Niels Jespersen retweetledi
The attempt to revive the Bundism vs Zionism debate is frankly really bizarre. One of the main reasons why the Bundism vs Zionism debate ended in the 20th century is because the leaders of various European countries, from Antonescu to Hitler, killed pretty much all the Jewish Bundists, and the Zionists more or less survived it, and the Jews who survived the Holocaust all became Zionists, i.e. committed to the creation and maintenance of a Jewish state.
The Bundists and Zionists placed different bets on how the 20th century would play out for European Jews.
The Bundists bet that Europe would not become existentially inhospitable to Jewish life, and that instead European Jews could remain valued and safe members of European societies, especially by falling in with the prevailing trends of socialism and secularism, and that building a distinct Jewish collective identity in Europe would be compatible with all these changes. Fundamentally the bet was that European modernity would not prove incompatible with organised Jewish social and religious life.
The Zionist bet (which you can read in Herzl's Die Judenstaat and in his published diaries) was that industrialisation, European nationalism and mass society would lead to the destruction of European Jewish life, and that the only option was to try and escape while there was still time, and create a state of their own where they could defend themselves.
Herzl wrote in Die Judenstaat in 1896, "I cannot imagine what appearance and form this will take. Will it be expropriation by some revolutionary force from below? Will it be proscription by some reactionary force from above? Will they banish us? Will they kill us? I expect all these forms and others."
By 1945, as a rule of thumb, Europe's Jews either spoke English (i.e. lived in the United States, Britain, or the Anglophone world) or they were Hebrew- and Yiddish-speaking Zionists in Israel (or Mandatory Palestine at the time).* Europe pretty much killed off all the rest.
It's helpful to remember that what the Jews call the 'Righteous Among the Nations', i.e. those who risked their lives to save Jews from the continent-wide Holocaust, are notable in part because they were so few in number.
That's why the debate over Bundism ended after the War: both groups placed their bets on what the 20th century would mean for European Jews, and it turned out that the Zionists were right and the Bundists were wrong, and the consequence is that the former survived and the latter mostly died. It was a very high-stakes and tragic bet!
* The one exception to this are French Jews, but as usual it is the exception which proves the rule. About a third of French Jews are the descendents of the Jews of Algeria who had been there for over a thousand years, but fled to France when France ended its colonial rule over Algeria, since to remain behind under Arab rule would mean almost-certain death.
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