. In Harlem in the 1920s, Sephardic and Puerto Rican socialists in the garment industry collaborated to form the Sephardic Branch of the Workers' Party, known as the Spanish Branch. According to Devin E. Naar, a professor of Sephardic studies at the University of Washington, there was a time period during World War I when Sephardi socialists attempted to form a relationship with Yiddish-speaking socialists, but the relationship was temporary and that primarily Ashkenazi socialist spaces were not inclusive of Sephardic Jews.
In Soviets and against fascism As with the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the German Revolution of 1848, many Jews worldwide welcomed the Russian Revolution, viewing the collapse of a regime associated with antisemitic pogroms as a positive development. Many believed that the new Soviet order would improve conditions for Jews in the region. Many Jews became involved in communist parties, constituting large proportions of their membership in many countries, including Great Britain and the United States. Some communist parties had dedicated Jewish sections, such as the Yevsektsiya in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government implemented policies toward Jews and Jewish culture that fluctuated over time, at times promoting Jewish cultural development—such as supporting Yiddish-language scholarship and establishing the Jewish Autonomous Oblast—while also engaging in antisemitic purges, including the crackdown following the Doctors' Plot.
With the rise of fascism in parts of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, many Jews became active in left-wing movements, particularly communist parties, which were at the forefront of antifascist efforts. Jewish volunteers participated in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, including the American XV International Brigade and the Polish-Jewish Palafox Battalion. In Britain, Jews and leftist activists fought Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, including at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the Soviet Union also played a role in mobilizing opposition to fascism.
During World War II, Jewish leftist groups were actively involved in resistance to Nazism. Bundists and Labor Zionists played key roles in the Jewish Combat Organization and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Radical Jews in Central and Western Europe Alongside movements rooted in the Jewish working class, relatively assimilated middle-class Jews in Central and Western Europe explored radicalism within Jewish tradition. Martin Buber incorporated Hasidic Jewish thought into his anarchist philosophy, while Gershom Scholem combined anarchism with his scholarship on Kabbalah. Walter Benjamin was influenced by both Marxism and Jewish messianism, and Gustav Landauer, a religious Jew, identified as a libertarian communist. Jacob Israël de Haan merged socialism with Haredi Judaism, while Bernard Lazare, a left-libertarian, initially embraced Zionism in 1897 but later criticized its supposedly bourgeois character in a letter to Theodor Herzl and the Zionist Action Committee writing "You are bourgeois in thoughts, bourgeois in your feelings, bourgeois in your ideas, bourgeois in your conception of society."Gabriel Piterberg (2008), The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics, and Scholarship in Israel, London: Verso, p. 10 In the Weimar Republic, Walther Rathenau was a prominent figure in the Jewish left.
In Britain British Jews have played a significant role in left-wing politics in the United Kingdom, particularly within the Labour Party. As the Liberal Party declined in the early 20th century, the Labour Party emerged as the main party of the left. Jewish individuals were active in Labour, including Leonard Woolf and Hugh Franklin. Many Jewish MPs, such as Barnett Janner, Sir Percy Harris, and Harry Nathan, transitioned from the Liberal Party to Labour. Academics and intellectuals such as Harold Laski, Nicholas Kaldor, Victor Gollancz, and Karl Mannheim contributed to the ideological foundations of British socialism. Notable early Labour politicians included Lewis Silkin, a minister in Clement Attlee’s government, Sydney Silverman, who played a key role in the abolition of capital punishment in Britain, and Manny Shinwell, a leader of the Red Clydeside movement and later Secretary of State for War.
Sephardi socialists in the Ottoman Empire Sephardi socialists in Thessaloniki (Salonica), most notably Avraam Benaroya, were active in the primarily Sephardi Socialist Workers' Federation and founded Ladino-language socialist publications such as La Epoca.
Labor Zionism and the Israeli left
In the twentieth century, particularly after the Second Aliyah, Labor Zionism became a significant force in the yishuv settlement of Palestine. It was first developed in Russia by the Marxist Ber Borochov and the non-Marxists Nachman Syrkin and A. D. Gordon. Organizations such as Poale Zion, the Histadrut labour union, and the Mapai party played a central role in the establishment of the State of Israel, with Labor Zionist politicians including David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir among its founders. The kibbutz movement also emerged as a model of collective Jewish settlement based on Labor Zionist principles.
Labour Zionism flourished among Yiddish-speaking migrants in South America. Broit un ehre was a Yiddish-language Labour Zionist biweekly newspaper published in Argentina from 1909 to 1910.Waisman, Sergio Gabriel. Leaving. [Oakland, CA]: InteliBooks, 2004. p. 67 It was launched towards the end of 1909.