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Yehoshue Perle (1888–1943)

Autor(a) de Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life

1 Work 30 Membros 1 Review

About the Author

Obras por Yehoshue Perle

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Outros nomes
Perle, Yehoshua
Data de nascimento
1888
Data de falecimento
1943-10-21
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
Poland
Local de nascimento
Radom, Poland
Local de falecimento
Auschwitz, Poland
Locais de residência
Radom, Poland
Warsaw, Poland
Ocupações
novelist
short story writer
journalist

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Yehoshue or Yehoshua Perle was one of Poland’s most popular, controversial, and prolific Yiddish writers. When his novel Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935, Jewish leftists were scandalized by the sex scenes, and Isaac Bashevis Singer complained that it was too bleak to be psychologically credible. Yet within two years, it was heralded as a modern masterpiece. Perle was born in Radom, central Poland, the son of a merchant. After several years of traditional Jewish education, he was sent to a Russian school and became a bookkeeper. At age 17, he went to Warsaw, where he worked in a bank. He spent his free time reading literature, attending the theater, and meeting other young Jewish writers. His first work in Yiddish, an article called Shabes, was published in 1908. He also worked as a journalist and wrote short stories and novels, some of which were published serially in daily newspapers. In 1937 and 1938, he was awarded two prestigious prizes, one from the Warsaw Yiddish PEN club and the other from the Bund. During the German invasion of Poland at the start of World War II in September 1939, Perle joined the tens of thousands of people who fled Warsaw. He reached Lwów (Lviv) in western Ukraine by November. When the Germans arrived there, Perle, his son, and daughter-in-law went back to Warsaw. There he became involved in the Yiddish underground cultural organization, Yizkor. He described the roundups and deportations of Jews in a detailed diary he kept, titled Khurbn Varshe (Destruction of Warsaw). In March 1943, he and his son escaped the Jewish ghetto to live on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw under false identities. Following the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943, Perle and his son were lured out of hiding and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz.

Membros

Críticas

A novel about a working-class Hassidic Jewish family in Poland sometime in the early 20th century, as narrated by twelve-year-old Mendl. There isn't really a plot, just a slice of life from that time and place. The book becomes all the more significant because it was published in 1935 and the modern reader knows that way of life is about to be destroyed forever: hence the subtitle, "Scenes from a Vanished Life." The author himself died in Auschwitz.

Although the narrator of "Everyday Jews" is a child, this book isn't a children's book by any means. Everyone is sleeping with everyone else, and it's not strictly married couples or even girlfriends and boyfriends who are doing this. Mendl has half-siblings from both parents, and at one point in the story his mother's son tries to seduce his father's daughter. (Or maybe it was the other way around, I don't remember.) One of his half-sisters becomes pregnant by her employer and then miscarries. A maid and a neighbor girl both try to seduce Mendl himself, though he hasn't even had his bar mitzvah yet. The Polish Jewry of the 1930s was shocked by this book when it came out, though it all seems pretty tame to me, not graphic at all.

I would recommend this book to people interested in Hassidic and/or pre-Holocaust Jewry. It has a few footnotes for clarification and also defines some terms for the Gentile reader. It's a slow-moving story without a lot of action, but beautifully written with some lovely similes, and it really taught me a lot about the prewar Polish Jews.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
meggyweg | May 31, 2009 |

Prémios

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Associated Authors

Shirley Kumove Translator
Maier Deshell Translator

Estatísticas

Obras
1
Membros
30
Popularidade
#449,942
Avaliação
½ 3.5
Críticas
1
ISBN
4