Di Yudishe biblioṭeḳ

Isaac Leib Peretz, 1852–1915 (Editor)

Di Yudishe biblioṭeḳ: a liṭerarish-populer-ṿisnshafṭlikher zshurnal (The Jewish Library: a popular literary and scientific magazine)

Ḳraḳa: Ferlag-gezelshafṭ “Hilf” Ṿarshoy, 1904

Isaac Leib Peretz was one of the founders of modern Yiddish literature, alongside Mendele Mocher Sforim and Sholem Aleichem. Born into an educated traditional Jewish family in Zamosz, Poland, Peretz was exposed to the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment at a very young age and became fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian, as well as German and French. He began his literary career writing in Hebrew, but later decisively switched to Yiddish. His first Yiddish work, the poem “Monish,” appeared in 1888. In the following years, he thoroughly embraced the idea of making Yiddish a universal language for education of the Yiddish masses, a goal he realized in the almanac Di Yudishe biblioṭeḳ, which he created in Warsaw in 1891. He was also its editor and a contributor. Not only did Peretz prove that Yiddish was a vibrant and rich medium for nearly every aspect of contemporary life, including science, politics, and translations of literary masterpieces from European languages into Yiddish; he also convinced young emerging writers and intellectuals, most notably the novelist Sholem Asch (1880–1957), to follow in his footsteps. Many of them made their literary debut in his almanac. 

Although Peretz had to suspend publication of Di Yudishe biblioṭeḳ in 1895 because of a lack of commercial success, he revived the journal in Krakow in 1904. On display is a title page of the third volume of the Krakow edition that appeared under the auspices of the Warsaw-based publishing society “Hilf” (Help).