Bund Bulletin Volume 1 Issue 16

March 21, 2025 By Provisional Steering Committee

IN THIS BULLETIN:

  • Local Field Notes

  • Updates from the General Meeting

  • Mutual Aid Requests

Dear Bundists,

This Bulletin will be a little different this week, as the PSC did not have their standard weekly meeting. Instead of our usual summary of what was discussed, here’s a rundown of the March 15 General Meeting and updates from Bundists organizing locally. You can find a link to the minutes here.

The meeting began with reports from our khaveyrim involved in local organizing. We currently have two officially established chapters (DMV and Montana) and four Local Organizing Committees (New England, Chicagoland, New York City, and Golden Gate). We also have a number of unofficial locals that formed before we implemented this process, and it’s their work that has laid the foundation the IJLB is now building upon.

Here’s some of the organizing our khaveyrim have been up to on the ground:

  • In New York City, Bundists have worked with Hunter College to stop cooperation between staff and Hunter Hillel, as well as to reinstate a Palestinian History professor. NYC Bundists have also been active in protests against the deportation of students such as Mahmoud Khalil, and are working to establish themselves in the New York scene through social media efforts, a new logo, and an upcoming zine. There are also plans to begin a reading group, work on further outreach to established groups, and begin building cultural spaces for anti-Zionist Jews struggling to find community in and around NYC.

  • Montana Bundists held their monthly Shabbat dinner on Friday, 3/14 and are quickly growing as they continue to participate in coalition-building efforts across the western region of the state. They are currently planning a community Passover seder and looking into fun new ways to practice doikayt, including a Havdalah hike to smell the sap of ponderosa pines!

  • In the DMV, members voted to become an official chapter in January with a regular convener meeting schedule! They’ve also established 3 committees – Khavershaft, Yiddishkeit, and Doikayt. Through the Khavershaft committee, they are seeking to work in solidarity with DC for Palestine’s Apartheid Free DC Campaign. DMV Bund organizers worked with other local organizers to help shut down Chuck Schumer’s book tour and used the opportunity to put on an “AntiZionism is not Antisemitism” teach-in.

  • Philadelphia is meeting twice monthly, alternating between public meetings and member meetings where official decisions are made. Additionally, organizers are planning protests against the ADL and other fascists. They are working toward formalizing their local under the 3-10-3 system and plan to experiment with the final 3 roles being Secretary, Treasurer, and Communications.

  • The New England Bund is in the process of finalizing its own status as an official Bund Chapter. In the meantime, one of the khaveyrim involved in this effort has proposed a Bund Rapid Response Network with the region’s many universities in mind. The proposal was discussed at the General Meeting—see meeting minutes for commentary from the wider Bund!

If you’d like to start your own local chapter of the Bund, all you need is two khaveyrim to get started! The 3-10-3 structure is the procedural scaffolding we’re currently using to formally charter IJLB chapters. The goal with this structure is to ensure no one person is responsible for all the work that goes into organizing a chapter. The finer details of this process are very much under negotiation, so please feel free to experiment and report back on what’s worked for you at the next Local Development or General Meeting!

[Redacted] reported back from the Jewish Diasporist Movement Retreat that they attended from February 24 through 27 outside of Philadelphia. They were extremely grateful to be two of around thirty-five anti-Zionist Jews invited to participate in the early stages of coalition-building. While both experienced some frustrations (as Jews with opinions are wont to do), the experience affirmed to both of them just how important the Bund is in the landscape of modern Jewishness and they each walked away with several new potential comrades who can help us as we continue to grow.

Delegate Body updates:

  • Distribution of labor: At the General Meeting, we discussed the importance of balancing delegates’ institutional memory with the ever-present risk of burnout. Proposed solutions included any of the “final 3” elected Chapter Conveners serving as a delegate and delegates having “understudies” authorized to step in if a Chapter’s primary delegate can’t make a meeting to fulfill their duties.

  • Five Chapters and five delegates: The PSC has proposed an arbitrary goal of five official IJLB Chapters as the minimum for establishing the Delegate Body. If you have questions regarding the process of establishing a chapter, please reach out to us at psc@jewishbund.org and we can help!

  • The IJLB after the PSC: The reason we keep bringing up the Delegate Body is that our term only runs until May. If possible, we’d love for the establishment of the Delegate Body to happen before our term is up so we can help ensure it’s ready to replace us once we step down. The hope is that this structure will allow truly local-first organizing that’s relevant to the work our khaveyrim are doing wherever they live, and we need everyone’s help to make that happen.

With that in mind, we hope to use the next Local Development Meeting discuss proposals for a delegate body (such as the one discussed at the January General Meeting) and emerge with a clearer idea of where the IJLB is headed. There was also strong interest in discussing solidarity networking like the work the Montana Bund has been taking part in, so if that interests you please keep an eye out for updates on when the next Local Development meeting is!

MUTUAL AID REQUESTS

We have two requests from our khaveyrim in Philadelphia:

  • Help me Escape Disabling Homelessness A trans and Indigenous lesbian comrade has been unemployed while dealing with physical and mental trauma from hate crimes, abuse, and sexual assault. Please follow the link above to help them heal and reunite with their beloved cat Nmer. At time of writing, they have only received $60 toward their $6,000 goal, so please give if you can and share if you can’t!

  • Support Saleha and Salwa in Gaza “Saleha Messham is an 85-year-old old woman and has a daughter, Salwa, 30, who is displaced from northern Gaza. Their home was destroyed and they were displaced to Deir al-Balah, where conditions are very, very bad due to the overcrowding of this city. They need food, water and medicine. The funds will be used to pay for basic survival needs like that. Please help them get it. The person fundraising on their behalf is a friend living in the United States, [redacted]. The funds will then be sent to my bank account and transferred to their family via Wise.”

f you have a project you’d like to promote, a local win you’d like to celebrate, or a request or offer for mutual aid, please submit your announcement to the Provisional Steering Committee via our email and we’ll include it in the next Bulletin!

As always, you can find summaries of all our meetings here, and you can reach us for questions, feedback, or just to say hi at psc@jewishbund.org. Thank you!