Jewish

Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to Holocaust

Moishe Postone's 1986 essay on the development and importance of anti-Semitism to the Nazi party. And the short comings of many previous attempts to grapple with it, particularly from a left perspective.

Schwartzbard, Shalom (1886-1938)

Submitted by Ed on Mar 28 2019 23:40

Short biography of Jewish anarchist poet and participant in both 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions Shalom Schwartzbard, who carried out a revenge assassination of a leading anti-Semitic pogromist in Paris.

Does anti-capitalism mask anti-Semitism?

Submitted by Mike Harman on Mar 13 2019 11:45

Karl Marx holding up an edition of Matzpen's paper

John McTernan, writing in the Financial Times claims that anti-capitalism ‘masks and normalises anti-Semitism’. The claim was picked up the next day by a Labour MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Messianic Troublemakers: The Past and Present Jewish Anarchism - Jesse Cohn

Submitted by Ed on Feb 19 2019 09:39

Jesse Cohn looks at the engagement and activities of Jewish people in the international anarchist movement, their involvement in labour struggles, propaganda by deed and their relationship to Jewishness as both a religious and national identity.

Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto - Bernard Goldstein

Jewish fighters captured in the aftermath of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, 1943.

Memoirs of life in the Warsaw ghetto from Bernard Goldstein, leader of the Jewish Labour Bund, recounting his underground activities in Nazi-occupied Warsaw such as how he (and the rest of his group) smuggled food, clothing and, eventually, arms into the Jewish ghetto in preparation for one of the most significant anti-Nazi uprisings during World War Two.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Marek Edelman

Submitted by Ed on Feb 17 2019 21:15

Jewish fighters captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, 1943.

First-hand account of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, and the increasingly inhumane living conditions imposed on the ghetto by the Nazis in the years leading up to it, told by Marek Edelman, member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund and co-founder of the Polish anti-Nazi resistance group, the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB).

A Tempest in Three Teapots: Yom Kippur Balls in London, New York, and Montreal

Undated advertisement in Yiddish for a Yom Kippur ball in New York City

At the end of the 19th century a nascent tradition emerged in London, England among recent Jewish immigrants as an anti-religious celebration of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism. The event quickly spread to North America where it was taken up by other Yiddish speaking anarchists and socialists as a way of expressing their collective power in a celebratory environment and encouraging others to turn against superstition and religion.