Maurice Samuel – författare

Maurice Samuel presents to the English-reading audience one of the richest spirits of the Yiddish language to appear at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through the writings of Isaac Loeb Peretz, he provides access to the lost and lamented world of Polish Jewry. Peretz's folk and Chassidic tales are here retold. The author has arranged them into a pattern that reveals both the life and work of the great writer as well as the basic folklore of the Jews of Poland. Originally published by Knopf in 1948, this edition includes a new introduction by Jacob Neusner.

Writing neither in defense of the Jews, nor in the hope of converting Anti-Semites, the author rejects as inadequate and dangerous the economic and sociological interpretation of Anti-Semitism. He sees in it, not a form of ordinary racial intolerance or religious bigotry or political trickery, but a far deeper condition of the Western Christian mind.