THE GHETTO AND THE WORLD
kind that he has published so far is that in neither did he develop any
serious literary criticism. Translation is not enough to carryover "Classi–
cal Yiddish" into a foreign medium; without criticism, at least of the
historical sort which can expand, for an uninformed audience, a given
piece of work to the full meaning of its themes, Yiddish literature, even
of its greatest period, may appear provincial and off-center, removed
from the main interests of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth cen–
tury Europe in which it was produced. And it is this impression which
one is likely to receive from Samuel's book, for all his effort to assure
the reader of the contemporaneity and importance of Peretz's intellec–
tual concerns. He divides him in two--"The Prince of the Ghetto" is
the author of the folk tales and stories of wonderful Chassidic rabbis
and their disciples, of miracles of faith, hope and charity, joy in the
Torah and in the emanation of God; Yitzchok Leibush Peretz is an
editor, social worker and intellectual leader of the Jewish Warsaw of his
time, a man of modern predilection, friendly to socialism and everything
radical and worldly-and leaves the two halves disconnected, with the
opinion that the "real" Peretz is of the ghetto. But there is a far more
intimate connection between his two natures than Samuel lets on.
Of first importance to Peretz was the reconstitution of the Jews.
They were, in his time, already committed to a secular and European
perspective; their destiny was no longer to await fulfilment of the Divine
Promise but was, like the fortune of any people taking the turn of the
century into the Twentieth, something to be made. Peretz was thus
something of a champion of pragmatism-an uncommon philosophy for
the Jews, whose practical sense had always been hitched to a religion
which gave it ample representation, but never allowed it an expression
of its own, with the right to choose self-sufficient ends. Peretz would
have freed the life-energy of the Jews from service to the religious ideal
(deTleben-that
we may live to see the Promise fulfilled) and encour–
aged it to find direct, creative satisfaction in intrinsic goods. This meant
a Jewish community closer than any had yet been to the surrounding
nations, sharing the values of all Europe and contributing its part to
the general belief in progress, and to such work as could make it real.
Secular equivalents had to be found for what was deserted in the sacred
tradition, to preserve the cohesion of the original culture. These came
to hand, oddly enough, in the science of the time and the enthusiasm
for learning, whose first effect on the lagging medieval groupings of the
Jews had been so disruptive. But socialism provided one reigning influ–
ence as the worldly objective to which the new worldly enthusiasm was
to
be
directed, and thus a goal for all the Jews; the other came from
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