Socialists on Religion: On Judaism / Jews

Marxist critics on religion and historical analysis of the main religions

- Foreword
- General on Religion
- The Classics
- On Islam
- On Christianity
- On Judaism / Jews
- Appendix: On the Bolsheviks and Religion

Marxists Internet Archive
- Jews, Marxism and the worker’s movement
"A subject index of texts from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Leon and Luxemburg; texts from the Jewish Socialist & Labor Movement and the impact of the Russian Revolution on Jews."

Against the Current
- Peter Drucker: Marxism and the fate of the European Jews (Issue 65, November-December 1996). Review of Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, 1843-1943 (1994)
"An excellent book on the subject has been translated into English and published. Enzo Traverso’s [book] is valuable not only for what it says about Jews in one region or one period, though it is particularly strong on Eastern European Jews and their role in the workers movement in the early 20th century. It is the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of what Marxists wrote about Jews and anti-semitism up until the mid-20th century."

Are the Jews a Race?
By Karl Kautsky (1914).
"Are the Jews a Race? now appears for the first time in English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under the title Rasse and Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, already included a number of important additions and improvements, particularly the new chapter entitled Zionism After the War; for the present English version [1926], the author has revised and brought up to date the second German edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine."

CounterPunch
- Eric Walberg: The Bible and Middle East history: colonizing a metaphor (December 3, 2007)
"What do modern archaeology and other sciences have to say about the Bible? Does it help us resolve the question of the validity of Jesus as a legitimate messiah, one who would end Judaism and found a truly universal religion for all mankind? Does it allow Judaism a new lease on life, providing proof of the existence of a Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, with a spectacular and ancient history? And are we fated to die in a fiery apocalypse as predicted in Revelations?"

In Defence of Marxism
- Yossi Schwartz: The origins of the Jews (15 December 2003):
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: The rise of Anti-Semitism
Part Three: Anti-Semitism and Zionism
Part Four: The Russian Revolution: Bolshevism, the Bund, and Stalinism

International Socialism
- John Rose: Karl Marx, Abram Leon and the Jewish Question - a reappraisal (International Socialism, Issue 119, Summer 2008, p.121-143)
"Abram Leon ... wrote a classic Marxist study, The Jewish Question, before dying in Auschwitz. John Rose points out the relevance and importance of the arguments in the book, but suggest they need some amending in the light of recent historical research."

The Invention of the Jewish People
By Shlomo Sand (Verso, 2009, 400 p.)
"Leading Israeli historian evaluates the national myth of the Jewish exile from the promised land."
See:
- Linkbox: Shlomo Sand & The Invention of the Jewish People (Modkraft.dk/Tidsskriftcentret)

Jewish History, Jewish Religion : The Weight of Three Thousand Years
By Israel Shahak (London, Pluto Press, 1994, 127 p.).
"Drawing on the Talmud and rabbinical laws, Israel Shahak embarks on a provocative study of the extent to which the secular state of Israel has been shaped by religious orthodoxies of an invidious and potentially lethal nature."

The Jewish Question : A Marxist Interpretation
By Abram Leon (1946) (New York, Pathfinder, 1970, 270 pages).
"Writing in the shadow of Nazi occupation, the possibility of conforming his work on the Jewish question to certain formal standards of scholarship simply did not exist for the author. In making the English translation of his work, considerable time and effort were devoted to locating and identifying Leon’s source material and quotations, so as to eliminate, insofar as possible, this purely technical shortcoming."
See more about the book at Socialist Books Online (Modkraft.dk/Tidsskriftcentret)

Marxistarkiv
- Israel/judefrågan
"Olika texter med marxistiska analyser av judefrågan och staten Israel: K Marx, L Trotskij, A Leon och I Deutscher."

New Politics
- Debate: Anti-Semitism and Socialism (2007-2008)
"In New Politics No. 43, Sherry Gorelick reviewed Mario Kessler’s book, On Anti-Semitism and Socialism. David Finkel replied in the next issue. Bennett Muraskin and Sherry Gorelick then replied to Finkel."

Reds - Die Roten
- Hal Draper: Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype
From Hal Draper: Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol.1: State and Bureaucracy (New York, Monthly Review, 1977, p. 591-608).
"There is a bulky output of literature alleging that Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question is anti-Semitic because it equates Jewry with the spirit of money-making, the merchant-huckster, preoccupation with self-interest and egoism-that is, with the commercialism of the new bourgeois order."

Socialist Register
- David Ruben: Marxism and the Jewish Question (pdf) (1982, p. 205-237)
"A number of interrelated questions about Jewry, collectively referred to as ’the Jewish question’, have been discussed by many Marxists, beginning with Marx himself in his essay, ’On the Jewish Question’."

Weekly Worker
- Jack Conrad: Religion, class struggles, and revolution in ancient Judea, Supplement I (Issue 827, July 22, 2010) + Peasant socialism and the persistence of polytheism, Supplement II (Issue 828, July 29, 2010) + Royalist nationalism, opposition prophets, and the impact of exile and return, Supplement III (Issue 829, August 5, 2010)
"The aim of this three-part study is to locate the main internal and external factors involved in bringing about the Jerusalem temple cult described in the New Testament, in which, of course, Jesus and his party participated and sought to purify through their audacious actions."
- Gerry Downing: The sigh of the oppressed (Issue 658, February 1, 2007)
"Gerry Downing looks at the origins of monotheism and assesses the attitude of communists towards believers."

ZNet
- Anti-Semitism Debates
"Critics of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip face accusations of Anti-semitism. Here ZNet has collected some of the discussions on anti-semitism; some writers’ responses to charges of anti-semitism; and some reactions and context."

Facts
- Judaism (Wikipedia.org)
- Criticism of Judaism (Wikipedia.org)
- Skeptic’s Annotated Bible