Review of The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, Resistance Fighters and Firebrands by Janey Stone and Donny Gluckstein (Interventions, 2024)
In the spring of 1936, a wave of anti-Jewish violence engulfed the Polish town of Przytyk. Jews comprised 90 percent of the town’s population and tended to dominate in craft and service occupations, while larger numbers of Poles lived and farmed in the surrounding rural areas.
Although the vast majority of Jews and Poles were equally impoverished, goaded by right-wing nationalists, some Poles blamed structural barriers to economic mobility on Jews. On March 9, the town’s weekly market day, this racism came to a head, resulting in one of interwar Poland’s most notorious antisemitic riots.
In response to the violence, beloved Yiddish songwriter Mordechai Gebirtig penned the song “Es Brent” (“It’s Burning”), which admonishes the Jewish community for watching on, arms folded, while flames engulfed their town. The song was a desperate call to action — and it did not fall on deaf ears. Following the pogrom, the Jewish population of Przytyk formed armed self-defense militias, while the Jewish and Polish socialist parties joined forces to call a one-day nationwide general strike.
The standard, lachrymose telling of Jewish history often omits resistance like this in favor of casting Jewish people as the passive victims of unending, unchallenged calamities. It’s a narrative that bolsters Zionism by downplaying the possibility of solidarity between Jews and non-Jews and by implying that antisemitism can only be countered by a Jewish ethno-state.
The Radical Jewish Tradition, a new book by Janey Stone and Donny Gluckstein, challenges this grim…
Auteur: Clare Lemlich
