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Ida Nasatir on books

The Life of Isaac Leibush
July 24, 1947—"The Life of Isaac Leibush," Southwestern Jewish Press, page 6: Not too long ago, one of our local citizens, Mr. I. Domnitz, sent me an interesting book about one of our modern major writers. I have heard of this gifted and keen witted Jewish author, but frankly my acquaintance with him was all too meager. I discovered him to be one of the foremost Yiddish men of letters, one who certainly merits a review.  He was born in 1852, in the province of Lublin, Poland. Thirty-two years ago he was found dead at his desk, after completing the second line of a children's song intended for the war refugee children's home founded by him. In his sixty-three years of life, he contributed hundreds of portraits, sketches, stories and essays. He helped Yiddish speech and Yiddish literature rise above the position of the common people's language and the common people's literature, and raised it to the level of a national language. He succeeded, where Sholom Aleichem failed.  Peretz is not merely to be read. One must live his writings even though we (most of us) must read them via translation from the Yiddish. He is one of the few creative writers in our literature who sought a justification for the Jewish life. Yehuda Halevi, our greatest poet, was also of that type. Early in the 12th century, Halevi declared that it was not the Jewish people that derived its greatness from Moses, but that it was Moses who derived his greatness from the Jews. It was he who also said that "Israel among the nations is like a heart among the organs of the human body." Such writers do not merely carry a world within them, but they carry a responsibility for the world. Judaism, social justice—these are the urges for becoming one with past generations and with eternity. Such was the road of Yehuda Halevi, and such was the road too of Peretz. Peretz was foremost a Jewish thinker. He believed in God and attached importance to faith. When asked the question: "What must Jewish literature be?" he answered: "It must be the tongue and the conscience of a harassed and tortured people. It must be the thousand-year-old reservoir in which there is faith and hope—the forces that keep us alive, that teach our children it is an honor and a distinction to be a persecuted Jew."  He knew, and he loved, and he wrote about the everyday  life and problems of his people. He made them alive. His works reflect the influence of the Talmud, tempered by the realism of Tolstoi. Above all, he was original. His was the gift of transforming the homely "Yiddish jargon" into a symphony of melody, and of infusing the spiritual beauty of the ancient Hebrew prophets into the slime and the squalor of the Jewish ghetto of his day.  Perhaps the following words, written by I.L. Peretz best describe the genius of the father of Yiddish literature: "There are some people in this world whom God kisses at their death. And then their eyes are filled with the peacefulness and the light of Paradise, and all their sufferings are stilled. But now and then there comes into the world one whom God kisses at birth, so that everyone of his thoughts throughout his life is holy and every mission of his heart is sacred. Heaven is mirrored in his eyes, and every word he utters is a song."