I have many issues with the characterization of the Bund's history, and its attraction to Jews today. I don't normally weigh in on these things, but here goes. My first Twitter thread.
First, framing the story around Ben Gurion's attitudes towards the Bund strikes me as bizarre and irrelevant. It gives no agency to the actual Bundists that lived in that time and place. And it reduces the Bund's central concern to its conflict with Zionists
It ignores the fact that a Bund organization does still exist in Melbourne, Australia. As a journalist, he might have written to them to get their perspective (or anyone!). Yes yes, it's an opinion piece, but riddled with condescension towards millennials.
This version of the narrative pretty much ignores the fact that almost all of these Bundists were Holocaust survivors. Hardly conducive to rebuilding a mass movement -- and despite it, many did a remarkable job in radically new circumstances.
If the author really wanted to understand the nuances around the Bund's decline (hint: it looks different depending on where and when you look), I know an excellent book he might have consulted (hint: mine): amazon.com/International-…
Really, I just see this piece as under-researched, a too-hasty response to the popularity of @mollycrabapple's beautifully-written piece in the NYRB.
Finally, no-one's calling for a return to the Bund (if only for the reason that the movement is intimately tied up to Yiddish language and culture), but to a certain way of being Jewish that de-centers Israel as the key factor in global Jewish life.
