Ester Frumkin and Other Women of the Bund
Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**
This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Google Classroom. Students will be granted access to the class on Google Classroom after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.
Instructor: Elissa Bemporad
This course traces the life and political journey of Ester Frumkin, a prominent woman in the Jewish socialist Bund, from her early embrace of Marxism to her rise as a revolutionary activist amid the upheavals of early twentieth-century Russia. Through her experiences and the words and deeds of other Bundist women, the course explores revolutionary activism, the role of Yiddish in politics, political persecution, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the transformation of the socialist movement. It concludes with Ester’s rise to power within the Soviet communist system and her eventual execution during Stalin’s terror, revealing the tragic contradictions of revolution, ideology, and power. While the course centers on Ester, it will examine her work and ideas alongside those of other prominent women in the Bund, including Pati Kremer, Sora Fuks, and Sophia Dubnova-Erlich, among others.
Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Google Classroom.
Questions? Read our 2027 Winter Program FAQ.
Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. She is a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Indiana University Press, 2013), Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life (NYU Press, 2025). She is the co-editor of four volumes, including Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators (Indiana University Press, 2018) and Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021). She is currently working on a biography of the socialist-turned-communist Ester Frumkin. She is Series Editor of Yiddish Voices for Bloomsbury Academic/YIVO.
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