The following essay, drafted by Noah Brehmer under the collective alias Vilna Goles, is an outgrowth of research undertaken in the Exilic Politics Circle. The circle was established over the past year to broadly study histories of exile as a grammar for an emergent political community beyond empire. In the
You see the world as a Zionist, by which I mean you see the world with eyes full of darkness. You are not seeing the world as it is. Try to look at the world with socialist eyes and see.
June 4, 2025 We, the DMV Jewish Labor Bund, demand the end of the desecration of Moses Macedonia Cemetery, material reparations, and the public apologies of the Maryland Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC), the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC), and 1784 Holdings for their displacement of communities and destruction
Ultra-Zionist groups like Canary Mission and BETAR create lists of people that they want harassed, deported, fired, or expelled from universities (and now the country). They give these lists to Republican and Democratic Party politicians along with millions of dollars in campaign contributions via groups like AIPAC, NORPAC, etc. The
A conversation with Nora Lester Murad of #DropTheADLfromSchools.
The DMV Bund's establishment of "committees" based on the three pillars of the Bund allow organizers to better manage responsibilities and maintain organizing capacity.
At an international meeting of the Bund ten years after the Holocaust, Bundists highlighted the importance of participation in communal Jewish life, the preservation of Yiddish, and a "just peace" in Israel and Palestine.
Editor's note: This is a version of Elia Ayoub’s Master’s thesis about the war on Yiddish in Palestine written in 2016, graciously abbreviated and adapted for publication in Der Spekter. Source citations have been changed to links for easier reading. To read the original full essay
The Bundist approach at no real point degenerated into Jewish chauvinism, tribalism, or nationalism. In building an autonomous, non-separatist Jewish force in the labour, environmental, feminist, housing, queer, urbanist, and other socioeconomic liberation movements, we should strive to do the same.
Editor's note: With the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising having just passed, we offer this observation by political cartoonist Andy Singer about the perverted parallels of Israel's actions and Jewish history. I've been drawing and publishing cartoons since 1991. My clients were mostly
In honor of May Day, Der Spekter is proud to share: a kleztronica commentary on “Daloy Politsey,” the latest single by New York-based artist Chaia.
The issues faced by Jewish Americans in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and their assessment of the New Left, are no less crucial to us now in 2025, having witnessed the failure of neoliberalism and the rise of right-wing populism.
Music
A Yiddish-to-English translation, and new musical rendition, of the classic Bundist anthem Di Shvue (The Oath).
News
Project Esther exemplifies the efforts to position Jews in opposition to “the progressive left's obsession with LGBTQ+ and all other minorities” and exposes the right’s attempt to wield Jewishness for its Christian Nationalist ends.
History
Translator’s Introduction: דורות בונדיסטן [Doyres Bundistn] was edited by the Bundist Jacob Sholem Hertz, who published many books about the history of the General Jewish Labor Bund. These three volumes contain over 500 short biographical entries about rank-and-file Bundists by various authors. The Bundist term for an activist, “tuer”
If Bundists are known in local Jewish communities as radicals hated by the establishment, but respected for their strength and inspiring in their message by a significant part of the general Jewish population, we will be in a fantastic position.
News
Peter Beinart's new book employs Jewish scripture and tribalism in an attempt to win over Zionists. But can such arguments ever convince the blind?
Poetry
Resolution 1a. Whereas we have lived long enough in the world of our elders, as laid out in Appendix A, the book of Ungodly Psalms; whereas, moreover, we have grown tired of reading and living the fire and floods, the ruin, wandering, exile, ash and mud, etc.; be it here
News
April 25, 2023, was a typical spring Tuesday outside the California State Capitol: thermostats across Sacramento climbing well into the eighties by noon, harried staffers’ and lobbyists’ hair and makeup wilting in the heat as they ducked out to grab to-go salads from one of the many nondescript lunch cafés
Personal Essay
It is fatal that citizens become de facto exiles in their own country. It is this internal exile that must be reclaimed today, transforming it from a passively suffered condition into a chosen and actively pursued way of life.
You think the enemy is writhing in pangs of death, but those are birth travails
History
"Zionism has all along been a Siamese twin of anti- Semitism and every kind of nationalist chauvinism."
Dispatches
In the past several months, Bundists around the world have been actively organizing grassroots educational and cultural events as well as solidarity actions in their respective areas.
Poetry
Editor's note: this is the third poem in the series "Ungodly Psalms" by Joe Grim Feinberg. Don't miss the previous parts in this series, "Report from the Cowardly Scouts on the Condition of the Land" and "Ten Insubordinations." Our god