Here Where We Live Is Our Country

The resounding success of Here Where We Live Is Our Country, Molly Crabapple’s vividly told and extensively researched history of the Jewish Labor Bund—a socialist group founded at the end of the 19th century on principles of internationalist solidarity, doikayt (or hereness), and Jewish national-cultural autonomy—has improbably brought the Bund, decimated in the Holocaust, into the 21st century. In this interview, Arielle Angel speaks with Crabapple about what it means to see the Bund from this vantage, from the other side of a century where Jews have gone from victims of genocide to genocidaires. What can we learn about purity politics and principled refusal, about solidarity and its failures?Thanks to Julia Natt for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Media Mentioned and Further ReadingHere Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple“Back to the Bund,” Samuel Hayim Brody, Jewish Currents (forthcoming in the Fall issue)Transcript forthcoming.