Story summary
Samenvatting van Verhalen en portretten
- 8 min. leestijd
- 10 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A rebbe vanishes every Friday dawn, and a stubborn Lithuanian crawls under his bed to find out why.
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Verhalen en portretten in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 6 h 20 min5 h fast, 7 h 30 min slow
- Lengte
- 90.300 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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Verhalen en portretten in short
Stories and Pictures is a gallery of Jewish lives in Poland and its neighbors, painted by a Yiddish writer who loved and worried over his people. It opens with a Rebbe whose secret is a kindness, and it travels through porters, children, wives promised to old men and beggar students. Each piece is short, and each leaves a picture in the mind.
What Verhalen en portretten is about
Where does a holy man go before dawn, when the whole town is asleep? In the first tale of this book, a scornful scholar hides under the bed of the Rebbe of Nemirov to find out.
Stories and Pictures gathers twenty-six pieces by Isaac Loeb Peretz, a Yiddish writer who died in 1915. He wrote for Jewish readers in Poland and nearby lands, in a time of poverty and fear. You meet porters, widows, a girl promised to an old man and a beggar student who hopes for a plague.
Voor wie is het?. Readers who love humane short stories, Yiddish folk humor, Hasidic legends and portraits of ordinary small-town people will enjoy this collection. It also draws those curious about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A doubter follows a holy man in the dark
Every Friday before dawn, in the season of penitential prayers, the Rebbe of Nemirov vanishes from his house. The door stands open and the bed is empty. Nobody finds him in the synagogue or in either study house.
The townspeople say he flies up to heaven to plead for them. A visiting Lithuanian laughs at this. So he slips into the Rebbe's room and lies under the bed all night, while above him the Rebbe sighs with grief for all Israel.
Then the Rebbe puts on a peasant's clothes, takes a hatchet and glides from shadow to shadow. The Lithuanian follows him out of town and into a small wood. There the Rebbe stops beside a young tree and raises his hatchet. The laughter makes you a doubter too, so the quiet turn at the close lands with force. Look for goodness in what people do unseen.
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Poor families keep love alive with small things
Peretz often begins with hunger and ends with tenderness.
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A stranger's story leaves more questions than answers
In the Post-Chaise puts a writer in a dark coach with a fellow passenger who tells him everything in one breath.
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A girl is promised to a rich old man
Married is told by a woman looking back.
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A boy keeps asking what the soul is
What Is the Soul? is told by a man looking back on a boyhood spent with one question.
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Two outcasts pray for a plague
In Time of Pestilence, a town is gripped by fear.
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Silence, dreams and the dead speak louder than words
Bontzye Shweig opens with a dry comparison.
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A census taker walks through towns that fear him
In Travel-Pictures a narrator is sent to count Jewish life in the little towns.
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Hunger, letters and charity test every household
In the later city pieces, poverty gets sharper and the voices more personal.
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Fables and legends turn private sorrow into wisdom
Peretz is also a teller of fables.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- The Rebbe of Nemirov A revered holy man who disappears each Friday before dawn, and whom the whole town believes goes up to plead in heaven.
- The Lithuanian A stubborn Talmud scholar who laughs at the legend and hides under the Rebbe's bed to find out the truth.
- Bontzye Shweig A poor porter who lives and dies unnoticed, never complaining, and is welcomed in heaven with astonishing honor.
- Yössil A lame, pockmarked orphan student who longs to be married and fixes his hopes on an approaching plague.
- Doctor Savitzki A young Christian doctor with no patients and many debts, who waits for cholera to rescue his fortune.
- Leah A poor girl who tells how she is pledged to a rich old man while secretly loving a young doctor's assistant.
- Shemaiah An old former soldier who runs errands for traders in the snow, proud of his strong feet and his honest name.
- Hannah A wife whose husband has gone to America, and who writes to him from her brother's home while struggling to survive.
How it ends (spoiler)
Each tale closes in its own way. The Lithuanian, after watching the Rebbe bring wood to a sick widow, becomes his follower and says the Rebbe goes to heaven, if not higher. Bontzye, offered anything in paradise, asks for a hot roll with butter. Shemaiah dies suffocated, imagining four children embracing him. Hannah's unfinished letter is found in the pocket of the mad woman.
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Vragen over Verhalen en portretten
What is Stories and Pictures by Isaac Loeb Peretz about?
It is a collection of twenty-six tales and sketches about Jewish life in Poland and nearby lands. They include Hasidic legends, small-town portraits, a census taker's travels, fables and letters, all showing poverty, faith, humor and the pull of the wider world.
Who is Bontzye Shweig and why is the story remembered?
Bontzye is a poor porter who lives and dies without anyone noticing, and who never complains. In heaven an advocate tells his life, and the court receives him with great honor. The story is remembered for its gentle irony and its sharp eye on silence.
What does If Not Higher mean?
It is the title and closing remark of the first story, in which a Lithuanian skeptic follows the Rebbe of Nemirov on his mysterious Friday mornings. The phrase is a short, quiet answer to the claim that the Rebbe goes to heaven.
Are these stories true, and when did Peretz write them?
They are fiction, though they draw on the world Peretz knew, with real customs, trades and fears of Jewish towns. He wrote them before his death in 1915, as a Yiddish writer attentive to everyday life, faith and hardship.
What is the main message of the book?
Peretz shows that dignity lives in unnoticed people and small acts of kindness. He also asks what faith, charity and community mean when poverty and fear press hard, and he lets laughter and sorrow sit side by side.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Peretz, Isaac Loeb. Stories and Pictures. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/stories-and-pictures.
Peretz, I. L. (2026). Stories and pictures. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/stories-and-pictures
Peretz, Isaac Loeb. Stories and Pictures. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/stories-and-pictures.
@book{peretz2026stories,
author = {Peretz, Isaac Loeb},
title = {Stories and Pictures},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/stories-and-pictures}
}
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