My Childhood Years: A Memoir by Peretz Hirshbein

Translated by Leonard Wolf 

At the end of the nineteenth century, in an unspoiled rural corner of Eastern Europe, the sensitive youngest son of a miller lives in affinity with nature, keeping kinship with the river and trees, the animals and birds alike. While little Peretz admires the physical labor of his father and brothers, who tirelessly grind flour at the mill, he emerges as a star pupil at the local heder. He might amount to something, his proud parents are told—in other words, become a rabbi. But to pursue his Torah studies, the shy yeshiva boy must live among strangers in a succession of unfamiliar towns. As his horizons expand, so does his hunger to experience the world in all its complexity, and his exclusive commitment to the holy texts starts to waver. Finally, working in Vilna as a Hebrew teacher, mixing with poets and university students and reading Tolstoy and Turgenev, Shakespeare and Goethe, his destiny as a writer is made manifest. 

In graceful, lucid prose, given eloquent form by Leonard Wolf’s note-perfect translation from the Yiddish, Peretz Hirshbein chronicles with charming intimacy the first two decades of his life during a pivotal era in the history of European Jewry. A richly captivating coming-of-age memoir, My Childhood Years is also a timeless meditation on the conflict between religion and art—and a celebration of their wondrous interplay.