On Peretz’s Yortsayt / לכּבֿוד פּרצעס יאָרצײַט

Y.L. Peretz (YIVO Archives)

By Yasha Giner, Editor of CHUTZPAH: The Voice of Workers Circle Youth

English translation below.

Today is the yortsayt (also spelled yahrzeit; the Jewish anniversary of someone’s death) of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, one of the founders of modern Yiddish culture. Peretz’s life and work reflect many of the ideals that the Workers Circle, and CHUTZPAH in particular, hold dear. In his novels, poems, stories, and plays, which describe the customs and complexities of Eastern European Jewish life in their complex and colorful fullness, people of all kinds come to life: Hasidim and secularists, workers and bosses, drunks, ghosts, and socialists.

Reading him, we come to understand more profoundly Ashkenazi civilization in Eastern Europe, a history that weighs heavily on us, living in the wake of the Holocaust. But reading Peretz today is no simple exercise in mourning. Just the opposite — to immerse yourself in his writing is to reckon with the fullness, the liveliness, the radical possibility of diaspora, of Jewish culture, and of shared life, even in difficult times. Today, we should read Peretz, reflect on his life and beliefs, and rededicate ourselves to fighting for a Jewish culture and a wider human community that embodies his lofty ideals.

Koved zayn ondenk! Honor his memory.

To read an English translation of a famous story by Peretz, “And Maybe Even Higher,” click here.

For our readers who know Yiddish, we attach a link to a recorded lecture by David Roskies, “Peretz the Renewer,” delivered at Montreal’s Jewish Public Library in 1980 and digitized by the Yiddish Book Center.