The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, resistance fighters, & firebrands
By Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone
Interventions, 2024, 386 pp., ISBN: 9780648641612, $35

The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, resistance fighters, & firebrands by Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone has come at what could be a turning point in world history as the Israel’s rulers face up to their inability to crush Palestinian resistance.

This is producing a crisis in the misuse of the term “anti-Semitism” by our rulers. The ruling class cynically uses hatred of Jews as a divide-and-rule tool to disorganise working class radicalism. But then Zionists accuse progressives of anti-Semitism in order to intimidate into silence critics of Israel.

The costs of this ideology are a pacified and confused working class in the imperialist heartlands and colonial-settler genocide in Palestine.

Opposing this, Gluckstein and Stone reassert the entire Jewish radical narrative. They challenge the dominant Zionist discourse that equates Jewish identity with Israel. They meticulously trace Jewish radicalism from the late 19th century through the Holocaust and on to the establishment of the Israeli state.

They situate the rise of modern antisemitism within the framework of capitalist development. They dismantle the narrative of Jewish history solely as one of victimhood and highlight the connection between struggling against antisemitism and capitalism.

The book lays before us the rich tradition of Jewish solidarity with other oppressed groups. Jewish radicals were pivotal in various revolutionary movements across Russia, Poland and other countries. An example is the strike and protest of 250,000 people organised in the 1930s by the Polish Jewish Labor Bund in the city of Przytyk. It was in protest against a pogrom.

Before the strike, the Bund had spent years reaching out to the Polish Socialist Party to build joint responses to antisemitism. This enabled working-class Poles and Jews to recognize their shared cause and unite against the right. The Zionist ideology that antisemitism is insurmountable could not compete and Zionism remained a minority trend in the Jewish community until World War II.

Gluckstein and Stone also give detailed histories of Jewish radicals in New York and London. There are so many inspiring stories here that it is impossible to summarise.

Gluckstein and Stone highlight alliances between Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the face of fascism and racism, from the Russian Revolution to the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End.

In short, they show that wherever there were revolutions, from the tumultuous rise of the capitalist class through to socialist revolutions, Jews benefitted. Wherever there was counter-revolution, Jews suffered. They explain that the Russian Revolution did more to liberate Jews in a few weeks than years of class collaboration by bourgeois and Zionist Jewish leaders.

Moreover, The Radical Jewish Tradition challenges the Zionist narrative by revealing how Zionism failed to address antisemitism. Zionism prioritises nationalist aspirations at the expense of solidarity with other oppressed peoples and often collaborates with anti-Semites and other reactionaries.

Gluckstein and Stone do not just target bourgeois Zionism, they critique the limitations of labour Zionism and give a detailed history of its development. The Labour Zionists use socialist rhetoric but were utterly complicit in the Zionist colonial project and were leaders in the dispossession of Palestinians.

The Radical Jewish Tradition is a plain-English history. While academically rigorous, it is aimed at a non-academic audience. Its strategic insights are not just relevant for today’s Jewish left. It is a critical reflection on the pitfalls of nationalist solutions to social oppression.

Gluckstein and Stone stress the enduring potential of cross-cultural solidarity and class struggle. By reclaiming forgotten histories of resistance and solidarity they help us to challenge reactionary narratives and find other paths to justice and liberation.

Overall, The Radical Jewish Tradition powerfully answers Zionist hegemony, affirming the diverse and vibrant legacy of Jewish radicalism.