SOURCE: "Peretz," in The Flowering of Yiddish Literature, Thomas Yoseloff, 1963, pp. 98-116.

In the following essay, Liptzin praises Peretz's uplifting vision of the Jewish character.

Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz is the supreme literary artist of Eastern European Jewry. From his poems, stories, and dramas far more than from the cold chronicles of objective historians, one can gain the deepest insight into the moods, morals, and folkways of his colorful cultural epoch. From him also stem many talented disciples who enriched Yiddish literature with literary masterpieces and who are still influencing Jewish life today.

Peretz, who was born in 1852 at Zamosc in Poland and died in 1915 at Warsaw, experienced all the ferment and restlessness that swept Jewish life from the mid-nineteenth century until the First World War. He was reared in the orthodox religious tradition that had persisted with but slight changes since the Middle Ages. Early in life, however...