Yiddish short stories
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2026-01-12 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77680 |
Description
Yiddish short stories by Isaac Goldberg and E. Haldeman-Julius is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. Framed by a critical introduction, the anthology gathers leading Yiddish voices to portray Eastern European Jewish life through allegory, realism, and psychological drama, dwelling on faith, suffering, dignity, and moral choice. The contributors range from I. L. Peretz and David Pinski to Joseph Opatoshu and Sholom Asch, with characters that include a wandering soul, a hungry laborer, and a conflicted provincial doctor. The opening of the collection begins with Goldberg’s survey of major Yiddish writers—Peretz’s humane allegory, Pinski’s probing of the proletarian psyche, Asch’s poetic realism, Raisin’s delicate miniatures, Shapiro’s stark pogrom tales, and Opatoshu’s nature-rich vision—then turns to the stories themselves. In Peretz’s Three Gifts, a soul whose merits and sins exactly balance must win entry to Heaven by bringing three offerings that embody Jewish courage and piety: Holy Land sand stained by a martyr’s blood, a modesty pin bloodied by a condemned maiden, and a skullcap cherished by a man flogged for his faith. Opatoshu’s The Judgment follows river child Zelik and his friend Rachel amid storks and folklore on the Vistula; a prank of swapping a stork’s egg for a goose egg leads to a brutal flock “trial,” and a sudden storm sweeps Rachel away as Zelik barely survives. Pinski’s A Tale of a Hungry Man traces Itsye’s starvation into fury, petty violence, theft from his deaf landlady, a clash with a gendarme, and, after a beating and a cell, a despairing suicide. Asch’s A Strange Climate opens on Dr. Lazarovitch’s estrangement after his son converts to enter university; the household grows tense as he gropes toward Jewish practice and the hope of Palestine while worrying over his younger son’s fragility. (This is an automatically generated summary.)