SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Literature and Culture

I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism

Adi Mahalel

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781438492346
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz (1852–1915) was a major leader of Eastern European Jewry in the years prior to World War I, and was deeply involved in Jewish politics and communal life throughout his lifetime. In The Radical Isaac, Adi Mahalel examines a central part of his life and art that has often been neglected, namely, his close alignment with the needs of the Jewish working-class and his deep devotion to progressive politics. Although there have been numerous studies of Peretz and his work, this very central component of his life nonetheless remains severely understudied. By offering close readings of the "radical" Peretz, Mahalel recasts the way political activism is understood in scholarly evaluations of the writer's work. Employing a partly chronological, partly thematic scheme, Mahalel follows Peretz's radicalism from its inception and then through the various ways in which it was synchronically expressed during this intense period of history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Intellectual and Historical Backdrop of Peretz’s Early Work, Outline, and Methodology
• Chapter 1 Education, Professions, and Literary Proclamations: Peretz between Warsaw Positivism and Proto-Socialism
• Chapter 2 A Radical Shift: Becoming a Social-Protest Writer
• Chapter 3 “To Be a Fighter with Both Fists!”: Peretz the Radical Hebrew Writer
• Chapter 4 On Love and Class War: Peretz’s 1890s Hebrew and Yiddish Poetry
• Chapter 5 Between Liberal Satire and Socialist Roots: Peretz’s Hasidic Creations of the 1890s
• Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover