Isaac Bashevis Singer
(1904–1991)

Isaac Bashevis Singer's vibrant stories have made him immensely popular with audiences young and old. Much of his work evokes the small Polish village in which he was born. It describes the lives of Jews in Poland, many of whom were killed by the Nazis during World War II. "He'll turn wherever he is into the streets of Poland," Singer's friend Dorothea Straus said. "Consciously or unconsciously, he is interested in preserving the culture he left."

Born in 1904 in the tiny Polish village of Radzymin, Singer was the son of a rabbi, a Jewish religious leader. When Singer was four, his family moved to Warsaw, the capital of Poland, where his father set up a rabbinical court in their run-down home. Singer described the many functions of the rabbinical court when he said, "My father's home on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw was a study house, a court of justice, a house of prayer, of storytelling, as well as a place for weddings and Hasidic banquets."

A rabbinical court is also a place where community members discuss their problems and ask the rabbi for advice. Young Isaac would listen, fascinated, by the people's stories. Later, he would use them as inspiration for stories of his own.

Singer received a traditional religious education. He studied the Torah, the Talmud, the Cabala, and other sacred Jewish books. He was born into a line of great rabbis so holy they were said to perform miracles, and he was expected to follow their lead. Instead, Singer followed the example of his older brother Israel Joseph, whom he called his mentor, and became a writer.

Like much of Eastern Europe during the rise of Hitler, Poland was a dangerous place for Jews. Alarmed by the possibility of a Nazi invasion, Singer fled Poland in 1935 and joined his beloved older brother in New York City. He began writing for The Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish-language newspaper. Shortly after that, Singer's old neighborhood in Warsaw was destroyed. In 1939, the Nazis killed his mother and one of his brothers in Poland. Devastated by these losses, Singer wrote nothing for seven years. He then became one of the most prolific writers of his age, writing often about Polish Jews. In this way, he kept the ruined world of his childhood alive.

Singer wrote almost exclusively in Yiddish, a language spoken by Eastern European Jews. Though he became fluent in English, Singer continued to write in his native language. He explained, "I always knew that a writer has to write in his own language or not at all."

Much of Singer's fiction takes place in the Yiddish-speaking Jewish ghettos of Poland. His stories are filled with Jewish folklore and legends. The struggles of Singer's characters display his understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of human nature.

Singer also wrote about Jews who fled Europe because of the Holocaust, and about Holocaust survivors in the New World. He believed that "the serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation." However, he also believed that the most important role of fiction is to entertain. He was a storyteller, a philosopher, and a preserver of the past.

Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, and was praised for his "impassioned narratives, which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, bring universal human conditions to life." In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Singer noted "the high honor bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language." He spoke of the Jews who lived in European ghettos and said that we "can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation."

After immigrating to the United States in 1935, Singer spent the rest of his life in New York and Florida. He became a familiar figure in his New York neighborhood, taking walks, feeding the pigeons, and eating vegetarian lunches in local cafeterias. In 1991, after several strokes, Singer died at the age of 87.

Yiddish is the language of the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe. It is written in Hebrew, and it is based on a number of German dialects. Its vocabulary is mostly German, but it has been widely influenced by Hebrew, Slavic, English, and the Romance languages.

Singer called Yiddish "a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government." Although it is not a national language, Yiddish has about four million speakers worldwide. Before the slaughter of six million Jews during the Holocaust in World War II, Yiddish was spoken by more than eleven million people.

While Hebrew was the language of scholars, Yiddish was the language of the street, spoken by ordinary people. For this reason, its vocabulary is weak in abstractions. It also has few words that describe nature, for the Jews of Eastern Europe lived in cities. However, it has a wealth of words and expressions that describe character and human relations. It has many terms of endearment and makes great use of proverbs and idioms. These qualities make Yiddish a warm, vibrant language.

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z