Ebook: Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924-1951

The involvement of Canadian Jewish Communists in the development of an autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union.

In 1928 the Soviet Union proposed the establishment of an autonomous socialist Jewish republic in the far eastern reaches of Russian territory. In Birobidzhan the eternal search for a Jewish homeland would be realized and Jews would possess their own institutions, which would function in Yiddish. A "new" Jew would be created, emancipated, and rejuvenated. Although the project was eventually revealed to be a fraud, thousands of left-wing Jews in Canada and the United States passionately supported it and campaigned on its behalf - some even emigrated to Birobidzhan.