Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish in full
Yitskhok Bashevis Zinger (b. July 14?,
1904, Radzymin, Pol., Russian Empire—d.
July 24, 1991, Surfside, Fla., U.S.),
Polish-born American writer of novels,
short stories, and essays in Yiddish. He
was the recipient in 1978 of the Nobel
Prize for Literature. His fiction,
depicting Jewish life in Poland and the
United States, is remarkable for its
rich blending of irony, wit, and wisdom,
flavoured distinctively with the occult
and the grotesque.
Singer’s birth date is uncertain and has
been variously reported as July 14,
November 21, and October 26. He came
from a family of Hasidic rabbis on his
father’s side and a long line of
Mitnagdic rabbis on his mother’s side.
He received a traditional Jewish
education at the Warsaw Rabbinical
Seminary. His older brother was the
novelist I.J. Singer and his sister the
writer Esther Kreytman (Kreitman). Like
his brother, Singer preferred being a
writer to being a rabbi. In 1925 he made
his debut with the story “Af der elter”
(“In Old Age”), which he published in
the Warsaw Literarishe bleter under a
pseudonym. His first novel, Der Sotn in
Goray (Satan in Goray), was published in
installments in Poland shortly before he
immigrated to the United States in 1935.
Settling in New York City, as his
brother had done a year earlier, Singer
worked for the Yiddish newspaper
Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward), and as
a journalist he signed his articles with
the pseudonym Varshavski or D. Segal. He
also translated many books into Yiddish
from Hebrew, Polish, and, particularly,
German, among them works by Thomas Mann
and Erich Maria Remarque. In 1943 he
became a U.S. citizen.
Although Singer’s works became most
widely known in their English versions,
he continued to write almost exclusively
in Yiddish, personally supervising the
translations. The relationship between
his works in these two languages is
complex: some of his novels and short
stories were published in Yiddish in the
Forverts, for which he wrote until his
death, and then appeared in book form
only in English translation. Several,
however, later also appeared in book
form in the original Yiddish after the
success of the English translation.
Among his most important novels are The
Family Moskat (1950; Di familye Mushkat,
1950), The Magician of Lublin (1960; Der
kuntsnmakher fun Lublin, 1971), and The
Slave (1962; Der knekht, 1967). The
Manor (1967) and The Estate (1969) are
based on Der hoyf, serialized in the
Forverts in 1953–55. Enemies: A Love
Story (1972; film 1989) was translated
from Sonim: di geshikhte fun a libe,
serialized in the Forverts in 1966.
Shosha, derived from autobiographical
material Singer published in the
Forverts in the mid-1970s, appeared in
English in 1978. Der bal-tshuve (1974)
was published first in book form in
Yiddish; it was later translated into
English as The Penitent (1983). Shadows
on the Hudson, translated into English
and published posthumously in 1998, is a
novel on a grand scale about Jewish
refugees in New York in the late 1940s.
The book had been serialized in the
Forverts in the 1950s.
Singer’s popular collections of short
stories in English translation include
Gimpel the Fool, and Other Stories
(1957; Gimpl tam, un andere
dertseylungen, 1963), The Spinoza of
Market Street (1961), Short Friday
(1964), The Seance (1968), A Crown of
Feathers (1973; National Book Award),
Old Love (1979), and The Image, and
Other Stories (1985).
Singer evokes in his writings the
vanished world of Polish Jewry as it
existed before the Holocaust. His most
ambitious novels—The Family Moskat and
the continuous narrative spun out in The
Manor and The Estate—have large casts of
characters and extend over several
generations. These books chronicle the
changes in, and eventual breakup of,
large Jewish families during the late
19th and early 20th centuries as their
members are differently affected by the
secularism and assimilationist
opportunities of the modern era.
Singer’s shorter novels examine
characters variously tempted by evil,
such as the brilliant circus magician of
The Magician of Lublin, the 17th-century
Jewish villagers crazed by messianism in
Satan in Goray, and the enslaved Jewish
scholar in The Slave. His short stories
are saturated with Jewish folklore,
legends, and mysticism and display his
incisive understanding of the weaknesses
inherent in human nature.
Schlemiel Went to Warsaw, and Other
Stories (1968) is one of his best-known
books for children. In 1966 he published
In My Father’s Court, based on the
Yiddish Mayn tatns besdn shtub (1956),
an autobiographical account of his
childhood in Warsaw. This work received
special praise from the Swedish Academy
when Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize.
More Stories from My Father’s Court,
published posthumously in 2000, includes
childhood stories Singer had first
published in the Forverts in the 1950s.
His memoir Love and Exile appeared in
1984.
Several films have been adapted from
Singer’s works, including The Magician
of Lublin (1979), based on his novel of
the same name, and Yentl (1983), based
on his story “Yentl” in Mayses fun
hintern oyvn (1971; “Stories from Behind
the Stove”).
Sheva Zucker
