Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (1389-1793) were pretty much governing themselves and lived in peace -- in the late 1700s they comprised nearly 80% of world Jewry. The Hebrew joke was for 'polonia' (Poland in Latin) to be read as poh-lan-ya (God rests here). In the words osponsa No. 73 of the great Kraków rabbi Moses Isserles 'Remuh' (1510-72): "It is better to live on dry bread, but in peace, in Poland."
I actually have a point :) -- after the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was torn apart by Russia, Prussia and Austria, the majority of the Jews were in the Russian partition with the second-largest in the Austrian
The Russians had no significant Jewish population before this and the sudden, large, prosperous community which governed itself was a shock to them
They didn't know what to do, so Tsarina Catherine the Great kept them restricted to the Pale of Settlement, which corresponded exactly to the P-L commonwealth parts gobbled up by Russia
The Jews there were subjected to pogroms, second class citizenship treatment etc. and the May laws whereby their remaining rights were taken away from them was the last straw
Add this to the other factor in the 1800s -- the rise of nationalism and Jewish nationalism was at odds with not only the strong national identities of the Russians, Poles and Saxon Germans who lived in that area, but also with the Ukrainian, Belarussian and Lithuanian identities that were developing.
Jews didn't have the option they had in the pre 1850 days of governing themselves, being a nation in a nation, they had to assimilate or else retreat further into their tradition, which in the case of the Litvaks and divergently, the Chassids, they did
The Jews also participated in the Polish uprisings against the Russians, but these 3 failed and the Jews like the Poles started to introspect and look for other options politically -- some went to Zionism, some retreated into Jewish tradition, some assimilated into the German, Polish and Russian societies, converting or maybe not and some rejected religion utterly and went into the streams of socialism
Communism with its themes of equality for all had an attraction for a persecuted people -- an understandable one.
Among the Bolsheviks 5 of the 23 leaders of the Bolshevik party from 1917 to 1934 were of Jewish origin and those of Jewish origin comprised nearly 15% of the party before 1934.
I repeat Jewish origin - they were not practising, no more than Stalin or Mikoyan or others.
Trotsky was the leading example of this -- and in many ways Trotsky was the one who saved the Bolsheviks from annihilation. The Bolsheviks during the great war had infiltrated the Imperial Army and sown discontent against the officers. many russian soldiers (all conscripts) were sick of the hell they faced and turned on their officers. This was very successful and led to March 1917.
But the problem then was -- how to create a "Red Army" without officers? Trotsky solved this problem by reinstating the officers, and to ensure that they did not jump to the White Army immediately, he put a political commisar to watch over them
Also, they were given different names rather than Captain etc. -- things like GlavKom etc (short forms of Glawny Kommander etc)
Anyway, so Trotsky now controlled the Army and he was the face of Bolshevism after Lenin -- and this was widely used by those who believed the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to say see look, the Jews are trying to take over the world
Many in the West -- not just Germany, but also the US, UK etc. fell for this and believed it, equating Judaism with Bolshevism.
Remember this -- it was not only Trotsky but also Marx was of Jewish origin (but his father had converted to Lutheranism before and Karl was an athiest) as was the hungarian Soviet leader (yes, there was a short lived Soviet state in Hungary in 1919-1920) who was partly of Jewish origin
This was enough to demonise the Jews as Bolsheviks -- it was exacerbated during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920 and the White Russian- Red Russian wars when the Pale of Settlement was where much of the battles occured and where Jews were sometimes swept up to forcibly join the Red army
But then in the 1920s, Stalin forcibly came to power, killing off his enemies after Lenin died. Trotsky was his main rival, so Trotsky had to die. This was the seeds of the Communist distrust of Judaism. This went further with Stalin's purges when Kamenev etc were killed
But under Stalin the party continued to be overly weighted in favor of non-Russians, not only those of Jewish origin, but also Georgians like Stalin or Armenians or even Poles like Dzierzhinsky and Radek.
When Stalin fell, the flood-gates lifted and Khrushchv denounced Stalinism in his "Secret speech" -- and the anti-Jewish nature came to fore
This is incredible from a historians point of view -- Jews who were demonised by the West as being Bolshevik sympathisers were demonised by the Soviets as being US-agents, Rotschild agents etc.
There is no long lasting communist anti-Judaism imho,
My comment had nothing to do with 'Jews' relationship with the 'Bolsheviks' or Jews being Communists. That is obviously not the case in America.
But it had everything to do with the Hard Left in America -- and no, not the FDR New Deal liberals which is where many Jews gravitated. FDR was not a Commie and neither were most people who thought (mistakenly) that he was right, and still think so.
The hard left hated the FDR liberal types even before FDR and set out to destroy them, and they have pretty much succeeded in that effort over the last 30 or so years.
The old John L. Lewis type union leaders who really did care about the workers have been replaced by Hard Left ideologues like John Sweeney and Rich Trumpka who don't give a damn if every factory or coal mine in the country shuts down and puts those same workers on the street as long as it furthers their leftist agenda to destroy capitalism. The Left ain't the same as 'Liberals.'
Conservatives and Liberals could agree on things and find a way through disagreements. Conservatives and Leftists can never agree, and the problem we have today is there are really no Liberals anymore. The hard left owns the Democrat party, lock, stock and barrel.
From Walter Duranty in the 1920s, though Alger Hiss in the 40s and 50s, Jane Fonda and Bill Ayres in the 60s, to their current crop lead by Barak Obama, the leadership has never been Jews. None of the prominent hard left leaders in the US have been Jews.
There have been operatives like the Rosenbergs or Alinskies, but the bulk of the movement has always been strictly non-demoninational and mostly non-Jews.
For the hard left, their only religion and heritage is Marx. Nothing else matters for them. They don't compromise.