Hi, I'm Melissa Nadwarni, and you are listening to NPR's Book of the Day.

Today, our book is by artist and writer Molly Crabapple, who went on a journey across Europe to uncover the story of the Jewish labor Bund, a political party founded in the 1800s that was secular, socialist, and anti-Zionist. Her great-grandfather, Sam, was part of

the Bund in the Russian Empire in the early 1900s. Her new book, Here Where We Live is Our Country,

brings in his story and the story of her family to complement the many historical archives,

she found along the way. Crabapple talks with morning editions,

Lela Faddle. Writer and artist Molly Crabapple learned to paint from her mother.

And my mother learned how to paint from her grandfather, a post-impressionist painter named Samuel Rothbort.

Crabapple grew up surrounded by his work. Her favorite was a watercolor painting of a young woman in a skirt. Her hair pulled back and she was throwing a rock through a window.

And this painting was titled, Itka the Bundist, breaking windows. I thought, Bundist, what's that?

So she decided to find out and spent seven years researching the Jewish Bund, a labor party

born in the 19th century in the Tsarist Empire.

She learned Yiddish and traveled to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine to dig through archives

and find answers.

And the more I read these amazing books and letters and newspapers,

the more I felt like I was doing necromancy,

like I was speaking directly to the past, to my ancestors.

Crabapple's latest book is here, where we live is our country,

The Story of the Jewish Bund.

I started our conversation by asking her what she found.

What was the Jewish Bund?

The Jewish labor boond was a revolutionary political party born in 1897 in the Tsarist

empire that was secular, that was socialist, that was defiantly Jewish.

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