The continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, accompanied by what many see as Israel’s excessive use of force, pushed many left-leaning Jews toward concluding that Zionism was no longer compatible with their moral convictions. In recent years, and especially since October 7, this internal tension has been complemented by growing external pressure from the broader progressive movements with which they had long identified. Continued support for Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people came to carry significant political and social costs. Many chose to preserve their standing within those political circles by distancing themselves from Zionism.

These “old” and “new” Jewish antizionists alike faced, however, an ethical challenge. They had to reconcile their political choice with their own Jewish identity and consciousness. This required an intellectual and moral justification for their position: proof, to themselves as much as to anyone else, that by rejecting Zionism they were not “self-hating Jews,” but rather showed fidelity to an alternative and equally authentic Jewish political tradition.

The search for such a justification has taken several forms. Some look for it in Jewish ethics, invoking tikkun olam, the prophetic demand for justice, or Judaism’s universal moral mission. Others look for it in history, going back to Bundism and the doctrine of doikayt (“hereness”), presenting them as an authentic alternative to Zionism.

Attempts to revive Bundism in progressive Jewish circles have increasingly come to serve precisely this function, and Molly Crabapple’s book “Here Where We Live Is Our Country” has become its most visible and influential expression. Leaving the ethical and theological questions to those better qualified to address them, I want to focus on this Bundist revivalist movement drawing on my experience as a student in the Soviet Union, where I spent countless hours studying the history of the Russian revolutionary movement.

As a work of history, Crabapple’s book performs an important service by recovering the largely forgotten story of the Jewish Labor Bund. Yet this is not why it has become much celebrated in progressive antizionist circles. The main reason is that it also advances an attractive political message, claiming that the Bundist doctrine of doikayt still offers a viable present-day political alternative to Zionism. That message has been enthusiastically echoed in essays, interviews, podcasts, and social media, where Bundism is increasingly presented not simply as an important chapter in Jewish history but as a political vision for the Jewish future rooted in the half-forgotten Jewish past. However, Jewish history is not the Hollywood blockbuster “Back to the Future,” and its 20th century cannot simply be written out of the script.

Neither Crabapple nor those promoting her book ever seem to ask simple questions: Did the political philosophy of the Bund survive the upheavals that destroyed the world in which it arose? Can it be transplanted from 20th-century Tsarist Russia to 21st-century United States and Europe? Despite the considerable attention devoted to Crabapple’s book and to the broader attempts to revive Bundist ideas, I have yet to encounter a broadly accessible rebuttal of its central thesis that addresses these questions. This essay is an attempt to provide one.

I will begin with the title of Molly Crabapple’s book because it already reveals a profound disconnect between the world in which we live and the political imagination from which it emerged. Here Where We Live Is Our Country expresses an idea with deep roots in Jewish historical experience, but it resonates very differently in the 21st century. Surprisingly, no one appears to have paused to pose an obvious question:

Would anyone choose the same title for a book about any other nation without exposing themselves to ridicule?

Millions of Americans of German, Italian, Mexican, Indian, Armenian, and countless other backgrounds proudly call the United States their home. At the same time, no one expects them to deny Germany, Italy, Mexico, India, or Armenia as the national homes of their respective peoples. The two ideas are not merely compatible; they are perfectly complementary. One may feel completely at home in one country while recognizing another as the national home of one’s people. Indeed, for virtually every diasporic community in the world, the suggestion that the two are somehow incompatible would seem not merely puzzling but absurd.

Why, then, should the principle suddenly change when the nation in question is the Jews?

The defenders of the book would probably dismiss the question itself as preposterous. Germany, Italy, and Mexico, they would argue, are “old” countries that emerged “naturally” through long historical processes. Israel, by contrast, is routinely portrayed as an artificial colonial project, imposed upon an indigenous population and brought into existence only in 1948. In their eyes, it simply does not belong in the same category as “normal” nation-states.

The trouble with this argument is that history rarely cooperates with tidy political narratives.

Israel did not simply pop into existence in 1948. Like Germany, Italy, and many other modern nation-states, it emerged as a culmination of a long and complex process. Political Zionism........

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