Prince of Ghetto: A Revelation of the Life and World of Polish Jewry Through a Retelling of the Tales of the Yiddish Master, Isaac Loeb Peretz

Plot

i can't rave about this book enough! Maurice Samuel is so eloquent in his discussion of Peretz that it is a pleasure to read his rendering of Peretz' stories. I have a much clearer understanding of Jewish transitions in response to the Enlightenment as well as a better and deeply satisfying entry into the variety and strangeness of Eastern European Jewish Tales. Samuel does a very lovely job of telling Peretz' stories and, then, when necessary, interjecting his own comments as the stories progress. It's worth it just to read Samuel's chapter on why it's so difficult to translate Yiddish.

This work consists in Samuel's retellings of the Hasidic tales and folkstories of Isaac Loeb Peretz. Peretz was in his lifetime a major Jewish educator. He was a contributor to the Yiddish theatre but it was the stories which won him wide popularity. He was at the beginning of the twentieth century a champion of Yiddish , Jewish nationalism and the working- class movement. Peretz writes of the aspirations of simple people and his work spoke to a considerable share of that society so evilly destroyed by the Nazis.