Story summary
Samenvatting van Jiddische verhalen
- 8 min. leestijd
- 10 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A poor rabbi who has never left his town sets out for Wilna to share the misfortune of the rich.
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Jiddische verhalen in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 9 h 15 min7 h 20 min fast, 11 h slow
- Lengte
- 131.500 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1912by Diverse auteurs; vertaald door Helena Frank
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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Jiddische verhalen in short
Yiddish Tales moves from the study table to the marketplace, from the shtetl to Mukden and Manhattan. A rabbi plans to cure wealth, a man seeks land in Palestine, and a boy keeps his name through years of army service. The mood shifts from comedy to grief within a page.
What Jiddische verhalen is about
Picture a rabbi who has never gone four ells beyond his town, and who decides to cure the world of wealth. Reb Nochumtzi, the Rav of Pumpian, earns five Polish gulden a week, yet he plans to divide the misfortune of the rich among the poor. His hungry congregation collects a few rubles, and he sets off for Wilna in a peasant's cart.
That is the first tale in Yiddish Tales, a collection by many writers of the Yiddish and Hebrew tradition, put together around 1912. They come from Lithuania, Poland, Bessarabia and New York. You get water carriers, scribes, a cantor who fears for his voice and mothers counting every kopek. The stories are warm, sharp and often very funny.
Voor wie is het?. Readers who enjoy short stories rich in humor, warmth and keen observation will love this collection, especially tales of village rabbis, mothers, children and life in small towns.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A rabbi plans to share out riches
Reb Nochumtzi, the Rav of Pumpian, has never traveled beyond his small Lithuanian town. He earns five Polish gulden a week. Yet he knows the world through the holy books.
From the Torah and the Gemoreh he learns that riches are a misfortune. A rich man cannot give his misfortune away, because nobody would be mad enough to take it. Then poverty comes into his own house. His Sabbath cloak is threadbare, six children need clothes, and his wife Dvoireh begs him to think of something. He finds that poverty is a misfortune too.
His plan is to divide each rich man's unlucky wealth among many poor people. Both sides would gain. He rides to Wilna in a peasant's cart, rehearsing his speech, and the president of the community answers him with courtesy and a clever offer.
Sincere logic built only on books can walk straight past the real world.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
Land is for living, not only dying
The narrator of the second tale first tried to sell the world to come, and spies and neighbors turned on him.
- 3Begin gratis met lezen
Poverty turns Friday into a storm
Two short tales show poor households on the edge of the Sabbath.
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Faith survives exile in one small thing
It Is Well begins with a question, how did I remain a Jew, and the answer is the Schpol Grandfather, a shochet near Wilna.
- 5Begin gratis met lezen
Weddings test pride, money and tradition
Weddings show what a community expects from its feasts.
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Small disasters fill ordinary Jewish lives
Several tales find comedy in ordinary things.
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Work, hunger and talent strain every life
Fishel the teacher spends the year in Balta, away from his wife and children.
- 8Begin gratis met lezen
Conscience weighs most on the Day of Atonement
Yom Kippur appears in several tales as the day when conscience speaks.
- 9Begin gratis met lezen
Exile and migration reshape old loyalties
In A Livelihood, two young men inherit a hatred from their fathers.
- 10Begin gratis met lezen
Learning and belief divide the generations
Many tales set a child or a scholar against custom.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Reb Nochumtzi The Rav of Pumpian, a scholar of the holy books who has never left his town, and who wants to cure the world of riches and poverty.
- Yüdel The living orphan, a wanderer driven from town to town, who swings between hating and worshipping the narrator who wants Palestinian land.
- Shmerel A woodcutter with a wife and eight children, who follows a mysterious flame on a Sabbath night and dreams of a better life for his family.
- Gittel A widow who sets out for Warsaw to attend the wedding of her favorite youngest son, and wants to show the family's dignity.
- Fishel A teacher who lives away from home all year, and who struggles across a breaking river to reach his family for Passover.
- Berel Tzop A grain dealer who took a hundred-ruble note from a desk and cannot pray on the eve of Yom Kippur.
- Reb Shloimeh A seventy-year-old community leader who takes up science late in life and wants to educate the poor children and workers of his town.
- Feivke A wild blacksmith's son from the village of Kozlov, brought to his first Yom Kippur service and afraid of God.
How it ends (spoiler)
The tales end in different ways. In the first, the president of Wilna offers to persuade the poor if the rav persuades the rich, and then never sees him again. Shmerel finds a sack with a million gulden under his bed, and his wife reproaches him for keeping silent. In A Woman's Anger, the mother flings away the rope and nurses her child. In The Passover Guest, the visitor disappears with the family silver, and the boy cries for the lost land.
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Vragen over Jiddische verhalen
What is Yiddish Tales about?
It is a collection of short stories about Jewish life in small towns of Lithuania, Poland and Bessarabia and in New York tenements. They cover rabbis, workers, mothers, children, weddings, Sabbaths, Passover and Yom Kippur, with humor and tenderness.
Who wrote Yiddish Tales?
The stories are by many different writers of the Yiddish and Hebrew tradition, including Eliezer David Rosenthal, David Frischmann, David Pinski, S. Libin, Hirsh David Naumberg, Meyer Blinkin and Löb Schapiro.
What do words like Rav, Shool and Gemoreh mean?
A Rav is a rabbi. A Shool is a synagogue. The Gemoreh is the Talmud, the great collection of Jewish law and teaching. A Gass is a street, and Cheder is the traditional boys' school.
Are the stories true, and when are they set?
They are fiction, drawn from the lives of people the authors knew. Most are set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in Eastern European towns and New York, and some look back to Safed in earlier times.
Is Yiddish Tales easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that each story stands alone, with a clear scene, a lively voice and plain details of home and street. Short pieces make it easy to read one tale at a time.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Yiddish Tales. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/yiddish-tales.
Yiddish tales. (2026). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/yiddish-tales (Original work published 1912)
Yiddish Tales. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/yiddish-tales.
@book{anonymous2026yiddish,
title = {Yiddish Tales},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/yiddish-tales},
note = {First published 1912}
}
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