Graphic novel
Sharon Rudahl ,
Paul Buhle ,
Michael Kluckner ill.
The Bund: A Graphic History of Jewish Labour Resistance
Told in an engaging graphic novel format, The Bund explains the oppressive origins of Jewish resistance in Ukraine, Poland, and the "Pale of Settlement" in Tsarist Russia. Jewish people adapted to industrialization and organized against exploitation. As they became more divided along the linguistic borders of Yiddish and Hebrew, Jewish people split between those who sought a distant ancestral homeland, others who emigrated and adapted to the "new world," and many more who fought against murderous Soviet and Nazi regimes. Charismatic resistance figures including Pati Kremer and Bernard Goldstein kept secular and progressive ideas alive against impossible odds in this graphic account of a little-known story. The first of its kind, this graphic history of Jewish labour resistance lays bare evidence of a radical past that can have massive implications for leftist Jewish struggles today.
Sharon Rudahl was born in Virginia and grew up in a suburban Jewish ghetto in Maryland. She worked for anti-war underground newspapers in Madison, Wisconsin, and San Francisco. She was one of the women artists establishing Wimmen’s Comix, later working for a variety of underground comics, including her solo book Adventures of Crystal Night. She lives in Los Angeles.
Paul Buhle, a labour historian of 1960s vintage, published Radical America Komics in 1969. After an explicable lapse of 35 years, he has produced, since 2005, a number of non-fiction comics, including Wobblies! A Graphic History. He lives in Rhode Island.