Jewish left

The Jewish left refers to Jewish individuals or organizations that identify with or support left-wing or social liberal causes, consciously as Jews. There is no singular organization or movement that constitutes the Jewish left.

Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights movement, anti-racist and anti-colonialist work, and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist organizations of many forms in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the Ottoman Empire, Algeria, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Africa, Palestine, and the State of Israel.

Jews have a history of involvement in anarchism, socialism, Marxism, and Western liberalism. The expression "on the left" encompasses a range of political positions. Many individuals associated with left-wing politics have been Jews born into Jewish families, with varying degrees of connection to Jewish communities, cultures, traditions, or religious practices.

History

Jewish leftist thought has roots in the Haskalah, led by thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, as well as in the support of European Jews, including Ludwig Börne, for republican ideals following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the movement for Jewish emancipation spread across Europe and was closely associated with the emergence of political liberalism, which emphasized Enlightenment principles of rights and equality before the law. At the time, liberals were considered part of the political left, and emancipated Jews, as they became more integrated into the political culture of their respective nations, were often associated with liberal political parties. Many Jews supported the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Revolutions of 1848.