Bundists were in conflict with virtually all other groups of Jews. To tradi-
tionalists and the politicized Orthodox, Bundism was even more
antireligious than Zionism. Zionists at least spoke Hebrew and were trying
to rebuild the ancestral homeland; there was no such mystical rationalization
for the Bund. Liberal, assimilationist Jews regarded the Bund as a radical
Jewish fringe. Zionists regarded Bundists as assimilationists; Bundists
regarded Zionists as capitalist imperialists, and totally unrealistic in their
aims. Labor Zionists and Bundists, while sharing some aims in common and
periodically cooperating to work toward them, generally regarded each other
as a corruption of authentic Jewish socialism which was dangerously mis-
leading its followers.
The most challenging aspect of Autonomism and Bundism was impugn-
ing traditional Jewish culture without impugning diaspora itself, epitomized
by their endorsement of Yiddish as a viable secular national language.
Previously, Yiddish had been assailed by every progressive movement (Reform,
Modern Orthodox, Zionism) as outdated and the epitome of diaspora decay.
The challenge of reviving Yiddish and creating a secular Yiddish culture was
eased by the literary revival of Yiddish literature during the 1870s. Initially
an offshoot of the revival of Hebrew that began in the Russian Haskalah,
Yiddish, too, became a language of social criticism. In general, Yiddish writ-
ers presented alternatives to the difficulties of Jewish life that did not entail
leaving the diaspora.
The leading Yiddish writers in this respect were Shalom Rabinowitz
(also known as Shalom Aleichem) and Isaac Leib Peretz. Rabinowitz was
born in Ukraine and received an upbringing that was a mishmash of tradi-
tion and change. He studied in a hederand a gymnasium; his father, though
traditional, loved Haskalah Hebrew literature. Rabinowitz wrote in Hebrew,
yet he regarded his most serious works as those in Yiddish. His first Yiddish
work was a dictionary of curses used by stepmothers. He used the pseudo-
nym Shalom Aleichem for the first time in 1883. In 1905, he emigrated to
the United States. Through his most famous literary character, Tevye the
Dairyman, he expressed a sharp criticism of traditional Jewish life. The sto-
ries of Tevye and his family illustrated that traditional Judaism could no
longer sustain the complex fabric of Jewish family life, and that Jews were
politically weak and completely vulnerable to tsarist decrees. In one espe-
cially poignant exchange, Tevye attempts to explain his daughter Chava’s
devastating and scandalous marriage to a Russian Christian peasant by
quoting (or misquoting) a rabbinic aphorism. In response, his wife scolds
him for spending too much time quoting the rabbis and not enough time
being a good father. Tradition could unwittingly unravel the fabric of
Jewish family life.
No less critical was Isaac Leib Peretz (1851–1915). Born in Zamo ́s ́c, he
was raised as a traditional Jew but acquired a secular education indepen-
dently. He was married by arrangement at 18, but rebelled, divorced his wife,
198 Anti-Semitism and Jewish responses, 1870–1914