Chava Rosenfarb on Isaac Leib Peretz

“Modern Yiddish literature attained its maturity with the work of three classical masters: Mendele Moykher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz. These three authors were the literary forebears whom subsequent generations of Yiddish writers both emulated and rebelled against.”

“Throughout all of Yiddish literature, beginning with the classical writers...there is an undercurrent of sympathy for the Jewish woman, as well as guilt about her double enslavement, both as woman and as Jew...Itzkhok Leybush Peretz was most aware of the Jewish woman's double bind and depicted it without embellishment. I would say that he was the first thoroughgoing feminist in the literature, as can be seen in his two strongest stories from Folkstimlekhe Geshikhtn (Folkloric Tales).”