The Radical Jewish Tradition

An inspiring account of Jewish socialist struggles against Tsarist pogroms, exploitative sweatshops, and murderous Nazis across three continents.

The Radical Jewish Tradition recovers a neglected and suppressed history of Jewish resistance to oppression. Collected here are stories of heroism and selflessness that trace their origins to resistance against the nineteenth-century Tsarist Empire. These radical Jews—most of them working class—found common cause with other oppressed groups. They refused to be defined as victims.

This inspiring tradition was ultimately checked by the callous indifference of capitalist governments to refugees before the Second World War and to the Holocaust. Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone revive this history for the benefit of a world in crisis. They consider this legacy and its impact on modern Jewish identity.

At a time when a bellicose Israeli government claims to represent Jews the world over, the history of these radicals bursts the constraints placed on the historical imagination. Here is a story central to the socialist movement as well as an object lesson for all those struggling to resist.