Conclusion

Abstract

Jewish radicalism was primarily a by-product of the ethnic and class oppression of Jews living in the Russian Pale of Settlement in the late 19th and early 20th century. From Russia it spread across the globe as Jewish immigrants transplanted their left-wing ideas to their new places of settlement. It was never a movement of the majority of Jews, and it is unlikely that Jews ever constituted a majority of the political Left in any country other than Palestine/Israel. Nevertheless, a commitment to Left values of equality and social justice infected Jews everywhere, including even those in North Africa and the Arab world, whose formative political influences were at least partly non-European.