Jewish Left - Contemporary Jewish Left

Contemporary Jewish Left

As the Jewish working class died out in the years after the Second World War, its institutions and political movements did too. The Arbeter Ring in England, for example, came to an end in the 1950s and Jewish trade unionism in the US ceased to be a major force at that time. There are, however, still some survivals of the Jewish working class left today, including the Jewish Labor Committee and Forward newspaper in New York, the Bund in Melbourne, Australia, or Labour Friends of Israel in the UK.

Meanwhile, the 1960s-1980s saw a resurgence in interest in cultural heritage and ethnic identity, prompting a renewal of interest among assimilated Jews in the West in Jewish working class culture and the various radical traditions of the Jewish past. This led to a growth in a new sort of radical Jewish organisations, interested in Yiddish culture, Jewish spirituality and social justice. For example, in the decade of 1980–1992 one organization, New Jewish Agenda, functioned as a national, multi-issue progressive membership organization with the mission of acting as a "Jewish voice on the Left and a Left voice in the Jewish Community." The Jewish Socialists' Group in Britain and Rabbi Michael Lerner's Tikkun have continued this tradition, while more recently groups like Jewdas and Heeb Magazine have taken an even more eclectic and radical approach to Jewishness. In Belgium, the Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique is, since 1969, the heir of the Jewish Communist and Bundist Solidarité movement in the Belgian Resistance, embracing the Israeli refuseniks cause as well as of the undocumented immigrants in Belgium.

In the U.S. in the last decade, the Jewish vote has gone to Democrats by 76-80% in each election, leading to the reasonable conclusion that the majority of American Jews remain in at least some way more supportive of the liberal to left side of the political spectrum vs. the conservative to right side of the spectrum.