"Examines the Yiddish-Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz's alignment with the Jewish working-class in Eastern Europe and his devotion to progressive politics"-- Provided by publisher

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Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz Rise Jewishb: Radical Isaac

SUNY series in contemporary Jewish literature and culture, Albany, 2023

State University of New York Press, Albany, 2023

United States, United States of America

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Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Intellectual and Historical Backdrop of Peretz’s Early Work, Outline, and Methodology
The Backdrop of Peretz’s Proto-Socialist Phase (1888–92)
The Bund
Previous Scholarship on Peretz and His Politics
Outline of This Book
Chapter 1 Education, Professions, and Literary Proclamations: Peretz between Warsaw Positivism and Proto-Socialism
Bildung for the Masses, Professions for the Common People
Peretz’s Yiddish Literary Proclamations of the Early 1890s: “In Postvogn” and Bilder fun a Provints Rayze
“In Postvogn”: Creating a New Path for Yiddish Literature
State of the Nation on the Road
Storytelling
Liberalism Revised
From the Province to the City and Back
Representing Poverty
The Journey to the Provinces
Fire and Insanity in the Shtetl
Insanity
Fire
Chapter 2 A Radical Shift: Becoming a Social-Protest Writer
You Know That You Can Count Me In
Bontshe Shvayg: The Workers Will Not Be Silent
Weaving the Revolution
Anger Is an Energy: Jewish Women in Peretz’s Work
Revolutionizing the Means of Artistic Production and Radicalizing the Jewish Calendar in the Yontef bletlekh
Chapter 3 “To Be a Fighter with Both Fists!”: Peretz the Radical Hebrew Writer
Radical Hebrew Arrows
Socialism in Hebrew before Peretz
The Prose of The Arrow
“Beating Their Heads against the Wall”: Satirizing the Choveve Tsiyon in Hebrew and in Yiddish
“The Audacity to Demand Realism”: Peretz and the New Wave of Hebrew Literature
Peretz’s Major Hebrew Prose and 1890s Creations: The Poor Will Remain Silent
Coda
Chapter 4 On Love and Class War: Peretz’s 1890s Hebrew and Yiddish Poetry
The Socialist Prophet
Writing Hebrew Poetry: Early Years as a Poet
Yiddish Socialist Poetry and Political Poetry
Peretz’s Poetry in the Context of Socialist Yiddish Poetry
Collecting “Jewish Folklore”
Among Marx, Heine, and Peretz
Chapter 5 Between Liberal Satire and Socialist Roots: Peretz’s Hasidic Creations of the 1890s
Peretz and Religious Figures: The Beginning
Faith and Revolution, Secularism, and Imperialism
Making Sense of the Ridiculous, Confronting Materialist Faith
Keep Lifting Me Higher and Higher
“Between Two Mountains”: Dreaming of an Ethnic-Class Jewish Identity
Conclusion
Appendixes
Appendix to Chapter 1
Appendix to Chapter 2
Appendix to Chapter 3
Notes
Bibliography
Works by I. L. Peretz
Books and Articles in English, French, German, and Polish
Articles, Books, and Almanacs in Hebrew and Yiddish
Additional Reference Sources
Index

Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz (1852–1915) was a major leader of Eastern European Jewry in the years prior to World War I, and was deeply involved in Jewish politics and communal life throughout his lifetime. In The Radical Isaac, Adi Mahalel examines a central part of his life and art that has often been neglected, namely, his close alignment with the needs of the Jewish working-class and his deep devotion to progressive politics. Although there have been numerous studies of Peretz and his work, this very central component of his life nonetheless remains severely understudied. By offering close readings of the'radical'Peretz, Mahalel recasts the way political activism is understood in scholarly evaluations of the writer's work. Employing a partly chronological, partly thematic scheme, Mahalel follows Peretz's radicalism from its inception and then through the various ways in which it was synchronically expressed during this intense period of history.

2023-10-27