Bundism was another response to the problems facing Jews in the late 19th century, especially in the Pale of Settlement in Russia. It was a secular, socialist Jewish movement. The General Union of Jewish Workers, known in Yiddish as the «Alguemeiner Yidisher Arbeter Bund,» was founded in 1897 as the Jewish component of the socialist movement in Russian society.

The structure and ideology of the Bund (Union) was a response to the difficult situation prevailing in the Pale of Settlement, the area where Jews were permitted to live in the land of the Tsars. At that time, antisemitism was widespread among the Russian population, and the difficult economic and social situation in small Jewish towns encouraged emigration to other countries, especially the United States. Also, as part of the Russian socialist movement, the Bund shared its goals, tendencies, divisions, and methods.

The Bund received support primarily from three sectors of Jewish society. The first was the group of Jewish wage workers who began to realize their working-class status and organize into union-style groups, especially in the garment industry. The second was the circles of radical Jewish intellectuals who combined revolutionary Marxist ideas with their Jewish identity and concern for the Jewish proletariat. The third group was those Jews who were deeply rooted in Jewish culture.

In the 1870s, the Bund made its first attempts to disseminate socialist ideas among the Jewish population, using Yiddish, their native language, instead of Russian. This indirectly contributed to revitalizing the language and its literature. With its «Kultur Lige» (Cultural League), the Bund promoted Yiddish literature, theater, art, and secular Jewish culture in general.

The Bund was part of the Russian Social Democratic Party, the organization that united various revolutionary groups operating in the Russian Empire into a single structure. At its second congress, held in London in 1903, the Bund, with five delegates out of a total of 51, sought recognition as the representative of the Russian Jewish proletariat and recognition of Yiddish as its language, but its motion was rejected, leading the Bund to leave the party.

The Bund did not consider Judaism a global national entity and fought only for the rights and autonomy of Jews in their places of residence, especially in Russia. It strongly opposed Zionism and religious orthodoxy, believing that in a socialist society, the Jewish question would be resolved. It promoted secular Jewish culture as the identity of the Jewish people, expressed in Yiddish. It spread to many countries, although its influence waned after the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. After the war, a world coordinating council of the Bund was founded in New York. Little of the Bund’s socialist ideas remained, but its love for Yiddish endures to this day.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.