The SoCal Jewish Bund

Welcome to the SoCal Jewish Bund!

The Bund is a loose group of Jews throughout the world who believe that Jewish life is wherever we are, and not in a specific part of the world. We call this "doikayt", or "Hereness". The SoCal bund is exploring and helping to define what Jewish life looks like in all of Southern California, from the Imperial Valley to Santa Maria!

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Are We LARPers?

 This is an interesting question. Historically the original bund was destroyed in the Holocaust. But before that, many bundists had made it out of Europe, and even now in Australia there's an active Bund chapter. We're also talking to them, trying to do the right thing in picking up the Bund Banner and carrying the movement forward. But are we playing at being the bund? By reapplying words like "Doikayt", "Yiddishkayt", and "Socialism" are we just taking on a bundist style? Or are we actually Bundists? I think we're actually Bundists. It's not just that "words can mean anything if you reframe them", because, well, that's obvious and superficial. I think we're actually finding the meanings of these words, and looking at how the Bund worked and what Bundists believed, and understanding that their objections to the Zionist state and ours are more alike than not. And maybe prior to 1948 it was just a "potential" thin...
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The Bund Abides

There was an informative discussion on the Yiddish discord server about why we've taken on the name "Bund". The original Bund was basically eliminated in the Holocaust, and, well, there have been some people carrying the banner since then at various times. But relying on "an unbroken historical line" is also something Fascism requires. So why use the name in the first place then? The Bund was a positive framing to "anti-Zionism". Rather than saying "Don't go to Palestine" it said "We're Jews right here". And this is one of the main guiding principles I think we follow. The term Bund is cognate to "Band". I'm a musician, I played in bands, this is a band of Jews who are Jewish (Yiddishkayt) right here (Doikayt). We fight for social justice because part of being Jewish is making the world better (Socialism). And, as one person aptly pointed out, and what led me to the title of this post, "The Bund is a Vibe...
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The Coordinating Committee

In the original bund the governing committee was the Coordinating Committee. Here I envision the same sort of organization. We're not going to overshadow other Jewish groups here, and honestly that would defeat the purpose of the bund anyway. It would go against the Doikayt grain, because these groups are already "here", and we can support them. Rather, we're more of an outreach and education group. We want to help Jews here in the Diaspora, specifically Southern California, to find the Jewish organizations that work for them, and to provide a broader sense of Jewishness shared between all Jews. The focus can be taken off of a mythical land we possibly once resided in, and put back on where we are now. And besides, if you look at Jewish history, we've been in diaspora since the beginning, even when the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah existed, even when Palestine was called Judea. And in our writings you see all the different traditions that were knitted together over...
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