| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Zvi Gitelman, editor. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. (Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies.) Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2003. Pp. vii, 275. $44.95.
Expertly edited by Zvi Gitelman, this volume underwent a prolonged gestation period beginning with a conference on "A Century of Modern Jewish Politics: The Bund and Zionism in Poland and Eastern Europe." The contributors to the final product of this conference offer a historiographically balanced and highly perceptive account of the political, social, and cultural dimensions of these two major Jewish political movements.	1
This book is not just about the role of the Bund and Zionism in the rise and nature of "modern Jewish politics" but goes far beyond this focus in several ways. First, it examines in great detail the degree to which these two major movements were shaped by internal Jewish social and cultural developments and external economic, political, and ideological conditions and influences within the larger context of imperial Russia, interwar Poland, and Soviet communism. Essays by Antony Polonsky ("The New Jewish Politics and its Discontents"), Daniel Blatman ("National-Minority Policy, Bundist Social Organizations and Women in Interwar Poland"), and Samuel Kassow ("The Left Poalei Tsiyon in Interwar Poland") are particularly noteworthy. Second, and equally significant, contributors go far afield in exploring the relationships among Jewish politics, culture, and society and how they relate not only to Bundism and Zionism but also to largely neglected movements and parties such as Russian Jewish liberalism, the orthodox Agudat Yisrael, and the Left Poalei Tsiyon. As the respective essays by Benjamin Nathans, Kassow, and Gerson Bacon demonstrate, these groupings represented alternative ideopolitical platforms that influenced, and were influenced by, Bundist and Zionist politics, ideology, and organization. By the same token, essays by Michael Steinlauf, David Fishman, Ruth Wisse, David Aberbach, and Seth Wolitz relate Jewish cultural groupings and expressions—youth culture, education, literature, and the arts—to social, ideopolitical, and economic issues that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience generally and the evolution of modern Jewish politics specifically.	2
The contributors' attention to the interconnectedness and interaction of widely disparate and yet related phenomena is truly impressive historiographically. As indicated in Ronald Suny's thoughtful postscript ("East European Jewish Politics in Comparative Perspective"), this marks a clear departure from the partisan scholarship of inherently teleological and compartmentalized interpretations that often ignore the larger historical context that gave rise and shaped the democratization, modernization, and, for lack of a better word, "nationalization" of Jewish political and cultural life from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and beyond. Instead of collectively constituting a discourse that deals with Bundism and Zionism as mutually exclusive entities, the essays present an integrated portrayal of the complex relationship between the two and showcase reciprocal influences between them and other political, ideological, and cultural manifestations, both, Jewish and non-Jewish.	3
Indeed, this book is one of those rare publications that delivers more than it promises. Not only is the reader presented in the first two sections on "East European Jewish Politics" and "Politics of Culture" with penetrating comparative analyses of Bundism and Zionism from various perspectives and in relation to other movements, but the third and final section, "East European Jewish Politics in Emigration," reaches beyond the boundaries of Eastern Europe. The contributions of Jonathan Frankel and Maud Mandel address the vicissitudes of Bundism in the United States and of Zionism in France and show how their fortunes radically changed as a result of the Holocaust.	. . .

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