Tale
Hasidic Tales
Khsidish
Isaac Leib Peretz · 1900
Synopsis
Tales drawn from the life of Hasidic communities. In the best known, a sceptic from Lithuania wants to prove to the Hasidim of Nemirov that their rabbi does not ascend to heaven, as they believe, during the days of penitence, and secretly follows him in the early morning. Other stories set a learned rabbi against a Hasidic master, follow the metamorphoses of a melody, retell the tales of Rabbi Nahman or describe the joy of the festivals: piety is regarded with respect, without the author sharing the beliefs.
Context
The stories began to appear in 1899 in the Zionist weekly Der Yud, published in Kraków and Warsaw, before being collected under the title Khsidish: the most famous, Oyb nisht nokh hekher, appeared there on 11 January 1900. Against the writers of the Haskalah, who mocked Hasidism, their author found in popular piety a literary subject, and these stories were long read in Jewish schools as moral tales.
Who it is for
Short stories; it helps to know a little about what the religious life of the Jewish towns of the East was like.
Prizes and reception
Texts that brought Hasidic material into modern Yiddish literature, among the most widely read of their author.
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The pages consulted to check this page.