On the evening of Sept. 16, New York’s YIVO Institute sponsored a massively attended panel discussion called “Bundism’s Influence Today.” The panel was diverse in age, but less so in viewpoint. The audience included an impressive number of engaged young Jews, but apparently few with sympathy for the Jewish state. Although the panel’s moderator, Prof. Jack Jacobs of CUNY, a respected scholar on the Jewish Workers’ Bund, said that he still hopes for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, the program might have benefited from the participation of an actual left-Zionist.
One of my final pieces published at the Jewish Currents website, “The Bund Is Gone, But Its Anti-Zionist Critique Remains,” was about my participation in a five-session YIVO seminar on the Bund, taught by Prof. Jacobs early in 2018. During one session, I found myself denounced for expressing pro-Zionist convictions by none other than the individual who organized this panel, Spencer Sunshine. He remembered me from a conference we had both attended about 15 years ago (I actually didn’t remember him). Being unsettled by his hostility, I suggested we meet privately to discuss things further — an offer which he contemptuously spurned.
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