#42: Molly Crabapple on the Jewish Labor Bund

For this week's podcast episode we're joined by Molly Crabapple to discuss her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. We talk about the Bund's early debates and encounters with both the proto Bolsheviks and Zionists, and the alternate visions of both communism and Jewishness the group represented. We hear about the waves of Bundists that wound up in New York City, including members of Molly's family, and their concept of "hereness" as a radical vision of migrant solidarity in the face of various nationalisms. Finally, we reflect on the meanings for revolutionary movements of winning and losing, and the lessons the Jewish Bund offers us today. Here Where We Live is Our Country: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646320/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-by-molly-crabapple/April 13th Book Event in Brooklyn: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/molly-crabapple-discusses-central-library-dweck-20260413-0700pmREADINGS:--"My Great-Grandfather the Bundist" - Molly Crabapple, 2018: https://archive.is/xsOxQ--"The War on Memory: Learning from the Jewish Labor Bund" - Molly Crabapple, 2024: https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-night/the-war-on-memory-learning-from-the-jewish-labor-bundMolly Crabapple is an artist and writer, and co-author of Brothers of the Gun (2018), an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham. Her memoir, Drawing Blood (2017), received global praise and attention, and her animated films have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Molly’s reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.Michael Simon is on the Organizing Committee of the NYC Jewish Labor Bund.