Biography

YITSKHOK-LEYBUSH PERETS (ISAAC LEIB PERETZ) (May 18, 1852[1]-April 3, 1915) He was born in Zamość, Lublin district, Poland, into a well-pedigreed, fervently anti-Hassidic family. The name Perets may be of Sefardic origin, because in Spain the surname Peres [or Perez] is highly popular among Marranos. This hypothesis is, however, not borne out by the facts. Perets himself never remarked that he came from Sefardic roots. We know that his great-grandmother, Naytshe Perets, came from Frankfurt-am-Main. She was a devout woman who sat day and night with the Talmud and sang beautifully. She lived in Levertov (Liubartov), where the Perets family settled after moving from Germany. Perets’s paternal great-grandfather was a great scholar and the author of the popular religious work, Pene yehoshua (The faces of Joshua). Because of his business, he often went abroad and introduced a kind of worldliness to the family which was passed on hereditarily. The fact that the family was non-Hassidic should be especially noted, for in his later years Perets achieved the apogee of a writer’s mission both in his Hassidic tales and in his “folk stories” which have within them the kernels of Hassidism. Perets’s father Yude was a great student of Talmud, and in Zamość he married Rivke Levin who was the daughter of a highly prominent “Leipzig” merchant, Shloyme-Hersh. Y. L. Perets was closely tied on both his mother’s side and his father’s side to Torah and secular learning. He was his parents’ third or fourth child; the earlier children had died, and he was thus the first-born son, not according to Jewish law but according to the attitude of his parents and his entire family toward him. Perets’s father at first did business in lumber, sending rafts to Danzig, but he found no success in business. So, his mother opened a notions shop, and his father joined in partnership with a new office: a beer brewery. By nature Yude Perets was a virtuous man and, although he was never rich, he gave a great deal to charity, and he was always ready to help a poor man. The future classic writer of Yiddish literature received a traditional Jewish education, but as he was growing up, he also had teachers of Hebrew, German, and Russian. His father thought he ought to sit for the examinations for secular high school, but his mother who was very devout would not stand for such “heresy.” From childhood, Perets had the makings of a prodigy. He was blessed with a quick mind and a “sharp head.” In addition, he had a proclivity to paint and to carve. At age three he was already studying the Pentateuch and at six he was studying Talmud. He went through numerous tutors, every one of whom was not only imprinted in his memory but also in his soul and his spirit. The young Perets was very much alive, a bit of a brat. On many occasions he played practical jokes on his elementary school teachers to get out of class for a while. For a short time he studied in Shebershin (Szczebreszyn), three miles from Zamość,[2] and there a new world emerged before him: he had more free time and, more importantly, a slacker discipline, so that he could throw himself into the fields, the meadows, and the sun. His teacher in Szczebreszyn, Reb Pinkhesl, was in his own way an “enlightened” Jew and he taught the students that it was most important for them to create for themselves an “intellectual problem”—to study on one’s own and “sharpen one’s head.” They were expected to come before the teacher with questions and doubts. Perets, who had from childhood evinced a passion to make his way alone to a conclusion and to “break through” a Talmudic passage, was enthused by Reb Pinkhesl’s manner of teaching and succeeded in learning a great deal more with him than with other teachers. When he returned home to Zamość, he studied together with a friend under the celebrated scholar Avrom Yeshua Dayan and later with his close friend Yitskhok Gelibter in the synagogue study chamber. At that time he was still very devout, observing fast days and penitential purifications. At the age of thirteen, however, a change transpired within him. He began to read texts that other boys his age had not read, such as Akedat yitsḥak (The binding of Isaac) and Ḥovot halevavot (Duties of the heart), among others. Two works by the Rambam (Moses Maimonides) made a particularly strong impression on him: Yad haḥazaka (The mighty hand) and More nevukhim (Guide of the perplexed). Perets was once reading a religious text, in which the author spoke without sufficient respect for the Rambam, and he became so angry that he blotted out the offending lines. A fanatically devout young man saw this in the study chamber and set off a frightful scandal. The young Perets was almost thrown out of the synagogue study hall as a result. Later, his thirst for knowledge led him to works of kabbala, which he located on a bookshelf that he father held very dear. But these books did not satisfy his thirst, because his curiosity for learning had gone much further. Perhaps he responded to the works of kabbala with his emotions; to Jewish Enlightenment literature, on the other hand, to which he arrived a bit later, he responded with his intellect. This he understood, but he didn’t love it. In his adult years, he also struggled between ideas and feelings, and he would discover harmony between them in his searching. He was at this time also acquainting himself with Polish literature. His teacher for Polish was the son of the mathematician Avrom Yankev Shtern. By chance, he happened upon a rich private library, and he threw himself into the books, as a thirsty man would to a well. In this library there was mixed together in no order Dumas’s many volumes of fiction translated into Polish, Victor Hugo’s novels, and similar works, and next to them were scholarly work of physics, natural science, history, and even Napoleon’s Codex—all in Polish. These books shook up his world view, leaving him full of doubts, and he had no on with whom he could speak about his spiritual discombobulation. In Zamość there was a teacher of Jewish religion named Sh. Khorak who was later the Yiddish censor in Warsaw, and he advised Perets to go to Zhitomir and study there in the rabbinical seminary (from which he, Khorak, had graduated). He even helped Perets with expenses by pawning his own gold chain. Perets, though, remained in Zamość. His great love for his mother, for whom his departure would have been a tragic experience, prevented him from proceeding there. Perets grew into adult bachelorhood, and his father arranged a marriage for him. He was engaged to the daughter of Gavriel-Yudl Likhtenfeld, a follower of the Jewish Enlightenment who wrote Hebrew poetry. Following the wedding, Perets had to find a way to earn a living, although his father-in-law gave him a handsome dowry. In Tsoyzmer (Sandomierz) he became a partner in a brewery and settled into that naturally beautiful town. Perets, though, was engrossed in entertaining guests and in writing, such that the business was left virtually abandoned. One year on the eve of Passover, he forgot to sell his leavened goods in the brewery, and after Passover he had to pour out all of the beer, because he could not delude his Jewish customers. He lost all of his money and had to flee from the town with the cemetery in which he had buried his son Yankev. In 1876 and 1877 Perets lived in Warsaw and made a living teaching Hebrew. In this period he also began to write creatively. He had in fact been writing since childhood, but these were childish efforts, and in his mature years he never paid [this early work] any attention. He dared to send a poem of his to a journal, apparently under the influence of his father-in-law Likhtenfeld. This first poem of his, in Hebrew, was published in Hashaḥar (The dawn) (Sivan [= June-July] 1875). It was entitled “Hashutafut” (The partnership) and was a satirical, narrative work. A plague breaks out in a wealthy farmer’s flock, and the farmer comes before the heavenly Ḥamuel and pleads with him that, if he prays the plague might cease. The heavenly one says that he can do this, but that the farmer must enter into a partnership with him for the sheep. The farmer agrees, but the plague does not stop. In the end the heavenly one comes for his portion of the sheep, as they had agreed upon, and the farmer then says: the sheep have all died. The heavenly one says to him: But you have their hides, and I am a partner in them as well. This poem, with which Perets debuted in print, was characteristic of his subsequent path. Ordinarily, a poet starts off with a lyrical, personal, even highly sentimental work. Perets set out with an Enlightenment poem, but at that time it had a kind of biblical resonance which suggests in a parable what the prophet Natan gave to King David, and afterward the king took Uriah’s wife Batsheva from him. His second poem, “Ḥalukat haḥokhmot” (The transmission of wisdom), was also satirical. His third poem, “Li omrim” (I am told), which appeared in Hashaḥar (1875/1876)—which Perets himself counted as his beginning—was lyrical. In 1878 he published in A. B. Gotlober’s Haboker or (The morning light) a kind of programmatic poem, “Gavriel” (Gabriel). He speaks in this poem against those Hebrew authors of the day who are primarily concerned with their florid language, and demands content from them, content which, he claims, is the essence of poetic creation. Right on the matter of content, though, Perets was a loyal son of the Jewish Enlightenment. Perhaps he dusted off the flowery language a bit, but he adhered to the Enlightenment’s path to teach the people. In 1879 he published in Haboker or a Hebrew poem entitled “Kidush hashem” (Sanctification of the Name), based on a sad story of Jewish girl who at the time of the massacres of 1648-1649 preferred drowning, before falling into the hands of Khmelnytskyi’s Cossacks. Years later in Folkstimlekhe geshikhtn (Folktales), he used this subject in prose. In 1877 he and Gavriel-Yudl Likhtenfeld published the volume Sipurim beshir, veshirim shonim (Stories in verse, and miscellaneous poems), “by two collectors” (Warsaw, 158 pp.). The majority of the poems were by Likhtenfeld. Perets contributed a long poem, which was called “Ḥaye meshorer ivri” (Life of a Hebrew poet) and signed it YL”P. Several other poems would also be signed in this way. This long poem, “Ḥaye meshorer ivri,” and his poem “Hashefet vehamelits” (The judgment and the advocate) were signed by both men. There were other poems that went unsigned altogether, and it is difficult to know which of the two authors composed them. Perets’s poems in the volume possess more distinctively poetic indications, and Perets Smolenskin in Hashaḥar (1879) dwelt on them and noted that the beginner was one who truly appeared to be a poetic talent. Before going to Warsaw, Perets divorced his wife. Some two years later, during which he lived in Warsaw, he returned to Zamość and married for the second time, this time to Nekhame-Rokhl (Helene) Ringelblum from Lentshne (Łęczna). He intended at this time to establish a Hebrew school in Zamość, but the pious Jews there would not stand for it. For a short time, he and his uncle Yoysef Altberg and one Gedalye Shper operated a mill, but after the institution of new Russian laws and courts, on his own he arranged to turn his attention to working as a lawyer. In a short period of time, he mastered the Russian code of laws and sat for the examinations of the circuit court. Over the course of ten years, he successfully practiced as private lawyer. Even Count Zamojski had confidence in him to serve on his behalf in court trials. Twelve young men worked in the office with him, and they transcribed court papers for him. In those years Perets earned a good deal of money, but he gave away every last penny of his earnings, because he was by nature a generous man and did not know how to save money. During this decade, he published nothing, but he did write a great deal in Yiddish and in Hebrew. Just as he had been cut off from a writing environment, his fastidiousness with himself was so fierce that he tore up and burned all of his writings from this period. Uncle Yoysef Altberg, who was a great adherent of Perets’s talent, attempted to save those writings which came into his possession. After Altberg’s death his two sons, both fanatic assimilationists, got their hands on these writings and destroyed them. Older Zamość residents, though, thought of Perets’s poetry (Hebrew and Yiddish both) for many years. The poems had a gentleness about them and concerning events in the city. One of the poems was titled “Zamoshtsher pozhondkes” (Orderliness of Zamość), and it was very popular in the city. Perets reacted to the pogroms at the beginning of the 1880s with a passionate poem that circulated in manuscript in Zamość. There were skillful people who set these poems to melodies, and the people sang them and often did not even know whose poems they were. As Shmuel Ashkenazi recounts, in this period Perets explicated in Yiddish sections from Tanakh. Concerning this era in his life, of which we know little from Perets himself, Ashkenazi explains: Perets was already at the time extremely interested in Jewish social issues. He in fact loved his people, especially the poor and lower strata of them. He would always say: “For the old Talmudists and the bourgeoisie, there’s nothing we can do. There is nothing with which to help them. However, the ordinary folk, the working masses—this is a field in which to work. This is an unhappy but capable people. There are many idealists here, but they need to be educated. Thus, I shall write in Yiddish; I want to create a Yiddish literature, to read and write for the people in their language.” These very thoughts in roughly the same time frame were entertained by Mendele and also Sholem Aleichem, but Perets did not hear from them, for Yiddish literature from Ukraine did not make it to Poland. Perets organized in Zamość evening courses for laborers, at which one might learn to write and do calculations, and Jewish subject matter every Saturday during the daytime: Fayvl Gelibter taught Ethics of the Fathers; Shmuel Ashkenzai spoke about the rabbis of the Mishnah and great Jewish scholars; Perets covered Jewish history. His lessons were a great success. People came from all over to hear him speak, even young Hassidim. The government closed them all down. On Perets alone fell suspicion of socialism, and this may have been the reason that later he was deprived of his permit to practice law.