Every week this summer, K. brings you a selection of six texts that have already appeared in our pages, but have been brought together for the occasion around a few key themes. This week, we invite you to (re)discover texts on the relationship between Jews and the political left with Avishag Zafrani, Gérard Bensussan, Ivan Segré, Mitchell Abidor, Constance Pâris de Bollardiere, Elisheva Gottfarstein and Sylvaine Bulle.
The uses of Jewish tradition by the revolutionary left, part I
Avishag Zafrani – Published February 2nd, 2023
How can we understand the emergence of a political use of Jewish tradition within a certain radical left? Is this use paradoxical, ideologically overdetermined, or does it proceed from a real interest in certain religious sources, susceptible of reviving a revolutionary messianism? We put the question to philosophers Ivan Segré and Gérard Bensussan, who know both the Jewish tradition and that of the revolutionary left.
>>> Read Avishag Zafrani’s article
Victor Serge: revolutionary and philosemite
Mitchell Abidor – Published March 16th, 2023
Victor Serge, whose real name is Viktor Lvovitch Kibaltchitch, was born in Brussels in 1890. The man who would become a key figure in the European revolutionary mythology of the 20th century, grew up in the European libertarian milieu before joining Soviet Russia. Among the first denouncers of the abuses of Stalinism, he was deported to Siberia before being allowed to go into exile, first in Western Europe, then in Mexico. Mitchell Abidor returns to a little-known part of the career of the man who, during the war, wrote “The Extermination of the Jews of Warsaw”: that of his extreme attention – not tinged with ambiguity at times – to the specificity of the fate of the Jews.
>>> Read Mitchell Abidor’s article
From a Russian childhood to Yiddish socialism: Vladimir Medem, “legend of the Jewish labor movement”
Constance Pâris de Bollardiere – Published February 16th, 2023
This year marks the centenary of the death of Vladimir Medem (1879-1923), a great theoretician of the Bund and the Jewish national question in the Russian Empire, considered in connection with socialist internationalism. Vladimir Medem was renowned for his writing and political activities. Constance Pâris de Bollardière discusses the singularity of his personal journey. Medem’s memoir, published in New York in 1923, will form the fabric of this evocation.
>>> Read Constance Pâris de Bollardiere’s article
Jewish anarchism and its contemporary ecological resurgence
Sylvaine Bulle – Published November 24th, 2023
Ecology, as well as anti-capitalist and communalist alternatives, are increasingly popular with activists and researchers committed to social criticism. These audiences sometimes refer to Gustave Landauer (1870-1919), Emma Goldman (1869-1940), Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), or even Martin Buber (1878-1965), Jewish thinkers who can be described as anarchists or libertarian socialists. Their utopian visions prefigured an agrarian socialism or an everyday communism, of which certain initiatives in France – such as the zones to be defended or the alternative and ecological collectives – are reactivations. Sylvaine Bulle returns to the Jewish origins of these reference authors; origins that remain silent by those who analyse and defend their thought.
>>> Read Sylvaine Bulle’s article
Pierre Goldman’s biopic : Parias and Parvenus – Archaeology of a Movie
Gérard Bensussan – Published October 5th, 2023
The release in French cinemas of Le Procès Goldman [The Goldman Case] raised questions for the editors of K. What mark has the activist left on French Jewish consciousness, particularly on the left? And what impact did he leave on the left after his assassination? It seemed obvious to us to turn to the philosopher Gérard Bensussan, who after seeing Cédric Kahn’s film entrusted us with this text in which he breaks down the figure of Pierre Goldman, caught up in his Jewish condition.
On ‘goyish fragility’. Jewish response to an offended left
Elisheva Gottfarstein – Published July 11th, 2024
In France, the radical left is plagued by antisemitism that expresses itself in a variety of ways. Since October 7 in particular, anti-Jewish outbursts, conveyed in particular by France Insoumise executives and activists, have been documented and constantly denounced by Jewish organizations. Yet, while this left wing acknowledges its anti-Zionism, it denies any accusation of antisemitism, claiming to belong to the anti-racist camp. Recently, intellectuals close to France Insoumise published an opinion piece that caused quite a stir, with the explicit aim of clearing their movement of any antisemitism. Elisheva Gottfarstein’s text is a step-by-step response to their diabolically specious arguments.
>>> Read Elisheva Gottfarstein’s article
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