Politics across borders: Mapai and the mobilization of Polish Jewish youth

• In Event: Youth, Culture and Politics among Polish Jews in the 1930s

Abstract

This paper examines modern Jewish politics from a new perspective of mass mobilization across national borders. The most decisive elections campaign to the Zionist congress during the interwar period, which established the hegemony of the Labor Zionist, took place in Poland in 1933. Using this campaign as case study I show how hundreds of thousands of Jews were mobilized in international election campaigns. The paper examines the successful strategy of Mapai leader David Ben-Gurion, who came to Poland to spearhead the European campaign, and the tactics he employed to secure a landslide victory over the rising Zionist right.
As shown by Ezra Mendelsohn, the demographic core of modern Jewish politics was east European Jewry. Divided by mass immigration and new borders after WWI, it was the sphere of an international Jewish politics, which attracted a mass following after the World War. The paper examines the formation of an international Zionist mass politics in the 1930's by comparing the interaction between local, national and international factors during the decisive campaign. It demonstrates the consolidation of an international Zionist political sphere around elections, even if only temporarily, and the central role played by the youth, who granted Ben-Gurion the desired victory.

author

• Rona Yona, Tel Aviv University