Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Since October 7th, 2023, the world witnessed a massive American Jewish uprising in support of Palestinian liberation, from sit-ins in Congress and Grand Central Station, to petitions and marches in which thousands of Jews are vocally making it known the Israeli state is not acting in their name. Rather than view this upsurge of Jewish anti-Zionism as a rupture with progressive American Jewish history, Citizens of the Whole World proposes a longer view of the American Jewish socialist left, excavating how the politics of anti-Zionism, diasporic constructions of Jewish identity, cross-racial solidarity, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism have been constitutive for Jewish radicals over the last century. Beginning the with "red decade" of the 1930s and concluding with the present, Citizens offers expressive and granular insight into radical Jewish novelists, memoirists, interviews with Jewish revolutionaries from SDS to SWP to the DSA, suggesting a buried if nonetheless unbroken continuity between left Jewish Americans and diasporic internationalism. Far from just the politics of Zionism, Citizens further explores the cultural expressions of American Jewish radicalism, from an embrace of Jewish de-territorialization, to Jewish revolutionary traditions of Marxist internationalism, to the aesthetics of Jewish solidarity with Third World revolutionary struggles and Black diasporic traditions in the U.S. A book of historical and cultural recovery, Citizens stages an intervention into current anti-Zionist politics, suggesting activists can learn from the past struggles of the Jewish left as a means to help form a politics of a post-Zionist future.

Reviews

As more American Jews join the ranks of those calling for a world free of the institutions that wield Judaism and antisemitism as a means to justify and entrench genocide, Benjamin Balthaser offers a deep dive into the roots of today's Jewish anti-Zionist left. -- Sumaya Awad, co-editor of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
Finally, thanks to Benjamin Balthaser, the Jewish left has a voice which has been suppressed in the face of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States
Citizens of the Whole World is in a class by itself. Bracingly original, edgy and provocative, witty and cerebral, Balthaser's tour de force provides a stunning rebuke to the myth that the twenty-first century alignment of radical Jews with Palestinian self-determination is discontinuous with the past. His punchy amalgam of social movement history, oral interviews, and readings of imaginative literature affords a coolly reasoned argument for a diasporic internationalism with Jewish characteristics that is a fresh manifestation of a laudable tradition. -- Alan Wald, author of Exiles from a Future Time
Once, not very long ago, many Jews believed that our distinctive historical experiences and cultural traditions presented us both the opportunity and the obligation to practice a universal solidarity-a solidarity whose content was socialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-racist. Balthaser recovers this memory for us as it flashes in
a moment of danger. -- Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift
Citizens of the Whole World soberly and expertly excavates ideas long marginalized, thereby enabling us to better understand the complexities of the Jewish past and the possibilities for a more variegated and robust Jewish future. -- Shaul Magid, author of The Necessity of Exile
As Balthaser tracks in his new book, the vision of Jewish identity on display in Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations organized by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and the Jewish Anti-Zionism Network is the latest stage in a long history that sees Jewish identity as in relationship with all communities facing oppression and on a diasporic model of internationalism. -- Shane Burley * Jacobin *

Author Bio

Benjamin Balthaser's critical and creative work explores the connections among radical U.S. social movements, racial and class formation, internationalism, and culture. He is the author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Radical Transnational Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and Dedication (Partisan Press, 2011). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as American Quarterly, Historical Materialism, Boston Review, Jacobin, Shofar and elsewhere. He is currently associate professor of multi-ethnic U.S. literature at Indiana University, South Bend, and associate editor of American Quarterly.