Joshua Meyers Explores the Jewish Labor Bund Beyond Its Symbolic Legacy in YIVO Lecture

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will host a lecture by historian Joshua Meyers titled More than a Symbol: The Jewish Labor Bund in History on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, at 7:00pm ET.

Drawing on the Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA), currently being preserved and digitized at YIVO, Meyers will examine the history of the Jewish Labor Bund and the lived reality behind its enduring legacy as a symbol of Diaspora Socialism, anti-Zionism, and Yiddish cultural activism. The program will take place at YIVO located in the Center for Jewish History building at 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY and will also be available via livestream on Zoom.

More than any other political party on the Jewish left, the Jewish Labor Bund continues to hold a particular mystique in the imagination of Jewish leftists, even decades after the Bund in Poland was dissolved.

From its founding in the Russian Empire through its central role in interwar Poland, the movement became a major force in Jewish economic, political, and cultural life across Eastern Europe. For more than half a century, it mobilized workers, built institutions, shaped public debate, and advanced a distinctly diasporic vision of Jewish collective life—one that continued to influence Jewish communities around the world.

Meyers will trace the Bund’s history from its origins through World War II, when it emerged as the leading voice of Diaspora Socialism among Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

He will explore the movement’s evolving relationships with other major political movements—Zionists, Communists, and others—as well as the conditions that made the Bund so compelling to many Jews in the Russian Empire and interwar Polish Republic. The talk will also consider the limits of the Bund’s appeal within the political, cultural, and social realities of the period. Grounded in the experiences and perspectives of the Bund’s own members, the lecture will explore the movement’s history and that of Diaspora Socialism in the 21st century.

The Jewish Labor and Political Archives housed at YIVO comprise nearly 200 collections and approximately 3.5 million pages of archival documents, forming the world’s most comprehensive body of material pertaining to Jewish political activity in Europe and the United States. This lecture is the second in a series of programs inspired by the subject matter contained in these collections and by YIVO’s current digitization of these Archives.

Program:            More than a Symbol: The Jewish Labor Bund in History
When:                 Tuesday, November 3, 2026 at 7:00pm ET
Where:               Taking Place on Zoom and in person at YIVO,
                             Located in the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011)
Reservations:   yivo.org/Bund-in-History
Cost:                   Free

For any media inquiries please contact:
Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

About the Speaker

Joshua Meyers is a scholar of modern Jewish politics in Eastern Europe, particularly the Jewish Labor Bund. Formerly affiliated with Stanford, Harvard, and Queens College, he is currently student services coordinator at a charter school. His work has appeared in Jewish Social Studies, the Forward, Tablet, Geschichte der Gegenwart, and In Geveb.

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of Eastern European Jewry worldwide. For over a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our global outreach and enable us to share our vast resources. The YIVO Archives contains more than 24 million original items, and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for such study in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story