Bontshe became a synonym for the passive and humble Eastern European Jew who is not able to defend himself. The name goes back to Bontshe shvayg ("Bontshe the silent," 1927), a satirical short story by I. L. Peretz (1852–1915) published in 1894. Together with several other works published in the early 1890s, it catapulted Peretz – hitherto an unimportant Hebrew poet of late Haskalah and early Zionism – to the top of contemporary Yiddish literatur…