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STORIES AND PICTURES

BY

ISAAC LOEB PEREZ

TRANSLATED FROM THE YIDDISH BY

HELENA FRANK

[Illustration: colophon]

PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1906

COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA




PREFACE


My heartfelt thanks are due to all those who, directly or indirectly,
have helped in the preparation of this book of translations; among the
former, to Professor Israel Abrahams, for invaluable help and advice at
various junctures; and to Mr. B. B., for his detailed and scholarly
explanations of difficult passages--explanations to which, fearing to
overload a story-book with notes, I have done scant justice.

The sympathetic reader who wishes for information concerning the author
of these tales will find it in Professor Wiener's "History of Yiddish
Literature in the Nineteenth Century," together with much that will help
him to a better appreciation of their drift.

To fully understand any one of them, we should need to know intimately
the life of the Russian Jews who figure in their pages, and to be
familiar with the lore of the Talmud and the Kabbalah, which colors
their talk as the superstitions of Slav or Celtic lands color the talk
of their respective peasants.

A Yiddish writer once told me, he feared these tales would be too
_tief-juedisch_ (intensely Jewish) for Gentile readers; and even in the
case of the Jewish English-reading public, the "East (of Europe) is
East, and West is West."

Perez, however, is a distinctly modern writer