The award-winning artist recounts the rise and fall of the revolutionary socialist movement the Jewish Labor Bund, once among Eastern Europe’s most influential political forces.

In-person registration for this event is full but there may be a limited number of standby tickets available if space permits. Sign up for our bi-weekly NYPL Events e-newsletter to stay updated on the latest programs and events from the Library.

In her new book, Molly Crabapple brings to life the extraordinary story of the secular Jewish Labor Bund, which was active in Eastern Europe beginning in 1897 and continued its work into the 1930s. The Bundists sought dignity and equality “here where we live,” not in a distant homeland. Through vivid portraits of insurgent poets, clandestine revolutionaries, and everyday activists, Crabapple re-creates a vanished world, offering the first popular history of the Bund's rise and fall as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust.

Crabapple discusses the history of the radical movement with author Naomi Klein. Electropop musician Max Fractal will open with an electronic rendition of “Shtil Di Nakht,” the Yiddish partisan song about a young woman fighting Nazis.

This event is co-presented by LIVE from NYPL and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

To join the event in person | Doors will open 45 minutes before the program begins. For LIVE from NYPL events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment; we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Booked seats that have not been claimed will be released shortly before start time, and seats may become available then. A standby line will form 45 minutes before the program.

To join the livestream | A livestream of this event will be available on the NYPL event page. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register! If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. Her reportage is the 2022 winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award and has been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, Vanity Fair, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. She worked on Here Where We Live Is Our Country during her Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center in 2023–2024.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and the international bestselling author of nine books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough, On Fire, and Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, which won the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024. Her work has been published in over 35 languages. She is a columnist for the Guardian, and her writing has appeared in leading publications around the world. She is the honorary professor of media and climate at Rutgers University and is associate professor in geography at the University of British Columbia, where she is founding co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice. Her new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World written with Astra Taylor, will be published in September 2026.