The Polish Lad

Isaac Joel Linetski

1867–1869

By Way of Foreword

If my father had been able to foresee even a thousandth part of the trials I was to endure he might have been rather less ardent on the night my mother conceived me. . . . Now, of course, that is all water over the dam. [ . . . ]

Once on the eve of Tisha be-Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second…

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Creator Bio

Isaac Joel Linetski

1839–1915

Isaac Joel (Yitskhok Yoyel) Linetski was a prolific Yiddish writer, essayist, and literary translator, and an active maskil in Russia. After breaking with his Hasidic family, Linetski turned toward the Haskalah and was closely associated with the leading periodicals and figures in Hebrew and Yiddish culture, including Alexander Zederbaum and Abraham (Avrom) Goldfaden. Linetski’s most successful work was the satiric novel Dos poylishe yingl (The Polish Lad), first serialized in the Yiddish paper Kol mevaser beginning in 1867 and published in book form for the first time in 1869. The book, a humorous critique of Hasidic life written as a fictional autobiography, reached a mass audience, going through at least thirty editions. Linetski eventually settled in Odessa and became involved in the city’s early Zionist circles as both a critic and prolific translator of Hebrew literature.

Related Guide

Folk Tales and Fiction, 1750–1880

The “return to history” of Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and engagement between Jews and their majority cultures offered new models for imaginative writing beyond those within their ancestral traditions.

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