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The Shtetl In The Novels Of Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Content This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received
69-6483
ADLER, Sidney, 1930-
THE SHTETL IN THE NOVELS OF ISAAC
BASHEVIS SINGER.
University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1968
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
© _ SIDNEY ADLER 1969__________
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE SHTETL IN THE NOVELS OF ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
by
Sidney Adler
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1968
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, w ritten by
Sidney Adler
under the direction of A.i.?.... D issertation C o m
mittee, and a p p ro v e d by all its m em bers, has
been presented to and accepted by the G raduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirem ents
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
'axjo
? ..
'7n>
-sF..
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Max F.
Schulz, who introduced me to the works of I. B. Singer and
who guided my work on this dissertation from its inception.
Thanks is also due to Professors Flower and Schutz, the
other members of my committee, for their useful suggestions.
To Mr. Ezekiel Lifschutz, the archivist of the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research, I am greatly indebted for his
invaluable assistance in locating and providing the Yiddish
references used in my work.
Also helpful were Miss Bluma Jarrick of the Jewish
Community Library and Rabbi Shimeon Brisman, judaica
Librarian of the UCLA Research Library.
Finally, I wish to express my deep appreciation to my
wife, Nehama Dinah Adler, who served as a perceptive sound
ing board for my ideas and who helped with the editing and
typing of the various drafts.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................... ii
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION.................................. 1
Historical Overview of the Shtetl
Sociological Overview of the Shtetl
Personal Overview of the Shtetl
II. THE FAMILY MOSKAT............................. 48
III. THE M A N O R ..................................... 73
IV. THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN......................... 99
V. THE S L A V E ........................................121
VI. SATAN IN GORAY AND THE DESTRUCTION
OF KRESHEV.....................................141
Satan in Goray
The Destruction of Kreshev
VII. CONCLUSIONS....................... .... 169
GLOSSARY............................................... 178
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ 181
iii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Historical Overview of the Shtetl
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine Isaac
Bashevis Singer's novels as reflections of the complex world
of the now-vanished shtetl. This unique cosmos of religious
and moral assumptions is the raw material from which the
most prominent living Yiddish-American writer shapes his
vision. More than a geographic entity, the shtetl is the
spiritual world which for hundreds of years gave meaning to
the life of Ashkenazic Jewry in Eastern Europe.
This introductory chapter will survey briefly the
political, economic, and social conditions out of which the
shtetl grew and the divisive elements which threatened its
existence. It will then examine the values upon which the
spiritual life of the shtetl was predicated. In addition,
the opening chapter will also focus on the author's life and;
work as a writer and on his personal memoirs as reflections ;
of his relationship to the shtetl.
The geographic shtetl, prior to its violent and com
plete destruction during World War II, comprised major por
tions of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and European
Russia. The physical shtetl was born of the violence and
brutality of European life during the Middle Ages. Follow
ing widespread pogroms directed by the church against the
"infidels," thousands of German Jews migrated to Poland
after the First Crusade in 1096. There they were at first
encouraged by Polish rulers who recognized the importance of
Jewish capital and skills to the development of a Poland
which had scarcely emerged from a feudal economy. King
Boleslav the Pious, recognizing these advantages, promulgat
ed a relatively liberal statute detailing the rights of Jews
to live and trade within his domain.
Unlike the many Christian artisans who had also
migrated from Germany and who were absorbed into the socio
economic life of Poland, the Jews were never accepted into
the mainstream of Polish life. As in Germany, they were
increasingly subjected to the doctrinal bigotry of the
medieval church, as well as to the animosity of the secular
elements in society. The eminent historian of Slavic-Jewish
history, Simon M. Dubnow, succinctly describes those forces
3
which impinged upon the Jews:
In this manner the condition of the Jews of Poland
in the thirteenth century was determined by two factors
operating in different directions: the temporal powers,
actuated by economic considerations, accorded the Jews
the elementary rights of citizenship, while the ecclesi
astic powers, prompted by religious intolerance, endeav
ored to exclude the Jews from civil life.l
Succeeding generations of Polish clerical and temporal
rulers continued a policy of religious and economic repres
sion designed to keep the Jews as a despised minority with
out political or social status. Taken as a whole, the his
tory of the Jews in Poland is an incredible record of
vicious bigotry and unrelieved repression, with few paral
lels in modern history.
One period merits special examination. This is the
seventeenth century, the background of two of Singer's
novels— Satan in Goray and The Slave. While pogroms were
A History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, I
(Philadelphia, 1916), 49. While this volume and its two
succeeding volumes, II (1918) and III (1920), offer the most
specialized and authoritative treatment of Slavic-Jewish
history, the reader is referred to the following for a good
general overview: Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx,
A History of the Jewish People (New York, 1958), and Cecil
Roth, A History of the Jews (New York, 1954). A lucid and
detailed study of the same areas is Howard Morley Sachar's
The Course of Modern Jewish History (New York, 1963).
a fact of life during this period, the Chmielnicki massacres
were by far the most brutal. These shocking disasters suf
fered by the Jewish community occurred in 1648. In the
Ukraine, then a southeastern province of Poland, enormous
estates and countless villages were populated by peasants of
the Greek Orthodox persuasion. The wealthy Polish landown
ers exploited these peasants through forced labor and numer
ous taxes. Caught between the peasants and their hated
Polish masters were the Jews, many of whom managed the
estates and secured leases on the right to sell alcohol:
Thus the Ukrainian Jew found himself between the hammer
and anvil: between the pan and khlop, between the
Catholic and the Greek Orthodox, between the Pole and
the Russian. Three classes, three religions, and three
nationalities, clashed on a soil which contained in its
bowels terrible volcanic forces— and a catastrophe was
bound to follow.2
Additional circumstances aggravated the inevitability of
disaster. In order to safeguard the Ukraine from the Tartar
hordes in the Crimea, the Polish nobility permitted the in
habitants military forces called Cossacks. In 1648, a
Cossack military leader (hetman), Bogdan Chmielnicki, allied
himself with the Tartars and initiated a peasant rebellion
against the Polish landowners. In the devastation which
2
Dubnow, I, 142.
5
followed, more than 100,000 Jews were brutally massacred. A
contemporary Jewish chronicle, Yeven Metzulah, provides
vivid details of the massacre almost identical to those used
by Singer in Satan in Goray;
. . . Some had their skins torn off and their flesh was
thrown to the dogs. Some had their hands and feet cut
off and were thrown on the road to be run over by wagons
and trampled by horses. Some were dealt many wounds not
enough to kill and were thrown outside so that they
should not die immediately but should thrash about until
they expired, and many were buried alive. Children were
slaughtered on their mother's laps, and many children
were torn to bits like fish. And pregnant women were
kicked in their stomachs, the fetus removed and smashed
before their eyes. And some had their stomachs opened
and a live cat sewn inside and their hands cut off so
that they could not remove the live cat. And they
hanged children torn from their mother's breasts and
some children were stuck onto a skewer and roasted over3
a fire and their mothers were brought to eat the flesh.
The same perverse inhumanities and bestialities were repeat
ed in numerous Jewish communities throughout Poland and
Lithuania. The impact of these brutalities was far-reaching
as we shall see later in our discussion.
Eighteenth-century Poland witnessed a repetition,
though on a lesser scale, of the same pogroms, economic
repressions, and false ritual murder accusations against
Jews. Even at the end of that century when Poland had been
3
Nathan Nata Hannover, Yeven Metzulah (Warsaw, 1872),
p. 66. My translation from the Hebrew.
drastically reduced in size by three successive partitions,
the same pattern of persecution continued. Nor did the new
rulers, the Russians, bring an amelioration of these condi
tions. With a few rare exceptions, the Russian rulers
sought to destroy the shtetl by encouraging assimilation and
by expelling Jews en masse from specific territories and by
restricting them to a pale of settlement.
The hostility of the Slavic community designed to
uproot Judaism had the ironic effect of solidifying the
shtetl. Jews built their own religious, social, and cul
tural institutions in order to separate themselves from the
Christian majority whose morality they did not wish to emu
late and whose enmity they could not afford to incur. To
deal with the hostility of Christian neighbors and to meet
the periodic threats to its very existence, the Jewish com
munity was compelled to develop self-governing institutions
which could confront common dangers.
The Jewish Kahal, or communal self-government, was
the embodiment of the unity which had so long preserved the
life of the shtetl. Although Polish kings had long used
some form of Jewish government as an efficient way of assur
ing the collection of taxes, it was not until 1551 that
Sigismund Augustus confirmed a charter containing the
principles of self-government for the Jewish Community of
Great Poland. The kahal elders (elected by representatives
chosen by members of all synagogues) were in charge of the
religious, legal, and civil life of the community. The col
lection of taxes, the administration and control of schools,
synagogues, cemeteries, and the settling of disputes were in
the hands of the kahal.
Assemblies of local kahals called waads, met periodi
cally at large conferences. The waads were endowed with ex
tensive power for settling disputes between communities and
for dealing with dangers confronting the entire Jewish com
munity. The decisions made at these conferences affected
the religious, civil, and domestic life of every community.
Notwithstanding the unifying influences of the local
kahals and the waads, the impact of centuries of religious,
social, and economic persecution was destined to leave its
mark on the shtetl. The despair engendered by the massacres
of 1648 resulted in the pseudo-Messianic movement which
engulfed the Polish shtetl.
Since ancient times it was a matter of traditional
belief that when the Messiah did come to redeem Israel, his
arrival would occur during the darkest hours of Jewish
history. The events of 1648 came to represent for the
Jewish masses of Eastern Europe "the birth pangs of the
Messiah."
The most famous of these pseudo-Messiahs was Sabbatai
Zevi, a native of Smyrna in Asia Minor. Profoundly influ
enced by cabalistic writings, he became convinced that he
was the destined Messiah and in 1665, upon his return from
Jerusalem, proclaimed himself as such. His imposing appear
ance and personal fascination, combined with acts of self
mortification, tended to support Sabbatai Zevi's self-
proclaimed Messianic image. The Jewish world and Polish
Jewry in particular responded with fervor. A wave of repen
tance and asceticism rocked the shtetl. To complicate mat
ters, Sabbatai became involved with Nehemiah Cohen, a self-
appointed "prophet" who widely proclaimed the "truth" of
Sabbatai's Messianic mission. Following an argument with
the "Messiah, " Nehemiah reported his master to the Turkish
authorities, who promptly arrested and imprisoned Sabbatai
Zevi. Brought before the sultan, and offered the alterna
tives of death or apostasy, the "Messiah" chose the latter.
Although the masses were bitterly disillusioned, many
of his followers maintained their loyalty to him, believing
that his conversion to Islam was part of a temporary plan,
ultimately leading to redemption. Singer's Satan in Goray
9
captures the impact of this pseudo-Messianic movement on a
small shtetl.
Partly as a result of the collapse of the Messianic
hopes initiated by Sabbatai Zevi, and partly as a result of
the economic depression following the Chmielnicki massacres,
the movement known as Hasidism developed. Other factors
like the isolation of Talmudists, who, in pursuing their
sterile scholarship, lost touch with their fellow Jews, were
also significant in the rise of Hasidism.
Talmudic scholarship, long the privilege of the few,
failed to satisfy the masses who yearned for a meaningful
relationship with God. The educated Talmudists, numbering
a small fraction of Polish Jews, regarded intellectual
achievement in the form of Talmudic study as the road to
both communal status and divine approbation. The uneducated
masses needed another means of approaching God.
Mystical teachings emanating from a cabalistic coterie
in Safed, Palestine, found their way into Poland. There the
founder of Hasidism, Israel Baal Shem Tov (or Besht as he
was popularly called), preached a philosophy new to shtetl
Jewry. Though a cabalist and miracle worker, he deprecated
the ascetic practices of early cabalist teachings and pro
pounded a philosophy of faith and joy which formed the basis
10
of a dialogue between man and God. Simple faith, as opposed
to Talmudic scholarship, and prayer were the shortest roads
to salvation.
In addition, the Besht preached the idea of Pantheism
or the notion that God was everywhere. Hence all manifesta
tions of nature share in this divinity. Another fundamental
idea borrowed from the Cabala concerns the interaction be
tween the world of the divine and the human world. Not only
are human actions influenced by God, but they also exert an
influence upon God's will. A logical derivative of this
idea is the notion that communion with God is not only pos
sible but should represent the major endeavor of every reli
gious person. Since this communion is attainable mainly by
concentrating man's thinking on God, prayer is the most
practical means of promoting this communion. Ecstatic and
fervent prayer manifested by violent movements of the body,
a trademark of Hasidic prayer, is evidence of the ecstatic
state desirable for communion. The Besht's philosophy of
joy and faith which the historican Howard Sachar calls
4
"evangelical pietism" thoroughly permeated the masses of
Eastern European Jewry. Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel,
4
The Course of Modern Jewish History, p. 75.
11
the authority of Jewish mysticism, notes that the Besht and
his disciples, the Hasidim, "banished melancholy from the
5
soul and uncovered the ineffable delight of being a Jew."
Combined with this joy, was the deep feeling of camara
derie and close fellowship that characterized the socioreli
gious life of Hasidism. Howard Morley Sachar succinctly
describes the essential quality of this life:
Every act in the life of a true Hasid mirrored his
unshakable belief, as Martin Buber puts it, that "in
spite of intolerable suffering man must endure, the
neart-beat of life is holy joy, and that always and
everywhere, one can force a way through to that joy—
provided one devotes oneself entirely to his deed." To
the typical illiterate porter or drayman, Hasidism
offered something no less important than security and
joy. It offered him a sense of equality with his fellow
Jews, a belief that he, too, in his naive love and
enthusiasm, could and would be heard by God. (p. 75)
Those of Singer's novels, such as The Family Moskat
and The Manor, which chronicle the disintegration of shtetl
values, also describe the loss of this religious joy and
fellowship. There is among Singer's secular characters an
unmistakable spiritual vacuum, never to be noted in the
author's Hasidim even in their most precarious moments.
Hasidism is the emotional faith which sustains Menassah
5
"Hasidim," The Earth Is the Lord's & The Sabbath
(New York, 1966), p. 75.
12
David as well as the atmosphere into which Caiman Jacoby re
treats in order to preserve his sense of identity. Hasidism
is also the religious milieu to which Ezriel Babad and Asa
Heshel can never return and which they cannot replace with
science and Spinoza.
In Singer's less realistic novels there are also dis
tinct echoes of Hasidism. Ihe life of Jacob of Josefov
recalls the early life of the Besht, in the latter's youth
as a seeker after God in the Carpathian Mountains, and later
as a gentle and inspiring teacher of the young. Likewise,
Jacob's exemplary life of piety, gentleness, and good deeds,
recalls the lives of Hasidic tsadikim (righteous men) during
the early days of Hasidism.
Similarly, Yasha Mazur, though driven by the hedonism
of the secular world, is able to appreciate both the spiri
tual warmth of his Jewish home in Lublin and the joyous
piety of the Hasidic prayer houses in Lublin and Warsaw.
Singer's conscious concern with this loss of faith, joy
and fellowship as a major ingredient in his novels is
expressed by the author himself who observes:
Since I left Warsaw, I have seen around me only bits and
pieces of the former Jewish life. I have often thought
about this, that American Jews have stopped rejoicing,
13
stopped in a greater measure to have each other's
fellowship, and ended the warmth and nearness which was
once the hallmark of Jewish life and which actually
sustained the people.^
Just as Hasidism represents the vital emotional aspect
of Singer's shtetl, so Cabalism represents its mystical
aspect. The cabalists who influenced Hasidism taught that
the visible things of this world are symbols of the hidden
worlds above and are linked to them. Professor Heschel
explains the nature of this link:
By every holy action, by every pure thought, man inter
venes in the "supernal worlds." A pious deed is a mys
tery. By virtue of the devotion invested in it man
constantly builds spiritual worlds, the essence of which
the mind, as long as he is still of this world, cannot
conceive. But his deeds are relevant not only for the
upper spheres, but for this world as well. (p. 71)
From the cabalistic point of view man's life thus
attains cosmic significance. Through his good deeds man
participates in a perfection of the universe. Conversely,
by submitting to his evil impulses, man expands the domain
of evil. To the cabalists evil was a very tangible commodi
ty and its origin is interesting because many of Singer's
characters make specific references to it. In order to per
mit Creation to occur God "shrank" or "recoiled" into
Pi Presse (Buenos Aires), November 20, 1957, p. 5,
col. 1. My translation from the Yiddish.
14
7
Himself. This is the doctrine of tsimtsum. In the
vacated space in which a lesser light of God (called
reshimu) remained, the finite things of this world (called
kelim) were created. At the same time, God alternately
caused light to emanate from Him and to return to Him.
Cabalistically speaking, emanation is equated with rachamim
(mercy) and retraction is associated with din (judgment).
The cabalistic explanation for the presence of evil
suggests that the forces of evil called kelipot (which also
contain small sparks of God's light known as nitsotsoth)
assumed a real and separate existence when too much of God1s
light during emanation shattered or broke the finite things
of this world called kelim. The latter doctrine is known as
the doctrine of shevirat hakelim (the shattering of the
vessels).
Recording to the Cabala, salvation may come when the
broken vessels are restored, when the nitsotsoth (Godly
sparks) are reassembled, and when, as a result, din (judg
ment) and rachamim (mercy) are balanced. This entire
process is called tikkun (restoration). Man as a partner of
7 . . .
For an authoritative and detailed discussion of basic
doctrines of the Cabala see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in
Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1961).
15
God can accomplish this by prayer, good deeds, and, at the
end of days, through the Messiah.
Singer's fiction is permeated with these cabalistic
ideas. Jacob of Josefov, who secretly studies Cabala, re
veals his awareness of these ideas when he meditates about
the problems which threaten him. Faced with the danger of
the exposure of Sarah's real identity, and threatened by the
sexual overtures of Lady Pilitzky, Jacob feels himself sur
rounded by the forces of evil that "synonymous with absolute
emptiness only arose because God had contracted and hidden
His face."^
While the cosmic context of evil as supplied by the
Cabala underscores the allegorical Jacob, it fails to sus
tain Jacob the individual who is continually plagued by the
philosophical problem of evil for which he can find no suit
able answers. Singer, as omniscient author, notes this re
curring problem: "The question that recurred more often
than any other was why did the good suffer and the evil
prosper?" (p. 131). Although Jacob finally comes to realize
that "Not death, but suffering was the real enigma"
g
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave, trans. The Author
and Cecil Hemley (New York, 1962), p. 162. All references
are to the Avon edition.
16
(p. 227), he places himself in God's hands without ever
being able to reconcile the suffering he sees and experi
ences with the merciful God he believes in.
Yasha Mazur, reborn as Jacob the Penitent, also studies
the Cabala and learns that "evil was merely God's diminish
ing of Himself so that He might be called Creator and have
mercy towards His creatures" (p. 228). Mercy, Yasha discov
ers, is not enough. Endowed with free will, men had to
learn righteousness.
In The Magician of Lublin as in The Slave, the Cabala
serves as a purposeful artistic backdrop against which the
protagonists act out their search for faith and identity.
To the very end of the novel, though he is embraced by the
faith he has sought, Yasha is still tormented by his doubts,
in varying degrees nearly all of Singer's protagonists
exhibit an awareness of the Cabala and its principal assump
tions. This awareness is exploited artistically rather than
dialectically. There is, however, one sense in which
Singer's characters sometimes incorporate the Cabala into
their own lives. The self-sacrificing piety of Jacob is
evident in the last twenty years of his life. To a lesser
degree, the soul-soothing counsel, which Yasha Mazur doles
out to the Jews of Lublin in his saintly role as Jacob the
17
Penitent, attests to his good deeds. By their actions these
protagonists are perhaps participating in the cabalistic act
of tikkun. The aim of Creation as Gershom Scholem reminds
us, is to effect tikkun. a restoration of the vessels and of
the original light:
The historical process and its innermost soul, the reli
gious act of the Jew, prepare the way for the final
restitution of all the scattered and exiled lights and
sparks. The Jew who is in close contact with the divine
life through the Torah, the fulfillment of the command
ments, and through prayer, has it in his power to accel
erate or to hinder this process. Every act of man is
related to this final task, which God has set for His
creatures. (p. 274)
Thus we see how the shtetl, a product of historical
change and its resultant spiritual ferment, serves as a
meaningful artistic backdrop for Singer's fiction.
Sociological Overview of the Shtetl
The survival of Judaism throughout the many centuries,
despite prolonged and unrelenting persecution, is a fact
without parallel in the history of the western world. The
key to this survival is the unifying effect of a common
religious, moral, and ethical tradition rooted in the Torah
and its commentaries. While the historicity of the covenant
between God and the people who received His Torah is ques
tionable, the impact of the Torah on the survival of Jewish
18
identity is indisputable. Because the history of the Jews
is that of a people living in the Diaspora, the roots of
Judaism and the concept of the shtetl have always been
spiritual rather than territorial.
The shtetl of Eastern Europe was essentially a dominant
center of Jewish life from the sixteenth century to the end
of the third decade of the twentieth century, in the same
way that Babylonia, Alexandria, and Spain were the geograph
ical and spiritual centers of Jewish life in the succeeding
years. Wherever the study of Torah was permitted, Judaism
flourished. The shtetl is thus a moral and religious entity
as much as it is a territorial one.
The Covenant which gave the Torah to the Jews at Mount
Sinai embodied mutual obligations between God and His chosen
people. While they promised to accept the "Yoke of the
Torah," God, in turn, undertook to cherish the People of
Israel and to reward them if they lived up to their obliga
tions. The six hundred and thirteen commandments embodied
in the Torah involve the primary obligations to study Torah
in order to gain knowledge and truth, to raise a family, and
to observe the mitzvoth governing the relationship between
God and man and between man and his fellow man. In return,
God held out the promise of health and livelihood in the
19
present (called olam hazeh, this world) and the joys of
paradise (called olam habo, the world to come). In addi
tion, God promised the ultimate coming of the Messiah to end
the qalut and to effect the return of the Jews to the
Promised Land.
The study of the Torah, the prerequisite to material
and spiritual salvation, includes more than learning the
Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. Torah also
includes the numerous legalistic interpretations added to it
throughout the centuries and known as the oral law, in con
tradistinction to the written law, commonly called the
Tanach (Pentateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa). The most
important example of the oral law is the Talmud, which con
sists of the Mishna (an elaboration of the commandments
given in the Pentateuch) and Gemorah (discussion and commen
tary on the Mishna). Also part of the Talmud are indepen
dent commentaries known as Rashi, after a famous Franco-
Jewish commentator, and the tosefoth, or the collected com
mentaries of later scholars. When Singer's rabbis and
scholars are described as studying Torah, they are usually
engaged in the study of the Talmud and its numerous commen
taries.
20
The scholarly disputation of the Talmud and its commen
taries are finally resolved in the practical statement of
law codified in the Shu1chan Aruch (The Set Table), the
definitive compendium of rabbinical law written by Joseph
Caro. So all-encompassing are the Jewish laws which regu
late conduct, that decisions may range from such minutiae as
the order in which one's hands are washed during morning
ablutions to the complex regulations governing marriage and
the Sabbath.
Among the laws in the Shulchan Aruch are some which
regulate seemingly trivial aspects of behavior, but actually
prevent the violation of important laws. For example, the
prohibition against carrying even a handkerchief on the
Sabbath is intended to prevent the carrying of other items,
such as money, which might ultimately result in the viola
tion of the prohibition against trade on the Sabbath. This
type of law is called a syag or geder (fence) because it
confines human behavior. Hence, Yasha Mazur, the protago
nist of The Magician of Lublin, having entombed himself in a
small brick structure near his house, observes that "Harsh
9
laws were merely fences to restrain a man from sin."
^Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Magician of Lublin, trans.
Elaine Gottlieb and Joseph Singer (New York, 1960), p. 233.
All references are to the Noonday edition.
21
Although the multitudinous regulations governing daily-
life are ultimately derived by reference to specific state
ments in the Pentateuch, certain exigencies may create cir
cumstances in which the letter of the law must yield to its
spirit:
No matter how intricate the reasoning, how far-flung and
far-fetched the allusions, citations, and syllogisms, all
revert finally to the basic belief that the divine will
is actuated by intelligence and reasonableness and that
under extreme exigency the letter of the Law must yield
to the spirit which dictates always the preservation of
human life and the fostering of human welfare.10
When Jacob (The Slave) notes the discrepancy between the
letter and the spirit of the law as practiced by Jews in the
various shtetlach which he visits and in which he lives, he
rightly castigates their behavior. As Sarah approaches
labor Jacob sits alone thinking about his trying situation
and about Gershon, the rich, unscrupulous ex-manager of the
Pilitzky estate:
The very same people, who strictly observed the minor
rituals and customs which were not even rooted in the
Talmud, broke without thinking twice the most sacred
laws, even the Ten Commandments. (p. 180)
The study of Torah not only imparts great status to the
scholar (it is, in effect, one of the most important values
^Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is With
People (New York, 1952), p. 113.
22
of the shtetl), but it also has far-reaching spiritual
values. The study of Torah, as Zborowski and Herzog show,
transcends the limitations of time and space in uniting Jews
of all generations and all nations:
The learned tradition, then, not only serves to transmit
the culture but it is also a cohesive force, maintaining
unity and continuity in time and in space. Deprived of
common territory and common national history since the
beginning of the Diaspora, the Jews have maintained a
stable realm in the domain of the intellect. When a
scholar takes a sacred book into his hands, he immerses
himself in the tradition that reaches out of the far
past into the living present. Through study he finds
the joy of identification with his God, his tradition
and his group, for "Torah, God, and Israel are One."
(p. 118)
When Singer's Dr. Yaretzky in "The Shadow of a Crib,"
watches the rabbi studying Torah, and feels the despair of
his own rootlessness, he is observing a value— the study of
Torah— deeply rooted in the shtetl tradition.
Like the study of Torah, the observance of the Sabbath
is an important shtetl value. The Sabbath is a foretaste of
the hereafter promised to those who study the Torah and live
by its precepts. The elaborate ritual and culinary prepara
tion for the Sabbath are an earthly manifestation of Para
dise. Zborowski and Herzog's elaborate description of the
rituals relating to the Sabbath find a strong echo in
Singer's "Short Friday" in which Schmul-Leibele and his wife
23
Shoshe are shown sharing the riches of the Sabbath in stark
contrast to the poverty of their daily existence:
On the threshold he stamped his feet . . . , then opened
the door and saw Shoshe. The room made him think of
Paradise. The oven had been freshly whitewashed, the
candles in the brass candelabras cast a Sabbath glow.
The aromas coming from the sealed oven blended with the
scents of the Sabbath supper. Shoshe sat on the bench-
bed apparently awaiting him, her cheeks shining with the
freshness of a young girl's.^
Ironically, the observance of the Sabbath by this de
voted couple brings death instead of joy. Erich Fromm's
interesting elaboration of the symbolic meaning of the
Sabbath underlines the irony of their death. Fromm explains
that "man's first disobedience" resulted in a state of dis
harmony between him and nature. Hence the numerous restric
tions against work on the Sabbath are intended to restore
man's harmony with nature by preventing him from doing any
work which might result in violating the state of peace
between himself and nature. In addition, the coming of the
Messiah is regarded by Fromm as the state in which the
harmony between man and nature reaches its fullest expres
sion.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Short Friday," trans. Joseph
Singer and Roger Klein, in Short Friday and Other Stories
(New York, 1964), p. 218. All references are to the Signet
edition.
24
This new harmony, the achievement of which is the goal
of the historical process, reaches its fullest expres
sion in the figure of the Messiah. And the Sabbath is
the anticipation of the Messianic time, just as the
Messianic period is called the time of "continuous
Sabbath." The Sabbath is not only the symbolic antici
pation of the Messianic time but its real precursor.^
Thus the deep sense of harmony imaginatively re-created in
Singer's "Short Friday" ironically brings his protagonists
death rather than redemption. Although the ending of the
story implies that they have been admitted to heaven to
receive their just rewards, their deaths remain poignantly
incongruous.
While the Sabbath is the most important of all Jewish
observances, Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (The Day
of Atonement) rank next in importance in the shtetl holiday
calendar. Rosh Hashana symbolizes both the anniversary and
the renewal of the Creation, and of the Creation itself, a
process which Jewish tradition regards as continuous. The
solemnity of these holidays and the intervening ten days
(The Ten Days of Repentance) is marked by prayer and the
active solicitation of forgiveness from one's neighbors for
wrongs done throughout the year. The blowing of the ram's
12
"Meaning of the Sabbath," in Jewish Heritage Reader,
ed. Lily Edelman (New York, 1965), pp. 140-141.
25
horn on Yom Kippur recalls the trumpets and thundering at
Sinai during the giving of the Law and the Covenant between
God and the Jews. The blasts of the ram's horn also have
come to prefigure the time of redemption.
Singer's choice of the High Holidays as the emotional
climax of Goray's redemptive aspirations is particularly
appropriate. Reb Gedaliya preaches on Rosh Hashana before
the ram's horn is blown and exhorts his congregation to be
steadfast in its faith that Sabbatai Zevi, the true Messiah,
will momentarily redeem them. While the redemption of Goray
is never realized, Rabbi Bainish of Komarov in "Joy" is
redeemed by the appearance of the spirit of his deceased
daughter on Rosh Hashana. His redemption, though appropri
ately heralded by the beckoning spirits of his departed
family, is, nevertheless, accompanied by physical death.
Since the Jewish tradition values life above all things, it
is particularly ironic that spiritual redemption is concomi
tant with physical death in much of Singer's fiction.
In addition to the study of Torah and the proper
observance of the Sabbath and the holidays, another signifi
cant shtetl value is the doing of good deeds. Like the
medieval Everyman who achieves salvation with the aid of
Good Deeds, the shtetl Jew depends on his maasim tovim (good
26
deeds) for his spiritual redemption. The most conspicuous
form of good deeds is tsedokeh or the giving of charity.
The habit of giving is deeply ingrained in the shtetl tradi
tion. Every holiday is accompanied by some form of giving
to the needy. Similarly, ceremonies like the lighting of
the Sabbath candles, the calling up of individuals to the
Torah, and countless others are preceded by the giving or
pledging of tsedokeh. The numerous chevras (associations)
in the shtetl met the many needs for welfare and charity.
The intensity with which individuals threw themselves into
the work of the various chevras is a testimonial to the
great value which maasim tovim represented for the indi
vidual:
Whoever joined a charitable organization did so not only
with a view to the Hereafter, but also with a view to
benefiting by the honors, suffrage, social prestige, and
the religious bounties accruing from such membership.^
The absence of scholarship or the ability to learn
Torah can often be compensated for by a generous and open
hand in providing for the needy of one's shtetl. Singer's
characterization of Reb Bunim the noqid (respected leader
13
Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772-
1844 (New York, 1943), p. 248.
27
of the community) in "The Destruction of Kreshev" attests to
this:
He wasn't much of a scholar and could scarcely get
through a chapter of the Midrash, but he always contrib
uted generously to charity.^
The open-handed giving of help to the poor is charac
teristic even of Singer's less prosperous characters. The
impoverished couple in "The Beggar Said So" find fulfillment
in doing things for those even less fortunate than them
selves :
Moshe's wife carried groats to the poorhouse and every
Friday night Moshe would take a wayfarer home as his
guest for the Sabbath.
Just as tsedokeh characterizes an individual's proper
obligations to his community, so a suitable marriage
strengthens his place in that community. Because marriage
insures the continuity of Jewish life, bachelors and spin
sters are a small and unfortunate minority in the shtetl.
Every effort is made to promote marriage regardless of the
age or physical condition of the participants. Some chevras
14
Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Destruction of Kreshev, "
trans. Elaine Gottlieb and June Ruth Flaum, in The Spinoza
of Market Street (New York, 1961), p. 146. All references
are to the Avon Library edition.
"^"The Beggar Said So," trans. Gertrude Hirschler, in
The Spinoza of Market Street, p. 103.
28
exist exclusively to provide dowries and trousseaus for poor
and orphaned girls.
Although the Jewish tradition has it that marriages are
made in heaven, great care is taken through shadchanim (pro
fessional marriage brokers) to insure that proper matches
are arranged. These efforts consider both compatibility of
personality as well as such indispensable social variables
as learning, yikhus (social status), and money. From these
painstaking efforts love is expected to evolve. The elab
orate legal and ritual requirements connected with the
shtetl marriage are intended to secure and strengthen the
bonds of family life. Thus marriage is a key value in the
shtetl. The dissolution of the shtetl marriage is accompa
nied by strong public disapproval and is only attempted as a
last resort. The two chief grounds for divorce are infer
tility and desertion. After ten years of a childless mar
riage, the man may divorce his wife. A deserted woman can
secure a divorce without much difficulty.
Because marriage plays a central role in shtetl life,
Singer’s fiction reflects its importance, concentrating
primarily on the extremes of the idealized marriage and the
disturbed and/or disintegrating one. Shmul-Leibele and his
wife Shoshe in "Short Friday" enjoy the rewards of an ideal
29
marriage in a shtetl environment radiating tradition and
faith. Similarly, the water carrier, Moshe and his devoted
wife Mindel in "The Beggar Said So" enjoy the bliss of mar
riage while immersed in Yanov's orthodox environment. Iron
ically, both marriages are childless. An even more highly
idealized marriage is that of the rabbi whom Dr. Yaretzky
sees through the window in "The Shadow of a Crib." The
unspoken love which permeates the rabbi's study as his wife
silently enters to prepare his tea, poignantly reminds the
alienated Yaretzky of his own wretchedly lonely existence.
Another of Singer's idealized marriages has for its
irony the fact that one of its principals is a convert to
Judaism. The selfless devotion of Jacob and Sarah (nee
Wanda) in The Slave is unsurpassed by any other union in
Singer's fiction.
While Sarah's conversion makes theirs an acceptable
though tragic marriage, the marriage of Dr. Margolin and his
German wife Greta is a bleak and loveless one. The routine
existence Margolin leads with his non-Jewish wife is in
sharp contrast with the excitement he feels when "A Wedding
in Brownsville" re-unites him with his childhood sweetheart,
Raizel, a nostalgic evocation of "the grace of Sencimin,"
his boyhood shtetl. Again irony intrudes and we discover
30
that the reunion of Dr. Margolin with Raizel has occurred
after the doctor's death in an automobile accident and that
the two are disembodied spirits.
An even more prominent place in Singer's fiction is
reserved for disturbed or disintegrating marriages. While
devotion to one's mate is a quality that forms the backbone
of Singer's idealized marriages, excessive devotion ironi
cally can often spell doom. The devotion which recalls
Alter from the dead in "The Man Who Came Back" also results
in unrelenting marital discord. Similarly in "Esther
Kreindel the Second" the spirit of Reb Zorach Lipover's
deceased wife enters the body of a young girl, explaining
that "my husband longs for me day and night and I am unable
16
to remain in peace." Excessive love leads to adultery and
perverted sexuality, dooming the marriage of Lisa and
Shloimele in "The Destruction of Kreshev." Adultery and a
predisposition to sadism destroy the marriage of Reb Falik
and Risha in "Blood," and ultimately Risha herself, while
repressed sexuality produces the same results for Hindele
and Reb Simon in the "Black Wedding." Finally, "A Tale of
16
Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Esther Kreindel the Second,"
trans. The Author and Elizabeth Pollet, in Short Friday and
Other Stories, p. 64.
31
Two Liars" concerns the fraudulent marriage of a conniving
couple who find a home in Gehenna after violating every pre
cept of the shtetl marriage.
The ritual-laden shtetl and the endless responsibili
ties and obligations it imposes suggest a coherent social
world, based on reason, order and purpose. Recognizing that
man is also a creature of his feelings, and that order and
reason cannot always prevail, the shtetl insists that
justice be tempered by mercy in both divine and human
assessment of man's transgressions. Nevertheless, the
shtetl venerates moderation in human conduct. Zborowski
and Herzog observe that "The ideal man is supposed to be
restrained in behavior and attitude. Excess of any kind is
frowned upon" (p. 415) .
A major focus of Singer's fiction is the tension
between freedom and restraint. His protagonists, tormented
by their passions, struggle endlessly to achieve a balance.
Some like Yasha Mazur choose self-imposed slavery, while
others like Asa Heshel are destroyed by their inability to
achieve a balance between restraint and freedom.
Those of Singer's critics who are troubled by his
treatment of sex are missing an important aspect of his
vision, for Singer sees sexual excess like extremes of any
32
kind, as upsetting the balance of moderation. Hence,"Blood"
is not a prurient account of sex but of excess that ulti
mately destroys and reduces its participants to literal
bestiality. The same avarice and lust also result in the
downfall of Glicka Genendel and Reb Yomtov, the adulterous
couple of "A Tale of Two Liars." Sometimes excess of sex and
hate are pathologically fused. Such is the case with Leib,
the dehumanized wretch of "Under the Knife, " who, under the
influence of alcohol, and an "inner voice" is driven to the
heinous and brutal murder of two innocent victims.
Not only individuals but the community as well often
suffers from the consequences of excess. The perversities
of Lisa and Shloimele involve all of Kreshev in sin, just as
Frampol's compromise with Satan in "The Gentlemen from
Cracow" finds that shtetl literally wallowing in mud.
Singer's notion about the consequences of sexual excess is
universalized in the author's account of the debaucheries
which plague his gentile households. The Bziks, Jampolskis,
and the Pilitzkys share in the irreversible depravity that
follows excess.
While impiety and sexual excess invariably meet with
pain and suffering, ritual purity in Singer's ambiguous
artistic shtetl is not always followed by rewards.
33
Somewhere between Irving Howe's view that Singer's short
stories "can be seen as paradigms of the arbitrariness, the
17
grating injustice, at the heart of life" and J. A. Eisen-
berg's view that though many of Singer's stories deny life
others affirm that "man can carry on with dignity, and man
18
can live an upright moral existence," lies Singer's
ambiguous view of the shtetl.
Personal Overview of the Shtetl
Fundamental to an appreciation of Isaac Bashevis
Singer’s personal view of the shtetl are his own religious
and cultural backgrounds, his career as a writer, and his
memoir, In My Father's Court. Born in Radzymin, Poland in
1904, Singer received a traditional and extensive Jewish
education. He attended the chedar, veshiva, and beth
medrash, and studied at Tachkemoni, a rabbinical seminary in
Warsaw, where he also learned secular subjects. His father
and both grandfathers were rabbis, and the Singer household
was a stronghold of orthodox Judaism.
17
"Demonic Fiction of a Yiddish 'Modernist,'"
Commentary. XXX (October, 1960), 350.
18
"Isaac Bashevis Singer— Passionate Primitive or
Pious Puritan?" Judaism, II (Fall, 1962), 350.
The tradition of writing was well established in the
Singer family, for his father wrote commentaries on reli
gious works and his brother was to become the famous Yiddish
novelist I. J. Singer. Singer's first attempts at writing
19
fiction were in Hebrew, and he turned to Yiddish because
he felt that he could best express himself in that language.
His first Yiddish short story, entitled "Oif der elter"
("Old Age") was published in the Warsaw weekly, Literarishe
Bleter, in 1925. Although he published a number of short
stories during that year, his first important literary suc
cess was the Yiddish edition of Satan in Goray, first
serialized in the Warsaw Globus, a Yiddish newspaper, and
published in book form by the Yiddish Fan Club in 1935.
This work was acclaimed by Yiddish critics in the United
States as well as in Europe.
The author's preoccupation with literature and the
Yiddish Literary Society in Warsaw was so overriding, claims
Moshe Knapheim, a literary acquaintance, that those who know
19
During our brief conversation m May 1968, Mr. Singer
mentioned that very early in his writing career he had con
tributed some fiction to the Hebrew periodical Hayom in
Warsaw.
35
20
Singer knew nothing of his private life. Evidence of
Singer’s formidable knowledge of Yiddish literature is
21
apparent from an article he wrote for Zukumft in 1943.
In this brief but compact article, Singer reveals his knowl
edge about the works and eccentricities of almost every
important Yiddish writer in Poland. At the same time,he
was also extremely conversant with European and English
literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
especially with Russian, Polish, and German writers. He
has, in fact, completed several translations of German works
into Yiddish during his life in Poland, among them Ihomas
Mann's Buddenbrooks.
In 1935, sensing the ominous threat of Hitler's rise to
power, Singer migrated to the United States where he has
been employed for the past 31 years as a journalist, essay
ist, publicist, dramatist, literary critic, and writer of
fiction for the Forverts. the largest and most influential
Yiddish daily in the world. His informal essays, and liter
ary criticism have appeared under the pseudonym Yitshok
20
"Geshtaltiker fun unser groisen amol, " Literarishe
Bleter (Buenos Aires), July-August 1957, p. 13.
21
Yitshok Bashevis, "Arum der Yiddisher literatur in
Poilin," Zukumft, XLVIII (August 1943), 468-475.
36
Varshavsky, while his fiction appears under the names
Yitshok Bashevis and Isaac Bashevis Singer. According to
Yoel Jelenitz, writing in the Montevideo Yiddish Folksblatt.
22
Singer has also used the pseudonym D. Segal.
Since his arrival in this country, Singer has published
an impressive number of books written in Yiddish and then
translated into English. The English versions of the novels
are: The Family Moskat (New York, 1950); Satan in Goray
(New York, 1955); The Magician of Lublin (New York, 1960);
The Slave (New York, 1962); and The Manor (New York, 1967).
The short stories are Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
(New York, 1957); The Spinoza of Market Street (New York,
1958); and Short Friday and Other Stories (New York, 1961).
His stories have appeared in such diverse magazines as
Commentary, Esquire, Harper1 s. Mademoiselle, Midstream,
The Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, and in Pi Goldene Keit,
an important contemporary Yiddish literary journal published
in Israel. Singer supervises the English translations of
his Yiddish work very carefully and spares no effort in
22
"Yitshok Bashevis— der Yiddisher proz-meister, "
Folksblatt. November 19, 1957.
37
23
order to communicate a precise meaning or effect.
Artistic recognition in the United States has come
through the wider audience these translations have made pos
sible, and through the critical attention he has received in
such prestigious literary journals as The Kenyon Review,
Criticism, Critique, and others. Awards such as the Louis
Lamed Foundation Award (the annual prize in Yiddish litera
ture), and grants from the American Institute of Arts and
Letters (1964) and the National Council on the Arts (1967)
have enhanced his stature as a literary artist.
Although immersed in various aspects of Jewish cultural
life related to his literary career, Singer does not prac
tice the ritual orthodoxy of his childhood. He has
expressed strong feelings about the value and importance of
Jewish religious, cultural, and educational life to the
problem of Jewish identity and survival. Disdainful of most
ideologies, he has a strong prejudice for Zionism which he
sees as a positive hope for Jewish continuity.
In his memoir, In My Father's Court, Isaac Bashevis
Singer recreates the religious, social, and ethical milieu
23
Richard F. Shepard, "I. B. Singer Talks of Transla
tions, " New York Times, January 29, 1967, sec. 1, p. 14.
38
of the vanished shtetl. This work is appropriately dedicat
ed by the author to the numerous pious martyrs who perished
in the Nazi holocaust and whose lives stand as a monument to
the shtetl. His memoir, however, is not limited to a por
trayal of pious shtetl folk alone. The author's biographi
cal panorama also includes descriptions of individuals who
reflect the intrusion of the secular world into the shtetl.
Singer's memoir describes both Hasidim and socialists,
rabbis and assimilationists, Talmudic scholars and maskilim.
Hillel Rogoff, writing in the Yiddish press, describes this
work as a "literary monument to a wonderful chapter of
24
Jewish history and Jewish spirituality."
Indeed the men and woman who appear in these pages
vividly recall these external moments of the Jewish past.
Some like Singer's father embody within their thoughts and
actions the letter and spirit of the shtetl. Others, like
the author's famous brother, the novelist I. J. Singer,
represent the other end of the spectrum— the shtetl under
the impact of the secularizing forces. There are also those
94
"Yitshok Bashevis' 'Mein Tatens Beis Din Shtub,'"
Forverts, February 3, 1957, sec. 2, p. 5. My translation
from the Yiddish.
who stand somewhere in the middle in their attempts to blend
both worlds.
Singer's father, the pious and unworldly Pinchos-
Mendel, was a rabbi descended from generations of rabbis
and scholars. In his long hose, velvet hat, full beard and
long sidelocks, he lived "With only one desire— to live as a
25
Jew" in a world where everything outside of studying the
Torah was regarded as tref. As an unofficial Warsaw rabbi,
he ministered to his impoverished congregation and dispensed
justice in his beth din, a rabbinical court to which dis
putants and litigants came voluntarily. Singer makes it
clear that his father, whose whole existence embodied the
spiritual life of the shtetl, resented the intrusion of the
secular matters he was required to pass judgment upon. For
this function took him away from his real love— the study of
the Torah and the writing of commentaries. At the conclu
sion of "A Major Din Torah," Pinchos-Mendel shows his con
tempt for the sophisticated and conniving rabbis who accom
panied the feuding business partners. When they leave, he
25
Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father's Court, trans.
Cecil Hemley and Elaine Gottlieb (New York, 1962), p. 45.
All references are to the Noonday edition.
40
asks that the doors be opened "so that the odors of wealth
and worldliness might escape" (p. 41).
Nevertheless, the justice he dispenses is tempered by
mercy, understanding, and an abiding faith in the efficacy
of repentance. In "The Secret" a woman confesses to a sin
committed many years before, when she abandoned her illegit
imate child on the steps of a church. Though her sin is
abominable, the elder Singer affords her an opportunity to
do penance, for sincere repentance is always accepted by God.
In "The Oath," another recollection of a judgment rendered
in the beth din, a woman who has sworn falsely on the Torah
i
returns many months later to confess. Pinchos-Mendel con
soles her with the reminder that repentance can erase sin.
The sense of secrecy and outrage which attends the
latter two stories suggests the great culpability of both
women. The willingness of Singer's father to offer pardon
through penance is therefore the more laudable. Underlying
these decisions, however, is an attitude that accords with
the shtetl's view of evil. Singer recalls his father's
thoughts and words as the latter admonishes the sinning
woman in "The Secret":
Of course one should avoid sin, but there are always
ways of rectifying an error. Man must do what lies
41
in his power and for the rest he must rely upon the
Creator, for "from Him proceedeth not evil." Even that
which appears evil will eventually become good. In
reality, there is no evil. (p. 99)
Some of the cases which Singer chooses to recall
reflect the author's unwillingness to yield to an easy
didacticism. Compassion mixed with judgment sometimes has
ironic consequences. The unselfish love of an elderly woman
for her husband in "The Sacrifice" prompts Singer's father
to grant a divorce so that the husband can marry a younger
woman who supposedly will bear him children. The husband
dies before the poor orphan girl he marries can bear chil
dren and both women cry at his funeral. Similarly, in "The
Divorce" Reb Mordecai Meir, the fatally ill owner of a dry
goods store, secures a divorce from his wife in order to re
lease her from the burden of a levirate marriage. This
story also has its irony, for his wife remarries only to die
herself shortly thereafter and leave their business in the
hands of two strangers.
Sometimes, however, evil and injustice are overpowering;
and then man is permitted to expostulate with God. The
wretchedly impoverished mourner in "A Gruesome Question" who|
comes to seek rabbinical permission to sleep with his dead
wife, so that her corpse can be temporarily protected from -
42
the rats which infest their squalid cellar dwelling, prompts
Singer's father to cry out to God, "'it is high time for our
salvation . . . time . . . high time'" (p. 28).
While the aforementioned is intended to suggest the
sense of compassion and humanity which characterizes justice
in the beth din, there are other individual portraits which
exemplify other qualities valued by the shtetl. The simple,
hard-working, and generous dairyman, Reb Asher of "Reb Asher
the Dairyman" is the epitome of the humble Jew whose maasim
tovim are all the more praiseworthy because they are per
formed privately. Reb Asher, who gives unstintingly to
charity and who even saved the Singers from a devastating
fire, is remembered with special tenderness:
This simple Jew, who with great difficulty plowed
through a chapter of the Mishnah, lived his entire life
on the highest ethical plane. What others preached, he
practiced. (p. 163)
Another portrait of a Jew who lived on the highest
ethical plane is contained in the selection entitled "The
Land of Israel." The dark and dreamy Moshe Blecher, a poor
tinsmith whose yearnings for the Messiah and the Land of
Israel take him to Palestine, is the embodiment of the love
which the shtetl Jew has traditionally felt for the Holy
Land.
43
It is characteristic of Singer's fiction that the
values of the shtetl become universalized as he applies some
of these precepts to non-Jews. This is no less true of his
memoirs. One of the author's most moving recollections con
cerns a Polish laundress in "The Washwoman," whose herculean
labors at the age of eighty and whose sense of duty and hon
esty reserve for her a place in heaven. Her presumed death
is recounted as tenderly as is the passing of a saint.
And now at last the body, which had long been no more
than a broken shard supported only by the force of
honesty and duty, had fallen. The soul passed into
those spheres where all holy souls meet, regardless of
the roles they played on this earth. In whatever
tongue, of whatever creed. I cannot imagine Eden with
out this washwoman. I cannot even conceive of a world
where there is no recompense for such effort. (p. 34)
Some of the recollections simply recapture the nostal
gia associated with memories of the shtetl. The chapters
about Bilg^ray, the rural home of Singer's maternal ances
tors, reveal the shtetl steeped in tradition. Here Singer
recalls, "The common people were even more devout than the
scholar" (p. 387). Praying and fasting were an integral
part of daily existence. The author reminds us of the deep j
inspiration which Bilgoray gave to him:
In this world of old Jewishness I found a spiritual
treasure trove. I had a chance to see our past as it j
really was. Time seemed to flow backwards. I lived
Jewish history. (p. 290) j
44
Just as the chapters about Bilgoray recreate the
quality of shtetl life, so a few chapters concerned with
somewhat eccentric individuals are similarly used to recap
ture the flavor of the shtetl. Reb Chayim Gorshkover, the
impoverished habitue of the Singer household, though long
exiled by necessity to Warsaw, recalls the flavor of a
Sabbath in Gorshkov. Neither the chale, cholent, nor wine,
let alone the melodious voice of that shtetl's cantor can
find their equal in Warsaw. Similarly, in "The Miracle,"
Reb Moshe Ba-ba-ba recalls the flavor of the Hasidic court
of Reb Haskele of Kuzmir, where the very air was bathed in
sanctity at the moment of that saint's appearance. Singer
also records the faith of the Radzymin Hasidim in their
rabbi, notwithstanding the fact that the "miracle" of the
birth of a child to Reb Joseph's wife was the result of
medical skill rather than prayer.
In Singer's memory of his boyhood shtetl, however, not
all rabbis and scholars were without sin. Some of them, as
Singer shows us, lived behind the mask of hypocrisy. That
saints too can be sinful accords with the author's belief,
expressed in many of his novels, that belief in God should
be distinguished from belief in man and in man-made dogma.
The young Singer discovers that the rabbis in "A Major Din
45
Torah" who accompany the litigants are more interested in
good food and expensive clothing than in truth, and "that
each was looking for twists and turns to justify his party
and to contradict the arguments of his opponent" (p. 37).
Even a genuine scholar is not without moral flaws. Many
are deceived by "The Salesman," a Talmudic scholar, who col
lects money from gullible people who believe that they can
purchase a share in the hereafter from the salesman.
Although Singer's memoir portrays the shtetl mainly as
a bastion of Hasidic and rabbinic orthodoxy, it also reveals
the presence of the secularizing forces so troublesome to
the protagonists of Singer's family chronicles. Even
Bilgoray, the fortress of "old Jewishness" shows signs of
the "Enlightenment" in the characterization of Todros the
watchmaker, a possible prototype for Yekuthiel in The Family
Moskat. Also present in Bilgoray are faint hints of the
activities of socialists and Zionists.
If the picture of Bilgoray gives only a hint of things
to come, then the author's memoirs of his older brother,
Israel Jacob, reveals the essence of the secularism which
had enveloped the world outside of Bilgoray. Disheartened
by what he regarded as the wretchedness of Jewish existence
in the shtetl, Israel Jacob, who ultimately abandoned
46
orthodoxy, began to question the very fundamentals of
Judaism. In "The Boy Philosopher" Singer reproduces family
arguments, especially those between his brother and his
mother. Clearly evident in these arguments are the influ
ences of socialism and Darwinism, as well as of other
philosophies. "The Studio" reveals the impact of the
"Enlightenment" on a group of young Jewish artists including
Israel Jacob. With every visit to his brother's studio,
Isaac Bashevis experienced greater bewilderment at the
secular freedom he witnessed:
The ways of the intelligentsia became more familiar to
me. They neither prayed nor studied from holy books nor
made benedictions. They ate meat with milk, and broke
other laws. The girls posed nude with no more shame
than they would have about undressing in their own bed
rooms. In fact, it was like the Garden of Eden there,
before Adam and Eve had partaken of the Tree of Knowl
edge. Although they spoke Yiddish, those young people
acted as freely as Gentiles. (p. 240)
Singer's childhood view of the shtetl is perhaps even
more interesting. Although he extols the virtues of god
fearing Jews living their exalted spiritual lives, he also
records their equally wretched physical existence. His own !
poverty, so poignantly suggested in "The Satin Coat," and
;
the ugliness and squalor of the neighborhood, so shockingly
recalled in "I Become a Collector" must have prompted him toj
!
I
share his older brother's view of their Warsaw
47
co-religionists as Jews who were "stooped, despondent, liv
ing in filth" (p. 207). His brief respite from this envi
ronment is poignantly detailed in 1 1 To the Wild Cows" in
which he describes a summer day's ramble to the Warsaw sub
urbs with his friend Boruch-Dovid.
Unlike Israel Jacob, who left the Singer residence, the
"stronghold of Jewish Puritanism" (p. 68), for an artist's
studio, Isaac Bashevis, still a boy, remains to speculate
about his disquieting skepticism concerning shtetl orthodoxy
which persisted into his adult life. Aside from his usual
boyhood questions about Creation, God, sin, and death, the
younger Singer seems to wonder about the age-old problem of
evil. Even the cabalistic explanations that evil is ulti
mately beneficent fail to assuage his concern about the
obvious suffering of the innocent. Neither his father nor
the startling world of Jewish secularism in '"The Studio"
supplies a suitable answer. Thus, even in childhood, Singer
appears as the eternal skeptic probing the facades of his
Jewish reality to discover both good and evil. The same
ambiguity toward the mixture of good and evil in Singer's
memoir of his boyhood shtetl persists in the fictional
shtetlach of his novels and short stories.
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY MOSKAT
The Family Moskat, a chronicle of Jewish life in Poland
during the first three decades of the twentieth century, de
picts the disintegration of those values which had long sus
tained the shtetl Jew. Traditional shtetl values (the study
of Torah, communion with God through prayer, the strict
observance of the mitzvoth, the deep concern with social
welfare as a religious obligation, the sanctity of marriage
and family life) were all subjected to the strong influences
of secularizing forces such as atheism, socialism, assimila-
tionism, the Enlightenment, Zionism, modern philosophy and
science. The condition of Polish Jewry in this clash of
ideologies is mirrored in Singer's portrayal of the numerous
Moskats and the people with whom they become involved.
The novel's reviewers and critics point to the disinte
gration that stems from this confrontation of ideologies as
the central focus of Singer's novel. Solomon Bloom,
49
reviewing this novel in Commentary, notes this deterioration
as an element common to most of Singer's characters:
They are all caught in a maelstrom of intrigue, vanity,
lust, selfishness, and corruption that, however insis
tently the author dilutes it with elements of generosity,
taste, and reason, constitutes a satiric indictment of
Jewish society in pre-war Poland.^
In another review significantly entitled "Singer's
Chronicle of Disintegration," Theodore N. Lewis makes a
similar judgment about Singer's characters:
All the characters, and the principal ones more so than
the others, are maladjusted and frustrated, always feud
ing and battling with one another, and finding in adul
tery alone some compensation for their sexual hungers
and general misery.^
Finally, writing in The New York Herald Tribune, Joshua
Kunitz comments about the world in which these characters
move:
It is an ugly, passionate, fetid life without a trace of
nobility or valor, futile and hopeless. Save for a
couple of pious Hasids vaguely sketched into the crowded
canvas, there is scarcely an admirabfe or wholesome char
acter in the whole lot. Neurotics, weaklings, and petty
scoundrels, most of the central characters seem to be
driven by one appetite— sex; and when it is not sex it
is petty greed.3
^"Before the Deluge," rev. of The Family Moskat,
Commentary. XI (February 1951), 201.
^The JWB Circle, VI (January 1951), 3.
3
"Passion Without Nobility," rev. of The Family Moskat.i
New York Herald Tribune, November 19, 1950, p. 24.
50
Singer's carefully drawn characterizations are his most
obvious means of communicating the sense of this breakdown
in values. The author provides a full complement of charac
ters through whom he defines shtetl values and through whom
he traces their progressive decline. The author's charac
terizations also reinforce a secondary theme in the novel—
the conflict between generations— which Singer uses almost
metaphorically for the conflict between the old orthodoxy
and the new enlightenment. In a discussion of The Family
Moskat Singer says:
Willingly or unwillingly, we have enacted here the
struggle between two generations— the old and the new—
religious Judaism and the secular. Reb Meshulam Moskat
and Hadassah's husband Fishel are Jews who know what
they want, have a tradition, a belief, a way. For all
of their flaws, there is in all they do a steadfastness
which has been developed through generations. The new
generation is torn within. It fastens itself to Judaism,
but it does things which harm the moral foundations of
the Jewish people. Reb Meshulam, Fishel, and the entire
older generation have within themselves a considerable
amount of fanaticism, but they are established on a firm
foundation— The Ten Commandments.4
Although Singer's shtetl is essentially a spiritual
entity, and its values— Torah, prayer, mitzvoth, and maasim
tovim— circumscribe conduct regardless of a Jew's physical
4
K. H., "A geshprech mit I. Bashevis vegen zein
dramatishen roman 'Di familie Mushkat,' " Forverts. August 11, ;
1950, p. 7. My translation from the Yiddish. ;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I
environment, the author uses religious settings (study
houses, prayer houses, and Hasidic courts) to suggest the
spiritual qualities of some of his characters. The court of
Yechiel Menachem, the Bialodrevna Rebbe, provides the au
thentic flavor of Polish Hasidim as well as an intimate por
trait of a true tseidik. The reverence shown the Bialodrevna
and the joy and awe his presence inspires among the faithful
attests to his importance as a living embodiment of Hasi
dism. Like the village preacher in Goldsmith's "The
Deserted Village" who was unwilling to compromise his prin
ciples for any advantages which might accrue to him, the
Rebbe counsels against compelling the marriage of Hadassah
to Fishel Kutner in spite of Meshulam Moskat's wealth and
influence. The Bialodrevna Rebbe argues that "Man has free
will. Without free will what is the difference between the
5
throne of glory and the depths of the nether world?" The
Rebbe's spiritual qualities, however, do not insulate him
from the intrusion of the secular world. His inner thoughts
reveal a soul tortured by an awareness of the changing con
ditions in the world and their impact on the Jewish
5
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Family Moskat, trans. A. H.
Gross (New York, 1966), p. 87. All references are to the
Noonday edition.
52
community. Alone in his room he laments the breakdown of
Jewish values:
And here in Poland, Satan roamed openly through the
streets. Youths were running away from the study houses,
shaving off their beards, eating the unclean food of the
gentile. Jewish daughters went about with their naked
arms showing, flocked to the theaters, carried on love
affairs. (pp* 81-82)
The Rebbe's grief extends not only to the community of
Israel but also to the defection of his own daughter, Gina
Genendel, who left her husband Akiba for her childhood lover
Hertz Yanover.
Reb Dan Katzenellenbogen is another Hasidic rabbi whose
roots are firmly planted in the shtetl tradition. Revered
by Tereshpol Minor for his piety and learning, the old rabbi
(Asa Heshel's maternal grandfather) believes in an ordered
universe regulated by God. Despite his piety, he too is
plagued by doubts:
The old riddle remained: the pure in heart suffered and
the wicked flourished; the people chosen of God were
still ground into the dust. (p. 229)
Reb Dan's explanation that evil which has its roots in the
divine is an instrument of God's will fails to adequately
support the rabbi's faith. When he is driven from Tereshpol
Minor and witnesses the hardships of wartime travel and the
evil surrounding him, he is forced to expostulate with God
53
and cries out, "Enough! It is time! High time for the
Messiah!" (p. 287).
Reb Dan, like the Bialodrevna Rebbe, also witnesses
strife and divisiveness within his own family. His graying
sons pursue vain and empty lives while conspiring for their
father's rabbinical throne. The same emptiness possesses
his grandson Asa Heshel, whose Talmudic genius is deflected
by the secular knowledge secretly gained from Yekuthiel the
Watchmaker's library.
Not all of Singer's saintly rabbis are inwardly torn by
doubt or troubled by the secular forces around them. Some,
like the joyous Hasid Moshe Gabriel, are sustained by the
deep conviction that the study of Torah and the avoidance of
evil are realizable goals, and that human suffering in the
present is a precursor of God’s goodness in the hereafter.
Even the Bialodrevna Rebbe comes to Moshe Gabriel for reli
gious sustenance.
The ironic disintegration of Moshe Gabriel's marriage
suggests, however, that neither faith nor ritual alone can
sustain human relationships. In his treatment of Moshe
Gabriel Singer seems to suggest that the rigidity of the
shtetl marriage is incompatible with the demands of human
nature. In a like manner, Aaron, Moshe Gabriel's son,
54
follows closely in his father's footsteps. His immersion
in piety and learning, however, does not prevent Aaron from
ruining his own marriage. Here, too, Singer shows the in
compatibility between ritual orthodoxy and an enduring
family life.
Singer's most interesting characterizations, as one
might thus expect, are not people who stand squarely behind
Torah and mitzvoth. In some characterizations Singer pro
jects the paradoxes of human behavior in which the charac
ters are not only the products of a defined cultural envi
ronment but are also subject to inner drives and the demands
of their greater environment. Meshulam Moskat, the wealthy
patriarch of the Moskat clan, is one of these paradoxes.
While careful to observe the most minute details of reli
gious ritual, Meshulam— whose name ironically suggests com
pleteness, soundness, and peacefulness— suffers from an
excessive pride which drives him to assert his authority
over his family. It is his intervention which promotes the
loveless marriage between Hadassah and Fishel.
Meshulam, however, is not blind to his shortcomings.
To his third wife, Rosa Frumetl, Meshulam angrily confides
"I myself am a hard man, stubborn, spiteful, something of a
villain" (p. 89). The same Meshulam, nevertheless, supports
55
his large family in comfort, gives quietly to numerous
charities, and despite Koppel's advice, is unwilling to
evict the many impoverished occupants of his decaying tene
ments. Paradoxically, Meshulam refuses to participate for
mally in the life of his community:
The Warsaw Jewish community council had wanted to make
him an elder, as was suitable for a man of his wealth,
but he refused to take any part in civic affairs.
(p. 13)
Despite the power and influence which Meshulam has
wielded throughout his long life, and notwithstanding his
efforts to secure conformity to Jewish orthodoxy within the
large family he has spawned, the old man reviews his life
with regret. During the annual Purim gathering of the
Moskats and shortly before Meshulam's death, the ailing
patriarch sadly observes that:
He regretted everything now: that he had twice married
daughters of undistinguished families and spawned chil
dren of no accomplishments; that he had not been more
discriminating in the choice of sons-in-law; that he had
made such a fool of himself as to marry for a third
time; and especially that he had not made out a detailed
will, with the executor and a seal, leaving a substantial
part of his wealth to charity. (p. 193)
A third group of shtetl types consists of those charac-;
ters who ultimately reject the values of the shtetl. Unlike
the aged Meshulam who never divests himself of the mantle of
traditional Judaism, his complacent and self-indulgent son,
56
Nyunie, ultimately looks for an opportunity to cast off the
pretense and religious masquerade which has characterized
his existence. He finds this opportunity with the death of
his wife Dacha:
Now that Dacha was dead, he no longer needed this mask
of piety. There was nothing to stop him from shedding
these ancient Eastern garments and putting on European
clothing. (p. 349)
Even at Dacha’s funeral Nyunie is already eyeing her succes
sor, the widow Bronya Gritzhendler, the owner of an antique
shop. While the Russians are evacuating Warsaw and the
Germans are preparing to occupy the city, Nyunie's major
concern in this chaotic time is with his opportunity to
become westernized:
He could hardly contain his impatience for the Germans
to arrive, and for the time when he would be able to
don western clothing. Already he had a proper suit and
hat hanging in his clothes closet. Of his full beard
only a small chin-tuft was left. (p. 380)
Unlike Nyunie whose masquerade ends with his second
marriage, Abram Shapiro, Reb Meshulam's portly and promiscu
ous son-in-law, makes an open secret of his frequent trips
into the secular world. Abram moves deftly from the Hasidic
festivities of the Bialodrevna Court to his sexual encoun
ters. . Like Yasha Mazur, Abram moves uneasily from one
affair to the next, always conscious of his moral lapses.
57
These lapses are invariably posited as conscious deviations
from the shtetl's moral code. Even while engaged in the
spirited pursuit of sex, Abram Shapiro is able to recognize
the sordid quality of his life. In fleeting, anxious
moments, he contemplates his marital infidelity and filial
improvidence. Neither can he with an easy conscience shrug
off responsibility for the pain he has caused Ida during
their long and fruitless affair.
A poignant scene which focuses sharply on the ultimate
values which motivate him is the one in which Abram and his
grieving wife Hama achieve a temporary reconciliation. The
philandering Abram has just returned from a night spent with
his long-time mistress, Ida Prager, and learns that Reb
Meshulam has just died. His outraged wife berates him for
his infidelity and for the shame he has brought upon the
family. Although moved by the tearful earnestness of her
pleas, Abram's momentary affection and implied reformation
are prompted by other motives:
He bent his head and kissed her brow, her cheeks, her
chin. It was suddenly lightning-clear to him that there
could be no talk of divorcing her, whatever might be the
consequences. They would have to finish what was left
of their life together, especially now that the old man
was dead and that a royal inheritance would be her
portion. (p. 198)
58
Abram Shapiro's ultimate decline begins at a masked
ball, a charity affair, where most of the novel's characters
are gathered. 'The noisy and crowded ballroom into which
Abram Shapiro and Hadassah are swept is filled with masked
figures who represent an unmistakable parody of the shtetl
Jew:
A bewildering variety of masked figures went by:
Russian generals with epaulets, Polish grandees in
elegant caftans, Germans in spiked helmets, rabbis in
fur hats, Yeshivah students in velvet skullcaps; side-
locks dangling below their ears. (p. 487)
Significantly, the people Abram meets there are reminders of
the lost idealism and misguided hopes of earlier years.
Shapiro learns from the hunchback Finlender about the unful
filled aspirations of the living and the unrealized dreams
of the dead who were all part of their earlier years.
Another reminder of the past is a masked female who turns
out to be Manya, Reb Meshulam's former servant. Despite his
bad heart and the promises he has made to his wife, lust
wins out and Abram leaves the ball with Manya. In her
apartment he suffers a heart attack from which he never
fully recovers.
Although Singer projects Abram Shapiro as a fun-loving
and sex-ridden creature of pleasure, he also shows him in
59
more admirable moments, proud of his Jewish heritage and
willing to part with his last zloty to tip a janitor or
treat a weeping child to candy. He speaks out against
assimilationism and tells Asa Heshel that he will die a Jew.
Although Abram merits our disdain for the self-seeking life
he pursues, he also commands sympathy because both we and
the author recognize the struggle within a man driven by
instincts that are in direct conflict with the shtetl values
he has inherited.
Koppel Berman, Meshulam's shrewd and enterprising over
seer, is another self-serving individual whose pursuit of
power and sex is a sharp departure from the shtetl tradi
tion. Long convinced that "Most people were thieves, frauds
and scoundrels" (p. 265), Koppel wrests control of his mas
ter's fortune from the ineffectual Moskats, empties the safe
of the dying Meshulam, and finally persuades Leah to leave
her Hasid husband Moshe Gabriel and accompany him to
America. Koppel's power-laden dreams are initially linked
to his desire for yikhus:
He often imagined himself married to Leah and head of
the family enterprises. He would ride in a carriage
with rubber wheels; he would become an elder of the
community council, go to the Sabbath services in the
Great Synagogue. (p. 172)
60
In time, money becomes an end in itself for Koppel. Once in
America, he takes to bootlegging and, presumably, to other
shady enterprises. Although he returns to Warsaw as an
affluent American, Koppel has failed to find the happiness
with Leah that he had long dreamed about or the contentment
which wealth had promised him. His repeated half-humorous
confessions of the theft are a persistent reminder of his
troubled conscience, a product of the shtetl morality.
Like Abram Shapiro, Koppel is tormented by sexual
drives which are never satisfied in spite of the many women
who become the willing victims of his passions. Koppel's
two visits to Warsaw are a masterful study in rootlessness.
Alienated from his own family and moving restlessly among
his few surviving cronies, Koppel flaunts tokens of his
American affluence and reminisces endlessly about the more
satisfying past. Despite his wealth, he laments the past
and envies the plans of his simple-minded daughter Shoshe to
migrate to Palestine with her new husband, Simon Bendel:
He had no control over his own children. What would
happen to Teibele and Yppe? What would become of them
with that coal dealer for a father? He had lost every
thing— his wife, his children, the world to come. A
strange notion possessed him. Suppose he should go
along with these youngsters. Suppose he should go to
Palestine. After all, what they were building there
was a Jewish home. (p. 464)
61
While poetic justice calls forth an alienated existence
for the aging former overseer, other aspects of Koppel's
life somewhat mitigate our view of his past. Koppel does
provide for his divorced wife and children. He does lavish
money on his former cronies, and he does arrange a suitable
wedding for his daughter.
In his treatment of Koppel, Singer reveals the essen
tial rootlessness of the secular Jew. With few ties to his
family and to the spiritual life of the community, Koppel
wanders aimlessly seeking diversion in meaningless sexual
encounters. Nor does his American affluence suffice to fill
m
the spiritual vacuum he finds there. His return to Poland
for a visit to his vanished past brings despair rather than
nostalgia.
Asa Heshel Bannet is another character who leaves the
shtetl for the secular world only to find emotional and
spiritual death. That Asa Heshel's roots are firmly planted
in the shtetl is clearly evident from his early life in
Tereshpol Minor. A Talmudic prodigy at age six, he appears
destined to succeed to his grandfather's rabbinical chair.
Restlessly curious, he ponders the eternal questions which
repeatedly tormented him:
62
Was there a God or was everything, the world and its
works, mechanical and blind? Did man have responsibil
ities or was he accountable to no higher power? Was
the soul immortal or would time bring everything to
oblivion? (p. 28)
Asa Heshel's questioning intellect reinforced by secret
studies in science, philosophy, and mathematics prompt
Irreverent religious conduct and hasten Asa Heshel's depar
ture from Tereshpol Minor. Once in Warsaw under the tute
lage of Abram Shapiro, Asa Heshel completes his metamorpho
sis into a creature of the twentieth century. He enters in
to an unhappy marriage with Adele, another emancipated
but unhappy soul, only to abandon her for an adulterous
affair with Hadassah. Relinquishing his family responsibil
ities for the uncertainties of a soldier's life and for a
precarious, nomadic existence in Russia, Asa Heshel is left
with an unsatisfying nihilism, a personal philosophy com
pounded of a distortion of Spinoza, Malthus, and Darwin.
His personal philosophy not only posits the questionable and
anti-Judaic wisdom of sex without children as a solution to
the world's ills, but acts to rationalize his own belatedly
acknowledged irresponsibility:
The years had passed, filled with purposeless brooding,
fantasies, unquenched passions. His mother had died in
dire need. David had grown up estranged from him. He
63
had destroyed Adele's life as well as Hadassah's. Even
Barbara complained constantly. In his chase after
pleasure, he had neglected everything— his health, his
relatives, his work, his career. (p. 561)
Singer sees the pleasure principles which Asa Heshel
espouses not only as antithetical to the Judaic position,
but also as unacceptable from a secular viewpoint. It is
significantly Barbara Fishelsohn, the dedicated communist,
who reprimands Asa Heshel when she tells him, "You're a
victim of your own philosophy. If pleasure is all that
counts, there is no reason for ever giving. Only taking"
(p. 526).
The freedom he so avidly embraces fails to give him the
happiness he searches for or the peace of mind he desires.
Nevertheless, Asa Heshel is always aware of the shtetl as a
moral cosmos which he has left, and it is to the shtetl that
he repeatedly returns in moments of despair. Following his
return from Switzerland with Adele, he stops temporarily in
Tereshpol Minor. The thoughts which occur to him while he
visits the prayer house with his grandfather are especially
revealing:
Here in the dimness everything he had experienced in
alien places seemed to be without meaning. Time had
flown like an illusion. This was his true home, this
was where he belonged. Here was where he would come
for refuge when everything else failed. (p. 237)
64
Regrettably, Asa Heshel's initial skepticism and pro
gressive estrangement from the shtetl is never fully ex
plored or adequately developed by Singer. We are never cer
tain whether some inadequacy within the Talmud or perhaps
within Asa Heshel himself prompts his abandonment of his
traditional way of life.
Asa Heshel's acceptance of death as the Messiah is the
final indication of his moral decline. We are never sure,
however, whether this acceptance of death is a product of
his despair or whether it is occasioned by a positive affir
mation— the willingness to stand by his family in the face
of almost certain death.
While many of Singer's characters are treated so that
we are able to appreciate their involvement with and their
departure from the shtetl, other characters, less fully
treated, seem to illustrate the inefficacy of certain spe
cific secular choices. For Masha, assimilation is a path
strewn with disappointment. A university education enables
her to mingle socially with Polish aristocrats. This re
sults in her marriage to Yanek Zazhitsky and in her conver
sion to Catholicism. The resultant subsequent rejection by
her own family is only a prelude to the degradation she suf
fers at the hands of her alcoholic and paranoiac mate whose 1
65
debaucheries finally drive her to an abortive attempt at
suicide. The extreme suffering which Masha is made to expe
rience suggests that for Singer apostasy is the worst of all
secular choices.
Singer's portrait of Yanek appears as a mirror of the
self-hating enlightened Jew. Yanek looks Jewish, is fasci
nated by things Jewish and even marries a Jew. Though a
victim of anti-semitic taunts himself, Yanek attributes the
miseries of Poland and his own failure as an artist to the
predatory nature of Jewish merchants.
Though the proponents of the Haskalah or Enlightenment
do not suffer nearly as much as his apostates, their choices
prove equally futile. While the early glimpses of Jekuthiel
and Dr. Jacobi, the aged translator of Paradise Lost into
Hebrew, suggest Singer's awareness of the influence of the
Haskalah. none of the author's culture-bound characters ever
succeed in their undertakings: Asa Heshel's education is
never completed, Abram Shapiro's hazy dreams of publishing a
journal to enlighten the Jewish masses never get off the
ground, and Hertz Yanover's preoccupations with philosophy
and writing are debased by-the fruitless spiritualism in
which he dabbles. Like them, Adele, the only well-educated
woman associated with the Moskats, is left with nothing to
66
sustain her following her divorce from Asa Heshel. Singer
literary treatment of maskilim reflects the author's atti
tude toward that secular choice. In a recent interview in
The National Jewish Monthly, Singer says:
Yiddish writing was built on the ideas of the Enlighten
ment, and I am against the idea that the Enlightenment
can save us. Enlightenment, no matter how far it goes,
will not bring redemption.^
Communism, another secular choice, is also a poor sub
stitute for the shtetl. Barbara Fishelsohn, the rootless
daughter of an apostate minister, finally turns to the dog
mas of communism after unsuccessful attempts to discover
Christian purity, love, and personal emancipation. Con
stantly hounded by the police and subject to imprisonment
and deportation, she begins to doubt that the downtrodden,
to whose welfare she had dedicated her life, really appre
ciated her efforts:
She tried to justify in her mind the sacrifice she was
making for the proletariat, but somehow or other this
morning all of her social zeal seemed to have faded
away. These workers outside, the draymen, the janitors,
the gentile stall-keepers in the marketplaces, did not
know that she was suffering for them. And even if they
knew, would they care? . . . Why in the devil's name
g
Harold Flender, "An Interview with Isaac Bashevis
Singer," The National Jewish Monthly, LXXXII (April 1968),
14.
67
should she be singled out to be the one to sacrifice
herself for them? She tried to drive away these
bourgeois thoughts. (pp. 545-546)
Ironically, Barbara's father, the ex-yeshiva student turned
Christian missionary, arranges to have Barbara tutored in
Hebrew by Hertz Yanover, and, on his death bed, asks for a
Jewish burial.
While Singer rejects the secular choices which most of
his worldly characters make, he shows a favorable bias
towards Zionism. He treats Simon Bendel, Shosha's pioneer
husband and David, Asa Heshel's son, who are preparing to
leave for Palestine, with sympathy and admiration. Even
Aaron, Moshe Gabriel's son and the new Bialodrevna Rebbe
establishes a colony of Hasidim in the Holy Land. This is
particularly striking because traditionally Hasidim, in
their belief that only the Messiah could redeem the Jewish
people and re-establish Israel, were almost unanimous in
their opposition to Zionism. In an interview in Commentary
with Joel Blocker and Richard Elman, Singer expresses his
feelings about Zionism:
As for Zionism, I always believed in it. I think
Israel is a great hope for the Jewish people. But it
is true that just as I knew the socialist cooks, I knew
some of the Zionist cooks in Poland. . . . Yet in
68
the case of Zionism, I felt that whoever the cook was,
the food was wholesome.^
Moshe Gabriel's remarks during his poignant conversa
tion with his Americanized daughter Lotte, best expresses
Singer’s own view that Jews must remain loyal to their
traditions and resist assimilation:
"God gave us a law, a way of life. If not for the Torah,
then the nations,— God forbid— would long ago have swal
lowed us up." (p. 455)
This view was vigorously confirmed by the author himself
during a panel discussion at the Scottish Rites Temple in
Los Angeles in May 1968.
Thus, the only characters who find contentment are
those who choose the shtetl or Zionism. The others are
relegated by the author to a joyless existence. S. Niger,
the eminent Yiddish critic, sees the central focus of The
Family Moskat as the contrast between the spiritual life of
the faithful and the emotional death of the unbelievers:
The chief purpose of The Family Moskat is, it seems to
me, . . . to reveal to us two kinds of people: 1. reli
gious believers, whose life, as impoverished and pitiful
as it is, has a reason and therefore a foundation on
which they can rely and 2. unbelievers, godless people,
who have lost their reason and therefore also the
7
"An Interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer," Commentary,
XXXVI (November 1963), 369.
69
firmness and the certainty of their spiritual existence.
The only thing which sustains them is the brutal life-
instinct in its most intense expression, the libido,
sexual passion. It gives them temporary pleasure, joy;
it does not give them, however, any luck and certainly
not any rest.®
It is in the last chapter of the original Yiddish version of
The Family Moskat, omitted from its English translation,
that Singer projects an awareness on the part of the charac
ters of their own values in relation to the categories men
tioned by Niger. During the beginning hours of the Nazi
onslaught Singer's pious Jews examine and reaffirm their
faith in the values which have long sustained them. At the
same time the secular Jews discover the shortcomings of the
values they have embraced. Perhaps Singer's omission of the
last chapter is his attempt to avoid the didactic, an ele
ment common to much of Yiddish literature, and to end his
novel on an ambiguous note more acceptable to modern, non-
Yiddish readers.
While Asa Heshel agrees with Hertz Yanovar in the pre
ceding chapter that "death is the Messiah," in the final
twelve pages of the Yiddish ending, he rejects the
8
"Sotn m Varsha," rev. of Per Sotn in Goray, Per Tog,
June 3, 1951, p. 6, cols. 4-5. My translation from the
Yiddish.
70
philosophy of Spinoza and rediscovers the moral strength and
wisdom of the Old Testament:
Outside bombs exploded. Fires flared. Cannons fired.
But Asa Heshel did not interrupt his reading. These
very words were not unclear and hazy. The Nazi was not
able to usurp them. These are not words but flames,
which the Eternal Jew had hurled against eternal wicked-
9
ness.^
In a typical Singer irony Nyunie Moskat contemplates
the futility and disillusionment of his secular studies
while attending Rosh Hashana services in the Bialodrevna
prayer house. Bitterly Nyunie observes that "Everything had
deceived him: religion, evolution, progress, the human
species" (Pi familie Mushkat, II, 752).
To the same prayer house comes Masha, Moshe Gabriel's
apostate daughter. Deserted by Yanek and symbolically by
the Christianity she has embraced, Masha returns to her
Jewish roots to find spiritual sustenance on Rosh Hashana,
the Jewish Day of Judgment.
Simon Bendel, Singer's proponent of Zionism, who seemed
to be on his way to the Holy Land in the preceding chapter,
now awaits the Nazis in a forest outside Warsaw. Armed with
9
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Pi familie Mushkat, II
(New York, 1950), 758. My translation from the Yiddish.
71
a knife and a revolver, Simon Bendel is prepared to resist
and to sell his life dearly. The projection of his charac
ter by Singer as Zionist-turned-hero is the most affirmative
statement the author makes about his non-shtetl oriented
characters.
In contrast, Aaron, the Bialodrevna Rebbe, who inoppor
tunely returns to Warsaw from the Holy Land, prays fervently
with his Hasidim. The sermon he preaches takes as its
source the Cabala and asserts the sanctity of man's free
choice for which the surrounding evil is God's requisite.
Aaron expresses the hope that God will temper judgment with
compassion.
While nearly all of Singer's characters await certain
death, the author's final paragraph suggests that though all
hope for life is lost for the shtetl Jew, the high ethical
and moral plane on which he has lived will ultimately bring
redemption:
Moses is dead, but his word calls to you: Arise, rem
nants of Israel, and gird yourselves for the last
battle. For the House of Jacob is a flame and the House
of Esau is straw. Arise and fear not. The final
victory is on your side. To you the Messiah will come.
(Pi familie Mushkat, II, 760)
In the elevated tone of the novel's last paragraph,
Singer celebrates the final spiritual redemption of man.
72
In his assertion that the flame of Jacob will consume the
straw of Esau, he is affirming that the shtetl which he sees
as an ethical and moral entity, must ultimately prevail over
the secular forces that seem to have temporarily triumphed.
In Singer's teeming canvas of Jewish life in pre-World
War II Poland, the author contrasts the rich spiritual and
moral life of his shtetl-oriented characters with the emo
tional death and disillusionment of his secular characters.
Although the rituals of orthodox Judaism do not always
insure freedom from doubt, despair, and want, the suffering
of Singer's saints is markedly less than the anguish of his
worldly characters. The temporary triumph of evil in the
form of historical determinism is merely a prelude to the
ultimate triumph of the shtetl.
CHAPTER III
THE MANOR
The Manor, a complex family chronicle set in the
decades following the unsuccessful Polish rebellion of 1863,
traces the changing fortunes of the Jacoby family and those
of the ill-fated Polish aristocrats, the Jampolskis, with
whom they become involved. However, Singer does more than
recreate the period in Jewish history when the shtetl was
first seriously challenged by the secularizing forces of
Europe. In his treatment of the characters, Singer reveals
his vision of man.
Although his characters exercise free will, their
choices, as Singer shows, are determined partly by their
individual natures and partly by their environment. This
chapter will examine Singer's exploration of free will and
determinism as it focuses on his characters in their commit
ment to or departure from shtetl values. While the internal
influences are represented by the sexual drives of the
73
74
characters, the external influences are represented by the
secular forces which are part of the novel's historical con
text. In his "Author's Note," Singer specifically lists
some of those secular forces which after 1863 came into con
flict with the traditional shtetl values:
All the spiritual and intellectual ideas that triumphed
in the modern era had their roots in the world of th;.t
time— socialism and nationalism, Zionism and assimila-
tionism, nihilism and anarchism, suffragettism, atheism,
the weakening of the family bond, free love, and even
the beginnings of Fascism.
Singer's characters become the vehicles through which
the author examines both shtetl and secular values. The old
Rabbi of Marshinov, Jochanan, his successor, and Reb
Menachem Mendel Babad represent the shtetl-oriented world.
In the typical Singer manner, however, not even the holiest
of saints is unblemished. Singer clearly intends to avoid
the didactic and the stereotyped by revealing the shortcom
ings of the aforementioned rabbis and the machinations of
Reb Shimon and Reb Moshe, the power-hungry sons of the old
Rabbi of Marshinov, and by suggesting the hypocrisy of the
Hasid, Mayer Joel, Caiman's opportunistic son-in-law.
^Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Author's Note," The Manor,
trans. Joseph Singer and Elaine Gottlieb (New York, 1967).
All references are to the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition.
75
Another group of characters consists of those who
choose specific secular values. These include Ezriel Babad,
who abandons Talmudic scholarship for medicine; his sister
Mirale, the emancipated woman who embraces revolutionary
socialism; Wallenberg, the assimilationist; and Miriam
Lieba, the apostate. Finally, there is a third group of
characters whose choices are more self-seeking than specifi
cally secular. Those include the materialistic Clara, the
hedonistic Zipkin, and the latter's gentile counterpart.
Count Jampolski and his debauched son Lucian.
Though their choices are greatly determined by their
own individual natures as well as by their environment,
Singer's characters do exercise free will. They choose
consciously and deliberately from clear and unmistakable
alternatives. These alternatives, however, are limited by
the numerous orthodox rituals which dictate almost every
aspect of human conduct. Thus, the actual choice from a
shtetl point of view is one of accepting or rejecting these
regulations as they are set forth in the Torah and in rab
binical codes. At the same time, Singer, as we shall see
later, sets up a scale by which he judges the validity of
the secular values his characters choose. in addition to
Singer's major focus— the breakdown of shtetl values— the
76
author introduces a secondary theme, the conflict between
generations. The two, however, are closely related. "To
Singer," says Irving Buchen, "the family represents the
2
Jewish community in miniature." Zborowski and Herzog re
state the same equation in their assertion that "For the
3
shtetl, the community is an extended family." Singer's
attempt at universalizing the importance of family unity as
a significant value is apparent from his detailed treatment
of the Jampolskis.
The Hasidic Rabbi of Marshinov is the embodiment of the
other-worldly values of the shtetl. Our first glimpse of
the Rabbi, whose physical presence radiates spirituality, is
through the eyes of Caiman Jacoby who makes a pilgrimage to
the Rabbi's Hasidic court:
He marvelled at the rabbi's radiance. It was as if the
Divine Presence had enveloped this seer. Everywhere
around him were wet, clinging gaberdines, black, yellow,
and grey beards, eyes glowing with fervor. A spirit of
unalloyed rejoicing prevailed. . . . All sang one hymn.
Together they praised the Almighty for His mercies,
prayed not for earthly well-being but for the coming of
the Messiah and the abolition of evil, slavery, exile,
and that heavenly joy and salvation should exalt the
world. (pp. 61-62)
2
"Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Revival of Satan,"
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, IX (Spring 1967),
137.
3Life Is With People, p. 306.
77
The awe-inspiring sermon which he preaches— that spontaneity
should characterize the performance of good deeds while
restraint should accompany the contemplation of evil— is an
appropriate expression of the spirit in which maasim tovim
should be undertaken.
Other details in Singer's treatment of the Rabbi and
his court suggest deficiencies of the latter. Especially
revealing is the physical splendor which Caiman discovers
in the house of Temerel, the Rabbi's daughter:
Caiman stepped onto the gleaming parquet floor of a
drawing room; leather-bound books with gilt edges stood
on shelves behind glass, together with goblets, trays,
spice boxes, citron holders, and various silver and
gold-plated objects. Brocaded draperies hung over the
windows, and along the walls stood chairs with purple-
tasseled covers. (p. 66)
The luxury of this Hasidic household, in contrast to the
deep spirituality of its religious observances, suggests
Singer's satiric view of certain aspects of Hasidism. The
room in this description bears a striking resemblance to the
opulent interiors in the abodes of corrupt Polish aristo
crats such as Singer portrays in The Slave. Furthermore,
the Rabbi's character is somewhat tainted by the suspicion
(which even the often-naive Caiman entertains) that the seat
of honor in the prayer house reserved for Caiman is a result
of the respect due to wealth. The Rabbi is not
78
disappointed, for Caiman leaves two hundred rubles with his
host so that the latter can pray for his (Caiman's) soul.
There is also the unmistakable implication that the arranged
marriage between Jochanan, the Rabbi's grandson and Tsipele,
Caiman's youngest daughter, is a product of the Rabbi's in
tention to improve the fortunes of his own court.
Jochanan, the successor to the Hasidic throne of
Marshinov, is also projected like his grandfather as the
embodiment of other-worldly values. His piety, learning,
and humility win for him the reverence of thousands of
devoted Hasidim. Like the founders of Hasidism, Jochanan
rejects money and power and devotes himself to the study of
Torah and to the spiritual needs of his Hasidim.
Jochanan's idealized character is tempered by small but
significant details. One of these show Jochanan on his way
to the manor to visit his future father-in-law. Lest he be
distracted by evil thoughts, Jochanan spends his time on the
train praying:
But he had been unable to avoid glimpses of meadows,
fields, peasants, cattle, extraneous objects that he
did not care to observe, lest they deter him from
proper service to the Creator. (p. 75)
The incompatibility between Jochanan's reverence for God
the Creator and his obvious disdain for the evidences of
79
God's creation is a paradox which accords with an essential
ly non-Hasidic and non-Judaic negation of life which charac
terizes certain aspects of Jochanan's life. Jochanan's dis
dain for his own physical existence, for example, is care
fully noted by Singer:
In fact, Jochanan had been disgusted with bodily exis
tence for a long time. He never stopped envying his
father and grandfather, who had already cast off the
burdens of material life and now existed in supernal
regions. (p. 349)
It would appear then that for Singer, Jochanan the tsadik is
an embodiment of the shtetl only in terms of those quali
ties— piety, humility, altruism— which accord with the
spirit of shtetl values. He is at the same time the antith
esis of shtetl values as his attitudes often negate rather
than affirm life.
A further example which reveals Singer's attitude
towards his "pious" rabbis is apparent from his treatment of
Jochanan's uncles, Reb Shimon and Reb Moshe. Reb Shimon's
hunger for power, his ruthless attempts to usurp the Hasidic
throne by discrediting Jochanan and Reb Moshe's intrigues to
manipulate marriages in order to control power within the
Hasidic court are evidence that even rabbis are far from
perfect.
80
Another other-worldly character dedicated to Torah,
mitzvoth and maasim tovim, is Reb Menachem Mendel Babad,
whose portrait bears a striking resemblance to Singer's
father (as recounted by the author in his memoir, In My
Father's Court). Related to Caiman Jacoby through the mar
riage of his son Ezriel to Shaindel Jacoby, the former rabbi
of Jampol leaves for Warsaw after learning of the forthcom
ing marriage of Clara Kaminer and Caiman. Reb Menachem is
repelled by the poor prospects for a Jewish life in a town
which he correctly perceives will come to be dominated by
Clara. In Warsaw he becomes an unofficial rabbi, barely
ekeing out a living by settling lawsuits and ministering to
the religious needs of the Jews on Krochmalna Street. Bury
ing himself in religious studies and bemoaning the loss of
his children to the secular world, Reb Menachem remains un
compromising in his espousal of orthodox Judaism. Although
his stand on religion first appears as a fault, particularly
in his protracted arguments with Mirele, the old man's ex
hortations about the fearful progress of evil are ultimately
vindicated when his daughter abandons Judaism to embrace the
precarious life of a revolutionary socialist.
At least one of Singer's shtetl-oriented characters
attempts to secure the best of both worlds. Overtly within !
81
the shtetl but also associated with worldly aspirations is
Mayer Joel, Caiman's self-righteous son-in-law. Critical of
Ezriel's skepticism and confident in his own fanaticism,
Mayer Joel secretly yearns for Caiman's wealth and the
status which money accords. He willingly exchanges his
interest in study and Hasidism for success as a businessman.
Even while praying, Mayer Joel meditates about his prospects
for owning a mill in Jampol. He does, in fact, supplant
Caiman Jacoby when, at the novel's conclusion, he assumes
control of Caiman's enterprises. The materialistic goals
exemplified by Mayer Joel are perhaps even more reprehen
sible to Singer for they come disguised as religious piety.
While a few of Singer’s characters remain within the
physical and spiritual orbit of the shtetl, most of his
characters choose to become identified with the secular
forces in Europe. Ezriel Babad's exchange of Talmudic
scholarship for the practice of medicine is revealed as the
product of his skeptical nature as well as of his secular
reading. The first indications of his skeptical nature come
with the numerous unanswerable questions he poses about the
nature of the universe, creation, evil, and sin, as well as
the many Biblical contradictions he discovers. His
82
questions reveal a wide range of intellectual speculation:
On the other hand, how had the universe come into being?
Could it have created itself? How had the atoms
arranged themselves in order, with summer, winter, day,
night, men, women, thoughts, feelings? . . . What was
magnetism or electricity? According to the authors
things just happened by themselves. The universe was
ruled by chance. But what then was chance? And how did
it work? (p. 26)
Ezriel's heretical questions and secular reading soon come
to dominate his thinking and set the stage for his later
marital infidelities. After his marriage to Shaindel
Jacoby, Ezriel goes to Warsaw where he is encouraged by the
convert Wallenberg to pursue his medical studies. As with
nearly all of Singer's "enlightened" characters in all of
his novels, Ezriel in unable to understand or to accept the
presence of evil in a world presumably governed by God's
justice and mercy. His arguments with his father-in-law,
Caiman, reveal the further deterioration of his faith in
fundamental Jewish dogmas. Ezriel finally denies the truth
of the Torah, rejects the idea of reward and punishment in
God's relationship with man, and the promise of a Messiah.
His life as a medical student in Warsaw further erodes
his faith. Although he remains physically within the
restricted environment of a ghetto slum where he lives in a
single tiny tenement room, Ezriel's mind ranges beyond the
limited boundaries of his traditional life in Jampol.
Observing the human despair and the misery which surround
him, he concludes that the world is a jungle of blind forces
which has no room for God, justice, or sin. As a student
dependent on the generosity of others, Ezriel laments the
disparity between the promise he had envisioned and the
bitter reality of his own existence:
Ezriel had great hopes that progress could be achieved
through education. Yet knowledge itself turned out to
be extremely precarious. . . . Moreover, the various
materialistic theories, and Darwinism in particular, had
put almost all values in jeopardy: the soul, ethics,
the family. . . . What could Ezriel do about it? For
him the old traditions were already destroyed.
(pp. 285-286)
Whatever environmental influences confront Ezriel,
Singer still permits him to choose freely as he does all of
his characters. Because the disparity between Ezriel's
broadening intellectual horizons and his wife's unchanging
adherence to shtetl ways introduces a divisive element into
their marriage, Ezriel knowingly becomes involved in a love
affair with Madame Bielikov, the attractive and intellec
tually stimulating widow of an army doctor. Ezriel's aware
ness of his choice is apparent from the conflicts which this
relationship creates within him.
84 ;
I
Singer's disposition of Ezriel makes it clear that the
!
further Ezriel gets from the values of his youth the more he,
despairs. Although he achieves his goal, Ezriel has lost
the certainty of a sustaining faith, his marriage to
Shaindel is precarious and unsatisfying, and ironically,
though he becomes a doctor who specializes in mental dis
orders, his own anguish makes him feel an affinity for the
patients he treats. Judging by Ezriel's ruminations, one
senses Singer's own uncertainty about the balance between
free will and determinism in human life. As Ezriel thinks
about the human brain, he speculates about the secrets it
might hold:
Was free will also one of its constituents? If not.
How was it possible to talk about responsibility and
duty? When he listened to the voice of his own spirit,
it seemed to him that he heard the cry of all genera
tions. . . . Existence had always meant the same chaos;
the ego had always wanted everything for itself— money,
fame, sex, knowledge, power, immortality. (pp. 393-394)
Ezriel's identification of all generations with the same
drives establishes man's nature and free will as basic com- |
mon denominators of human destiny. This is the author's
position as well. Nevertheless, free will has led Ezriel j
from the shtetl to the secularism of the modern world. ;
Ezriel's suffering, a measure of his lost past, is mitigated!
j
by the nature of his choice. As a doctor ministering to the!
85
needs of humanity, Ezriel's torments are less than those of
Singer's characters whose choices are dedicated to selfish
ends.
Mirale Babad, Ezriel's sister, also chooses to leave
the shtetl for the emancipated life of the secular world.
Rejecting an arranged marriage, she becomes involved with
the Enlightenment through her membership in a self-education
group. She also achieves self-sufficiency through her com
petence as a hairdresser. Singer foreshadows Mirale's
future in a significant conversation between Mirale and her
father, Reb Menachem Mendel, Jampol's ex-rabbi. The old
rabbi warns about the fruits of involvement wirh heretics
who deny God and who espouse materialistic values:
"The body is everything to them. If, as they say, there
is no God, then it doesn't matter what one does. At
first we are tempted by some minor sin, but as soon as
that is committed, the will lures us into more serious
evil." (p. 250)
The rabbi's worst fears are realized when Mirale severs her
ties with the self-education group, denounces Jews as para
sites, and joins a revolutionary socialist movement. Near
the conclusion of the novel we learn from Sonya, Zipkin's
sister, that Mirale, now living with her gentile boyfriend,
and deeply involved in revolutionary intrigue, is being
sought by the police. While her physical alienation from
86
the shtetl is complete, we can only guess at the nature of
her suffering. Singer fails to dramatize adequately the
quality of Mirale's emotional response to her predicament.
While Mirale's choices take her just short of apostasy,
her sister-in-law, Miriam Lieba, the beautiful daughter of
Caiman Jacoby, makes a complete physical and spiritual break
with her past. Instead of an arranged marriage with
Jochanan, Miriam Lieba chooses elopement with Lucian
Jampolski, the fugitive and unstable Polish aristocrat. Her
dreams of a brilliant life as a countess in Paris are quick
ly dissipated by the debaucheries of her erratic husband,
and she degenerates into an alcoholic drudge, unable to sup
port her children and barely able to stave off starvation,
by taking in laundry. Significantly, Miriam Lieba's unfor
tunate marital choice is motivated by the secular reading
she indulges in. The romances of knights in shining armor
prompt her to accept Lucian as a personification of her
literary heroes. Her downfall is clearly a result of her
poor marriage. That apostasy for Singer is the worst pos
sible choice is apparent from the unusual suffering which
Miriam Lieba is made to experience and from the abysmal
depths into which she is allowed to decline.
87
A few other characters also appear as the embodiment of:
specific secular choices. Aaron Asher Lipman is a maskil
whom Ezriel first meets in Marshinov. Aaron's Hasidic garb
ironically conceals his disdain for the religious and
economic condition of Polish Jewry. The solutions he sees
to the Jewish problem include the reformation of Jewish
education by the addition of secular learning, the abolish
ment of Hasidic dress, and the recovery of a physical home
land for the Jewish people. He becomes part of a self-
education group which ironically leads Mirale into revolu
tionary socialism. The reader's final glimpse of Aaron
shows him reacting to the horrors of a Warsaw pogrom. This
causes him to destroy his secret library of revolutionary
books and to embrace Zionism. The justification for
Singer's superficial treatment of Aaron is perhaps best
explained by the late arrival of the Haskalah and Zionism
in Poland as the author himself notes in his discussion of
Yiddish literature in Poland:
The Jewish shtetl in Poland did not experience the
Haskalah-epoch at the same time and in the revolutionary
form in which it developed in Russia or in Lithuania.
Until 1914 most of the Jewish shtetlach in Poland were
religious. There were in the greater cities and even
88
in the smaller ones individual maskilim, and also small
groups of socialists; but Jewish life in general remained
as it had been.^
That Aaron experiences very little suffering is probably a
reflection of Singer's own prejudice in favor of Zionism.
Another secularly-oriented character who experiences
relatively little anguish as a result of his separation from
the shtetl is the wealthy convert Wallenberg. This vocal
assimilationist betrays an unmistakable ambivalence about
his own religious status. While berating Polish Jews (whom
he describes as "a tribe of Asiatics") and though castigat
ing Hasidim (whom he likens to "savage Bedouins") Wallenberg
unselfishley uses his great influence to help Jew and
Gentile alike. Paradoxically, Wallenberg the apostate never
abandons his interest in Judaism. Singer uses the image of
the tightrope (previously used in The Magician of Lublin to
reveal Yasha Mazur's search for identity) to explore
Wallenberg's ambivalent Jewish feelings. As he moves from
one crisis to another, Wallenberg thinks of himself as "a
circus performer constantly forced to walk a tightrope over
a mass of hissing adders" (p. 392). Although Wallenberg
4
I. Bashevis [Isaac Bashevis Singer], "Arum der j
Yidisher literatur in Poilin," Zukumft, XLVIII (August
1943), 468. My translation from the Yiddish.
89
does not suffer as much as another apostate, Miriam Lieba,
Singer's picture of the emotionally sterile Wallenbergs sug
gests the loss of the warmth and closeness associated with
shtetl life.
While many of Singer's characters exchange shtetl
values for the secular values represented by Darwinism,
revolutionary socialism, Zionism, the Haskalah, and assimi-
lationism, some characters like Clara Kaminer and her lover
Alexander Zipkin embrace only self-serving materialism and
hedonism. Clara, the attractive and emancipated young widow;
who successfully contrives to marry the rich and pious
Caiman Jacoby, is the epitome of this materialism. She con
nives to gain control of the manor from her husband, auda
ciously negotiates for her father's inheritance, skillfully
engineers an unsuitable marriage between her father and the
spoiled young Celina, and boldly reneges on numerous prom
ises to Caiman. Clara's unscrupulous selfishness and mascu
line aggressiveness ("If only she had been a man, she would
have shown the world a thing or two" [p. 275]) are matched
only by her pervasive cynicism: j
There was no one, experience had taught her, who could
not be bribed. You could even buy off God with a ritual j
bath or a prayer house. (p. 266) 1
90
Significantly, the festering argument between Clara and her
husband about renovating the manor instead of building a
prayer house and ritual bath symbolizes their respective
roles in the conflict between worldly and other-worldly
values. Neither her marriage to Caiman nor her adulterous
affair with Zipkin brings Clara much joy. Ironically, Clara,
the outwardly emancipated woman, remains inwardly tormented
by guilt-ridden dreams in which the accusing white-robed
figure of Caiman appears. The morality of the shtetl thus
appears deeply rooted in her subconscious and is revealed by
her haunted dreams.
Clara's fate, however, is not determined by her choices
alone. Singer reserves a small measure of compassion for
this tormented character by reminding us of the inner forces
which have long dominated her life:
She couldn't stop planning, wanting, and hoping. It was
as if her blood were boiling within her. (p. 266)
Although Alexander Zipkin, Clara's lover, dabbles with
Darwinism, atheism, and revolutionary socialism, he emerges ;
i
essentially as a symbol of unrestrained hedonism. His other I
j
interests are submerged and debased in his pursuit of sexual;
freedom. His protestations that "Man is just an animal,"
i
and that Darwinism and atheism are rational guides to human j
conduct are postures ironically used to secure the sexual
favors of the all-too-willing Clara. Zipkin's interest in
revolutionary socialism is quickly dampened by his reluc
tance to exchange material comforts for political idealism.
His aristocratic upbringing and desultory university studies
merely enhance his appeal to women and never lead to any
career.
The consequences of Zipkin's sexual excesses are as
disillusioning to him as they are disastrous to others. He
destroys Jacoby's marriage, fathers Clara's illegitimate
child, and finally promises to abandon his wife and child
for an uncertain life with Clara in America.
Zipkin's joyless sexuality is skillfully projected by
Singer through highly symbolic dreams. The rooms with their
protruding petrified mushrooms and the various obstacles
which confront Zipkin in these dreams are unmistakable
sexual symbols which express the frigidity and the fear of
failure ironically associated with the facade of Zipkin's
outwardly successful sexual life.
The free choice which he exercises is painfully
apparent to Zipkin. Reflecting upon his promises to Clara
at the conclusion of the novel, Zipkin muses, "If my parents
knew what I've become, they'd die" (p. 432). As with Clara,
92
Singer reserves a measure of compassion for the totally
alienated Zipkin, who, like Yasha Mazur, is destined to suc
cumb to his uncontrollable lust. Again Singer's vision em
bodies the paradoxical combination of free will suffused by
determinism.
Singer's protagonist Caiman Jacoby is an unpretentious
Jewish merchant "esteemed for his piety, honesty, and
shrewdness," who prospers when he successfully operates the
large estate of a ruined Polish nobleman which he has leased
from its new Russian proprietor. Though he vows to remain a
"humble, unaffected Jew," and promises to "build" Judaism on
his estate by erecting and furnishing a synagogue, his
wealth soon brings him into contact with the secular world
and results in his falling away from the orthodoxy of his
past life.
His departure from tradition is first signaled by the
hint that his now expanded business has involved him in many
compromises of principle. His business also brings him into
contact with "nonconformists" whose skills he needs. Dis
mayed by the swiftly changing circumstances of his new posi-j
tion, Caiman reflects:
His recent wealth seemed to have brought him only com- j
plaints. He was forever justifying himself, apologizing,
offering bribes, and making promises. (p. 50)
93
Caiman Jacoby's short-lived second marriage to the
emancipated Clara Kaminer, a result of both nis newly
acquired wealth and status and his susceptibility to sexual
desires, leads him to curtail his studies of Torah, to scant
daily prayers, and to overlook the dietary regulations.
Only when he rids himself of Clara whose socials he tires of
and whose infidelities he correctly suspects, and turns over
his wealth to his son-in-law Mayer Joel, is Caiman able to
re-embrace the values of the shtetl.
Like the return of the protagonists of Singer's other
novels which is marked by their physical presence in a
prayerhouse, Caiman's return to the shtetl is signaled by
his visit to the Hasidic court of Marshinov where his son-
in-law Jochanan is now rabbi. There he participates in the
ceremonies and rituals of the holidays and there alone he
discovers genuine joy.
Caiman's joy, however, is not complete. Driven by
lustful dreams of his adulterous wife, he leaves for Jampol
during a driving snowstorm:
The wind scurried over the earth, tearing up the straw
roofs in the hamlets, knotting braids in the horses'
manes, exposing furrowed fields and sweeping paths and
highways. Occasionally Caiman was struck in the eye as
if by a handful of salt. At times it seemed as if cold
fingers pressed on his lids. (p. 352)
94
i
Here Singer deftly transcends the realism of his story by
using nature as both a physical phenomenon and as a punitive
force. Once in Jampol, Caiman realizes the futility of a
reconciliation with the deceitful Clara. His return to the
shtetl is complete when, like Yasha in The Magician of
Lublin, he isolates himself from the outside world and
retreats into his private synagogue to find peace:
Caiman prayed, reflecting. He kissed the phylacteries
worn on the head and on the arm by touching them and
then bringing the fingers to his lips. He also kissed
the fringes of his prayer shawl. He stationed himself
at the Eastern wall for the Eighteen Benedictions. This
house of prayer had been his salvation. Here he retired
with all his worries and anxieties. (p. 437)
In spite of his holy surroundings, Caiman, like Jacob the
Penitent, is unable to subdue the lust which burns within
him. That Caiman continues to suffer in spite of the piety
which accompanies his return to the shtetl does not repre
sent a paradox for Singer who regards suffering as man's
eternal legacy. In response to Harold Flender's question,
"What do you think will save humanity?" Singer, during a
i
recent interview in The National Jewish Monthly, gave the
|
following interesting reply; j
j
Nothing will save us. We will make a lot of progress,
but we will keep on suffering, and there will never be j
an end to it. We will always invent new sources of
95
pain. Hie idea that man is going to be saved is a com
pletely religious idea, and the religious leaders never
said we would be saved on this earth. - . . . I admit that
conditions can improve, and I hope we will do away with
wars, but there will be enough sickness and all kinds of
tragedies so that humanity will keep on suffering more
or less in the same way as it always has. Being a pessi
mist to me means to be a realist.5
One of the novel's characters makes an observation
which provides a useful clue to the way in which Singer
regards the suffering of his characters. In one of his
melancholy, philosophical moods, Jochanan, now the Rabbi of
Marshinov, speculates about human suffering:
Sinners were to be pitied; they were God's children
also, but having forgotten their father, they suffered
torment even while indulging in their sensual pleasures.
Yet the suffering that they inflicted upon themselves
served some purpose. God had created Satan so that man
should have free choice, although the path chosen by
sinners was the more painful one. (p. 255)
No one, not even Singer's most pious characters, is free
from some moral deficiency. Hence, all suffer. There is,
however, a scale which seems to determine the degree of suf
fering the characters experience. The further the charac
ters move from both shtetl and humanitarian values, the more!
they are physically and emotionally tormented. Jochanan
i
suffers ironically from the burdens of his religious j
5 . . .
"An interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer," National
Jewish Monthly, LXXXII (April 1968), 14.
96
responsibilities and the doubts of his own worthiness.
Ezriel suffers from the emotional vacuum which he has sub
stituted for his shtetl values and finds himself tormented
by doubts and despair. Nevertheless, because his life as a
doctor is dedicated to humanitarian purposes, he does not
experience the torments and anguish which confront the
hedonist Zipkin and the horrors which afflict the apostate
Miriam Lieba.
Singer's gentiles also suffer. Though they are the
victims of external forces, they are also driven by inner
forces. The similarities between Singer's Jews and the
Jampolskis suggest that the author uses the latter to under
score the universality of his vision. The Jampolskis expe
rience a total breakdown in values relating to nation,
class, and religion. Their family life totally disinte
grates.
As a result of the abortive Polish rebellion of 1863,
the Jampolskis, active participants in the uprising, are
dispersed by voluntary and self-imposed exile and forfeit
their ancestral estate. The old count who inveighs against j
the effete Polish aristocracy, cohabits with an assortment
of mistresses, extols Darwinism, and denounces religion,
97
compromises the aristocratic and religious values of his
class.
More debauched than the old count is Lucian Jampolski,
a composite of the most abominable qualities of all Singer's
characters. He abandons Miriam Lieba and her child to the
abject poverty of a Paris slum just as he abuses his mis
tress Stachowa and her daughter Kasia. Lucian's moral col
lapse is complete when, on Christmas eve, he murders a man
during an abortive attempt to rob the vacant apartment of
Pan Chodzinski, Kasia's employer.
Not all of the Jampolskis sink into the mud. One of
Singer's many ambiguities emerges in his portrait of
Felicia, the only Jampolski to escape the misery which
claims the rest of her family. Although she has always been
immersed in Roman Catholicism, her salvation from the bore
dom and frustration of spinsterhood comes not through any
return to a definable set of values, but through a physical
ly comfortable marriage. In what amounts to a humorous
paradox, Singer makes Felicia see the benevolent hand of God
as the instrument of her marriage to Dr. Zawaki, a militant
atheist who is confident that all truth can be discovered
under the microscope. Though she still observes the reli
gious rituals of her former faith, Felicia has compromised
98
her religious ideals for material comfort. By revealing the
tormented Jampolskis, Singer transcends the parochial and
exposes the common tragic destiny which all men must share.
Singer's essentially pessimistic and universal vision
of man as a victim of forces he must continually struggle
against is mitigated by the free choice which he is per
mitted to exercise. 'Though adherence to shtetl values does
not guarantee immunity from sin and pain. Singer's other
worldly and altruistic characters experience far less physi
cal suffering and spiritual despair than do his worldly and
self-seeking characters. For nearly all, however, the
author reserves some measure of compassion in the knowledge
that all men share the doubts and passions that are part of
the human condition.
CHAPTER IV
THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN
Whereas the characters in The Family Moskat and
The Manor are symbols of the various secularizing forces in
conflict with shtetl values, Yasha Mazur, the magician of
Lublin, is a composite of many of these forces. Yasha's
religious skepticism, preoccupation with science and magic,
insatiable sexual drive, and hunger for power and recogni
tion have their counterparts in the individual drives which
dominate Asa Heshel, Ezriel Babad, Abram Shapiro, Koppel
Berman, and many others.
Yasha's pursuit of these different secular interests
endows him with many identities. This multiplicity of iden
tities is emphasized by his being cast as an entertainer and
magician, a man who changes appearances and manipulates
reality. At the same time, Yasha is also drawn to and aware!
of the forces antithetical to his secular pursuits, namely,
the shtetl values of which he is also a part. Paradoxically,!
!
99
Yasha the skeptic is consciously envious of the sustaining
faith of the pious in the shtetl. Yasha the libertine is
ever aware of the sanctity of his shtetl marriage to Esther.
Yasha the enlightened European, the dabbler in science and
magic, is haunted by demonic forces which natural laws can
not explain.
The novel's plot clearly underscores Yasha's rejection
of his multiple identities and his discovery of faith in
"one wife, one God." Yasha's return to the shtetl, however,
does not come without moral assessment and suffering.
Following his abortive robbery, Yasha makes a nightmarish
journey through the streets of Warsaw. This journey, an
allegorical descent into hell, reveals the agony of human
existence and prompts a moral awakening within Yasha and a
consciousness of the evil in his own life. Redemption comes
when Yasha as a penitent ascetic isolates himself in a brick
house in order to control the passions which have hitherto
dominated his life. The familiar allegorical pattern of
sin, penance, and redemption emerges from Yasha's search for
identity and faith. Irving H. Buchen, writing in Critique,
describes the three-part division of The Magician of Lublin,
which essentially parallels the sin-penance-redemption
101
structure:
The first deals with Yasha in a situation that is char
acteristically modern in its admixture of freedom and
restraint, adultery and fidelity, secularity and reli
giosity. The second part is nightmarish, wild and sur
realistic. All bars are drawn and Yasha forgoes all
restraint. The conclusion presents the penitential por
trait of imprisonment and slavery to God.l
Yasha's religious skepticism is a product of his cyni
cal nature, his pragmatic training, and his reading in
natural science. Yet, in all aspects of nature he sees evi
dence that "God's hand was everywhere. Each fruit blossom,
pebble, and grain of sand proclaimed Him" (p. 6). While ex
pressing a belief in an immanent God, Yasha denies revela
tion:
There was a Creator, but He revealed Himself to no one,
gave no indications of what was permitted or forbidden.
Those who spoke in His name were liars. (p. 7)
Responding to Zeftel's criticism of his intention to
convert in order to marry Emilia, Yasha says, "How do I know
which God is the right one? No one's been up to Heaven. I
don't pray anyhow" (p. 47). Yasha's skepticism, Singer sug-;
gests, is perhaps also related to his speculations about thej
problem of evil. Observing a prayer house filled with piousj
i
l
1 ^
"Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Eternal Past,"
Critique, XIII (Spring 1966), 9-10.
102
Jews, devoutly praying to their Creator, Yasha muses:
Jews— an entire community of them— spoke to a God no one
saw. Although plagues, famines, poverty and pogroms
were His gifts to them, they deemed Him merciful and
compassionate and proclaimed themselves His chosen
people. (p. 16)
Yasha's religious skepticism does not, however, over
shadow his deep roots in the shtetl. Yasha's father had
been a pious and learned Jew, and Yasha himself had studied
the Talmud as a small boy. Though alienated from the Jewish
community, Yasha is sensitive to and aware of the religious
world around him. Lublin represents for Yasha "the stabil
ity of a long-established community" in which the old tradi-
tions prevail. He secretly envies the gaberdined Jews wor
shipping in the prayer houses who "had their God, their
saints, their leaders" (p. 16).
In Yakov, a small shtetl where Yasha and Magda take
shelter from the driving rain, he rediscovers the warmth of j
the tradition he has forgotten. Reacting to the old Jews in;
their prayer shawls and phylacteries, Yasha feels that "He
was part of this community. Its roots were his roots. He
bore its mark upon his flesh" (p. 67). Thus Yasha is a com-i
posite of both the skeptical and religious attitudes of latej
i
i
nineteenth-century Jewry. Indeed, Yasha's awareness of the j
!
103
dual roles he plays is readily apparent. While he glories
in the adulation of the Piask thieves, Yasha thinks:
. . . There was always another role for him to play. He
was a maze of personalities— religious and heretical,
good and evil, false and sincere. (p. 58)
Another role which Yasha assumes is that of the
enlightened modern European. Self-educated in Russian,
Polish, science, and mathematics, Yasha is particularly
interested in understanding the basic laws of nature.
Though some of this knowledge becomes useful in his work as
an acrobat and magician, much of it leads him to further
speculation about fundamental philosophical and theological
questions. It is especially appropriate for Yasha the
expert at opening locks to indulge in speculations about the
nature of the universe and its Creator.
If Yasha's interest in science and languages suggests
his propensity for the Enlightenment, his periodical strug
gles with inexplicable forces within him also suggest his
preoccupation with the supernatural. During his abortive
robbery of Zaruski's apartment, Yasha thinks about:
That enemy which for years had lurked in ambush within
him, whom Yasha had had, each time, to repel with force
and cunning, with charms and such incantations as each
individual must learn for himself, . . . a dybbuk, a
satan, an implacable adversary . . . (p. 142)
104
Like religious skepticism and the pursuit of secular knowl
edge, Yasha's sexual excesses represent a basic departure
from the values of the shtetl. His sexual adventures, how
ever, are not simply willful indulgence in sex for its own
sake. Sex for Yasha is a paradoxical combination of two
opposing forces. Lust controls him ("He lusted after women,
yet hated them as a drunkard hates alcohol"[p. 99]), while
his hypnotic power over women allows him to control them.
This control sometimes backfires, for just as Magda and
Zeftel are hypnotically drawn to Yasha, so he is drawn to
Emilia. Ironically, while his affairs with other women
deteriorate into mere physical passion and lead to despair
and even death, his childless shtetl marriage to Esther
endures.
Yasha's sexual intrigues, however, are more than a
source of illicit pleasure or a revelation of unmanageable
forces. His relationship with Emilia is the road to assim
ilation through conversion to Catholicism. Marriage to
Emilia also symbolizes artistic recognition and the power
that this implies. In Yasha's imagination artistic success
conjures up Faustian power:
He, Yasha, was no longer a magician but a divine hypno
tist who could control armies, heal the sick, flush
105
criminals, locate buried treasures, and raise sunken
ships from the ocean depths. He, Yasha, had become
the emperor of the entire world. (p. 62)
Ironically, while Yasha yearns for the "applause of
listening senates to command, " he also recognizes the hypoc
risy of the secular world whose good opinion he desires.
Seated with Emilia and observing the audience's reaction to
a farce about marital infidelity, Yasha expresses his con
tempt for the well-dressed audience:
The same rabble existed everywhere. They danced at
weddings and wailed at funerals, swore faithfulness at
the altar and corrupted the institution of marriage,
wept over a forlorn, fictitious, little orphan and
butchered each other in wars, pogroms, and revolutions.
(p. 98)
Yasha agonizes over his inability to effect compromises like
the ladies and gentlemen in the audience who "had fused
religion with materialism, connubiality with adultery,
Christian love with worldly hate" (p. 99).
The complexity of Yasha1s character is further evi
denced by frequent glimpses of Yasha the man as opposed to
Yasha the symbol. The twenty groschen piece he casually
gives to Haskell the water carrier as a small gift to the
latter's young son is Yasha's way of tactfully disguising
the charity Haskell is too proud to ask for. Shortly there
after, while in the company of the Piask thieves, Yasha
106
pretends difficulty in opening a lock which Blind Mechl has
so arduously perfected. Yasha does not wish to shame Mechl
before the others. In these small but significant moments
Yasha acts in the highest tradition of the shtetl. His
sense of maasim tovim does not stop with his kindness to
Jews alone. The grotesque glutton Elzbieta and her poten
tially dangerous son Bolek both are recipients of Yasha's
beneficence. Indeed, Yasha's downfall can be traced partly
to the obligations and responsibilities he willingly under
takes to help those in pain or difficulty. Magda's suicide
is at least partly a result of Yasha' generous impulse in
going out to meet and help the stranded Zeftel.
In Yasha's responses to life there appears a duality.
His rational responses generally lead to skepticism and sin,
while his emotional responses (with a few exceptions) bring
him near to the shtetl tradition. Singer is laying the
groundwork for Yasha's ultimate emotional decision— his
return to faith.
Before Yasha can rediscover the faith of his ancestors,
he must undergo a spiritual transformation. Yasha's
abortive theft, the climax of Singer's novel, is the
culmination of an increasing receptivity in Yasha to a
return to the religion of his ancestors. It also initiates
107
a moral re-awakening because Yasha realizes how close to the
brink he has come. Having lost his faith, and discarded his
marital vows, he is, in fact, only one step away from the
murder he contemplates during the robbery. That robbery
represents a significant departure from Yasha's values is
apparent from two prior reactions. Aghast at the suggestion
of his Piask admirers who solicit his artistic talents to
further their criminal work, Yasha announces, "I still
believe in the eighth commandment" (p. 59). To the sugges
tion of Herman, the pimp from Argentina, that Yasha can
profitably turn his hypnotic powers to criminal ends, he
angrily retorts, "I'm a magician, not a criminal!" (p. 132).
Nevertheless, the dreams of marriage to Emilia (assim
ilation) and the prospects for artistic recognition and per
sonal power, lead Yasha to overlook his moral commitments.
He even disclaims free will, an important shtetl value, in
order to rationalize his potential theft:
As long as it is inevitable, he said to himself, why not
tonight? Evidently, it had been foreordained. How was
it called?— predestination?— If there was a reason for
everything, as the philosophers claimed, and man was
merely a machine, then it was as if everything had been
written beforehand. (pp. 136-137)
Having disclaimed free will and his own moral responsi-l
bility, Yasha embarks on his attempted theft of Zaruski's
|
S
i
108
hidden fortune. While the episode itself reveals both the
physical and psychological tensions with Yasha, the death
images which are a significant part of the setting suggest
Yasha's impending moral death. The coffin-shaped safe and
the corpse-like appearance of the sleeping old man prompt
the ensuing moral struggle within Yasha. An inner voice
whose "intonations were almost that of a preacher" (p. 137)
urged Yasha on. The magician of Lublin is further confused
by "some presence, partly within and partly outside him”
(p. 141) which suggests the further possibility of murdering
the old man. Though Yasha rejects this alternative, and
continues his frenzied efforts to pry open the safe, he soon
realizes that his attempted robbery is a complete fiasco.
Yasha fears that potential weakness within his character
which would upset the precarious balance of his life:
That enemy which for years had lurked in ambush within
him, whom Yasha had had, each time, to repel with force
and cunning, with charms and such incantations as each
individual must learn for himself, had now gained the
upper hand. Yasha felt its presence— a dybbuk, a Satan,
an implacable adversary who would disconcert him while
he was juggling, push him from the tightrope, make him
impotent. (p. 142)
!
The tightrope, incidentally, is one of a group of unre-j
lated images used by Singer. It represents the precarious |
I
balance of Yasha's existence, alternately relaxed and taut.
109
It appears in various contexts, symbolizing simultaneously
the delicate balance of his sexual intrigues, and the bal
ance he maintains between the shtetl and the secular world.
His constant fear of falling suggests the conflict among his
multiple identities:
. . . he, Yasha, lived his whole life as if walking the
tightrope, merely inches from disaster. (p. 37)
Yasha's awareness of the mysterious inner forces which
control him is only the beginning of the way back. A more
significant beginning occurs in the prayer house where Yasha
has gone to find refuge from the police immediately follow
ing the abortive robbery. It is there that he sees his
failure at theft as a sign of God's beneficent intervention:
Only now did he realize what he had attempted and how
Heaven had thwarted him. It came over him like a
revelation. (p. 150)
The process of Yasha's spiritual rebirth is brilliantly
projected in a scene filled with symbolic ritual. In the
prayer house Yasha fumbles in his attempt to put on a prayer
shawl and to adjust his phylacteries correctly:
He began to put on the prayer shawl. He looked for the
spot where the embroidery was supposed to be, or a i
stripe which indicated the section meant to be worn over
the head, but he could find neither embroidery nor
stripe. He fumbled with the ritual fringes. One fringe
110
even lashed him across the eye. . . . He took out the
phylacteries and could not determine which one was for
the head and which for the arm. And which should one
put on first? (p. 149)
At first, Yasha's embarassment seems a result of his
inability to handle the sacred objects in the prescribed
manner. Close examination, however, reveals that the par
ticular religious significance of each of these objects
lends a symbolic meaning to Yasha's misuse of them.
On each of the corners of the traditional talith or
prayer shawl there are tsitses or ritual fringes. These
fringes represent the 613 commandments which God has given
the Jews and are also a reminder to the Jews that they must
not turn away from Judaism, or indulge in personal excesses.
When Yasha is lashed across his eye by the fringes, he is
being reminded of his obvious failure to observe the com
mandments.
Phylacteries are two black leather cubes or cases, con
taining quotations from the Pentateuch, which are worn by
Jews on the forehead and on the left arm during morning
prayers. The hand phylactery, significantly worn on the
i
left hand adjacent to the heart, is a reminder that God must;
be worshipped with the heart or by faith. The head phylac- i
tery, worn on the forehead, is a reminder that the Jew must ;
Ill
also worship God with his head or reason. Yasha's confusion
in using the phylacteries suggests his incomplete apprehen
sion of God. Although he has apprehended God through his
reason, as reflected in his earlier deistic concept of Him,
Yasha has failed to find Him through faith.
Responding to Yasha's helplessness and confusion,
several men appear to show him how to adjust his phylac
teries correctly:
He permitted the men to do with him as they pleased,
as one who's suffered a fracture and lets others bandage
it for him. The old man wound the thongs around Yasha's
arm. He recited the blessing and Yasha repeated it
after him, like a little boy. Telling Yasha to lower
his head, he fixed upon it the proper phylactery. He
wound the thongs around Yasha's fingers in such fashion
as to form the Hebrew letters Shaddai. (p. 150)
Yasha's childlike helplessness and the symbolic fashioning
of the letter "shin" (an abbreviation for the Hebrew
Shaddai or God) on Yasha's hands according to the prescribed
ritual represents an act of investing him with God. The
experience is, in effect, a spiritual rebirth whose impact
Yasha feels directly. in praying and acknowledging the God
he had previously denied Yasha undergoes a kind of spiritual
catharsis:
From the phylacteries Yasha sensed a radiance that
reached into his brain, unlocked compartments there,
illuminated the dark places, unravelled the knots.
(p. 153)
112
Although the abortive robbery and Yasha's moral reas
sessment in the prayer house mark the awareness of sin and
the beginning of repentance, Yasha is destined to undergo a
harrowing "descent into Hell" before he can complete his
"Pilgrim's Progress." Having been dismissed by Emilia,
Yasha heads for his apartment. Dragging his painfully
swollen foot, he arrives there only to discover that Magda
has hanged herself. The horror of Yasha's discovery is
heightened by the scarcely familiar and distorted, features
of Magda's face, which confront Yasha accusingly:
Her lips were silent and yet she was screaming— a cry
such as no mortal could long endure. Swollen and
cracked, the mouth shouted, look what you have done to
me! (p. 204)
Equally horrifying is Yasha's strangled menagerie
(alive they appeared intermittently as accusing reminders of
Yasha's moral lapses) whose stuffed-like appearance under
scores the atmosphere of "silence pregnant with strangled
screams." Singer's use of this menagerie is particularly
appropriate at this time since it has already been prepared
for. When Yasha first returns to his apartment immediately
after the abortive robbery and before Magda's suicide, he is
greeted by the raucous screams of the parrot, the monkey,
and the crow.
113
"Yasha! Yasha! Yasha!" the parrot shrieked, then
snapped its crooked beak and looked askance with a sort
of vain querulousness. . . . The monkey leaped up and
down, and the tiny face with the flattened nose and the
wrinkled brown eyes was filled with the sorrow and
anxiety of the man in the story book, who is a victim of
a magic spell, which has caused him to grow bestial. It
seemed to Yasha that the monkey asked, "Haven't you
learned yet that all is vanity?" The crow tried to
speak but only a humanlike cawing and a sort of mimicry
came to its throat. Yasha fancied that the bird scold
ed, mocked, moralized. (p. 160)
The "moralizing" of the crow, like the inarticulate shrieks
of the parrot and monkey, suggests Yasha's muffled con
science. The animals thus appear not only as a parody of
human outrage but also as a mirror of Yasha's guilt.
Indeed, Yasha comes to realize that he has been treating
people like animals. The animals are also an externaliza-
tion of his guilt. Their shrieks proclaim his villainy and
their deaths— coming as they do at Magda's suicide— are a
mute testimony to Yasha’s dead conscience.
Singer uses animal imagery also in his characterization
of Magda. Early in the story Yasha embraces her, and she
"fluttered like a pullet in his arms" (p. 39). Later in the
novel, Magda returns from marketing, carrying a chicken with
"its bloody neck aloft, ringed by onions, beets, potatoes"
(p. 170). Significantly, the attendant who removes Magda's
corpse "took her in one hand as though she were a chicken,
114
dropped her on a stretcher, and covered her with a gunny
sack"(p. 205).
One horror follows another during Yasha's descent into
Hell. Looking for a tavern, Yasha hastens through various
streets including one named Bolesc ("pain" in Polish). As
he wanders through the streets, he witnesses an encounter
between a tall disfigured laborer and a dwarfish prostitute.
A dog growls and snaps at Yasha. When he finally reaches
the tavern and opens the door, he is "hit by a blast of heat
and steam" (p. 208). There he contemplates his past and
"resolved to die" (p. 211). Inside the tavern, Yasha
observes the same surrealistic horror he had witnessed out-
s ide:
He opened his eyes and saw all about him in the tavern
wild eyes and flushed faces. Hands waved, bodies
reeled, feeble arms sought to do battle; there was much
kissing and embracing. (p. 211)
Opposite him, Yasha also observes a huge, pock-marked man
disfigured by pimples on his nose and a scar across his
forehead, whose "watery, crossed eyes rolled in exaltation,
the ecstasy of one on the brink of madness" (p. 212).
Racked by pain from his infected leg, Yasha leaves the
tavern. The sulfurous river breeze, the foul sewer odors,
j
and the dregs of humanity he encounters are unmistakable ;
115
images of Yasha's descent into Hell, a striking contrast to
the spirituality and religious air of the shtetl:
Throngs of people roamed about the streets, slept on
benches, lay on the banks of the Vistula in the midst of
filth. The city was surrounded by cemeteries, prisons,
hospitals, insane asylums. In every street and alley
lurked murderers, thieves, degenerates. (p. 213)
Sex too becomes grotesquely transmuted during the
nightmarish journey Yasha makes. He rejects the overtures
of a middle-aged prostitute dressed in black. This
encounter, however, is only a prelude to the revelation of
what Zeftel has become. Yasha makes his last stop at the
apartment of Herman's sister, where he finds Zeftel and
Herman in bed. In Zeftel's lechery and Magda's death he
sees parallels to his life:
He had looked on the faces of death and lechery and had
seen that they were the same. And even as he stood
there staring, he knew that he was undergoing some sort
of transformation, that he would never again be the
Yasha he had been. (p. 220)
Yasha's confrontation with evil has indeed been a reflection
of his own life. With this acknowledgment begin Yasha's
rejection of the secular values he has lived by and his
return to the shtetl.
Since Yasha's dramatic metamorphosis is so difficult
to motivate convincingly, Singer foreshadows early in the
novel Yasha's decision to become a penitent ascetic. He
teases Esther playfully, "What would happen if I became an
ascetic and, to repent, had myself bricked into a cell with
out a door like that saint in Lithuania?" (p. 25). Later,
after Emilia dismisses him, Yasha finds himself in a prayer
house where he takes stock of his past life. He soon
realizes that, had he been a pious Jew like his praying co
religionists whom he scrutinizes closely, he could have
avoided his difficulties:
He most certainly would not have been involved in all
these love affairs and other escapades if he had put on
a fringed garment and had prayed thrice daily. A reli
gion was like an army— to operate it required discipline.
An abstract faith inevitably led to sin. The prayer
house was like a barracks; there God's soldiers were
mustered. (p. 198)
This need for discipline is further suggested to Yasha
when he accidentally comes upon a passage in a book of
ethics. He interprets the passage to mean that an individ
ual must discipline himself from violating even the smallest
commandments if he is properly to protect himself against
more serious transgressions. These are precisely the con
siderations upon which is predicated Yasha's transformation
from libertine magician to penitent ascetic.
Rejecting a rabbi's arguments that "the world has been
created for the exercise of free will ..." (p. 222), Yasha
proceeds to build a physical wall around himself as a
117
protection from his own excesses and from the temptations of
the world outside, where 1 1 lurked unrest, lust, the fear of
coming day" (p. 226). Ironically even this strategem does
not suffice to preserve Yasha from doubt and lust. Never
theless, as a result of his own studies in Torah and his
debates with Satan, Yasha builds a morality that helps to
sustain him. "If there is no God," Yasha argues with Satan,
"man must behave like God" (p. 229). For Schmul the musi
cian, the joyless cynic who visits him, Yasha prescribes the
moral remedy, "Harm no one, Slander no one. Not even think
evil" (p. 237). Although Yasha himself becomes a pious Jew
and lives according to the letter of the Law, his moral
exhortations are of a universal character. All religious
and ethical persuasions require men to be concerned with the
consequences of their actions, words, and thoughts.
Furthermore, Yasha becomes convinced that even the evil
which surrounds man will ultimately give way to good:
Only one consolation remained: that God was merciful and
compassionate and that, in the final reckoning, good
must triumph over evil. (p. 228)
By the same token, men are responsible for their own deeds. ;
"They had to learn to cleave to the path of righteousness by
themselves, of their own free will" (p. 228). Man's actions!
have cosmological significance and "the most insignificant i
118
transgression reverberated in the most ethereal worlds,
delaying the day of deliverance" (p. 229).
Just as Yasha evolves a morality that has personal and
philosophical meaning, he also acquires a more meaningful
conception of God. Yasha's deistic Creator has now become
compassionate as well as immanent and is evident to Yasha
both in external nature and with man himself:
Each flake that fell on the window sill was hexagonal,
complete with stems and horns, with designs and appen
dages, formed by that hidden hand which is everywhere—
in the earth and in the clouds, in gold and in carrion,
in the most distant star and in the heart of man.
(p. 240)
Although Yasha finally evolves a morality and faith
which sustain him, the Epilogue to The Magician of Lublin
is riddled with paradoxes, not all of which can be satisfac
torily resolved. According to Zborowski and Herzog,
involvement with people and life characterizes the conduct
of the shtetl Jew:
Withdrawal is felt as attack, whether physical or psycho
logical, and isolation is intolerable. "Life is with
people."2
Yasha's return to the shtetl is paradoxically marked by
isolation and withdrawal from life.
^Life Is With People, p. 227.
119
There are, moreover, other paradoxes difficult to
reconcile. Yasha's asceticism is closer to the tradition of
Saint Augustine than it is to shtetl orthodoxy. In her
letter to Yasha, Singer has Emilia misread Yasha's asceti
cism as a monastic withdrawal rather than as a form of
Jewish penance.
Although Yasha has returned to the traditions and
rituals of the shtetl, and though both he and Lublin recog
nize the spiritual growth inherent in his piety and study of
Torah, Singer's final disposition of Yasha leaves some doubt
as to the efficacy of the values which he embraces. He con
tinues to suffer from the same desires which have previously
bedeviled him. Ritual asceticism is far from the most
desirable solution.
There is, furthermore, an interesting parallel between
Yasha the magician and entertainer and Jacob the Penitent,
around whom the gullible faithful cluster in their futile
efforts to solve their problems. A circus atmosphere j
attends Yasha's ministrations:
j
They sought his advice, begged him to intercede on their i
behalf. . . . Women stole into the courtyard, pounded on
the shutter, even tried to smash it down by force. They j
wailed and shrieked and when thwarted, cursed him. i
(p. 230) |
120
“ There is in the latter portrait a hint of the corrupt
Hasidic tsadik of Yasha's generation, whose doubtful minis
tration led to the ultimate disillusionment of the shtetl.
In Singer's treatment of Yasha we see no final solution to
Yasha's human dilemma. Ritual cannot cure or restore peace
of mind.
CHAPTER V
THE SLAVE
Reb Jacob the Penitent's exhortation to Schmul the
musician, "Harm no one. Slander no one. Not even think
evil," becomes effectively universalized in Singer's
The Slave. The distinctly religious values of its protago
nist, Jacob of Josefov, the enslaved ex-Talmud teacher, are
transmuted into a living body of universal ethical, moral,
and social values.
Singer's universalization of shtetl values is achieved
through a triple contrast in which shtetl virtues are
opposed to the degeneracy of paganism, the perversion of
Christianity, and to the hypocrisy of shtetl Jews who live
by the letter rather than the spirit of these values. Rele
vant to this contrast is Singer's complex characterization
of Jacob, his skillful use of setting, and his obvious
structural design.
121
122
By deftly establishing the nature of Jacob's roots in
the shtetl, Singer casts his protagonist in the role of an
individual Jew struggling to preserve his religious iden
tity. The Jewish slave of Jan Bzik, the Polish peasant,
perseveres in observing the rituals of prayer and diet as
well as the strict observance of the Sabbath, in spite of
great hardships. He recites his prayers from memory and
reviews whole portions from the Bible, Talmud, and Psalms
in the same way. Even the smallest of rituals like the
morning ablutions do not escape his attention.
Through a series of flashbacks the reader becomes
familiar with Jacob's early life in Josefov. A Talmudic
prodigy at age eight, and descended from generations of
devout Jews and scholarly rabbis, Jacob seems destined for
the rabbinate. Instead, he becomes a teacher of the Talmud
and a student of philosophy and the Cabala.
Though rooted in piety and learning, Jacob, like most
of Singer's other protagonists, is frequently tormented by
the philosophical problem of evil. Why the good suffer and
the wicked prosper becomes the subject of his debates with
God:
Why had God created the world? Why had He found it
necessary to have pain, sin, evil? . . . An all-powerful
123
Creator did not need to be sustained by the agony of
small children and the sacrifice of his people to bands
of assassins. (p. 49)
For Jacob, who had lost his family during the devastat
ing and brutal massacres of the Cossacks, this problem is
more than mere speculation. Tormented by memories of
ravaged towns and the violent murders of his own helpless
family, Jacob is unable to assuage his guilt or to account
for certain of God's actions.
If Jacob is the individual Jew struggling to preserve
his Jewishness, he also appears as the embodiment of shtetl
virtues. This is evident in his painstaking efforts to
recreate from memory the basic Jewish code. He engraves in
stone most of the 613 commandments ordained in the Bible.
His exemplary life among the pagans also attests to his
symbolic role of Shtetl Jew.
In addition to Jacob the individual Jew and Jacob the
representative Shtetl Jew, Jacob of Josefov is also present
ed in the role of the Jew as Redeemer. Taking his cue from
the Lurianic Cabala, Michael Fixler in The Kenyon Review
sees Jacob as such a Redeemer in a novel which has as its
theme "the successful realization of the destiny to which
124
the Jew is born."'*' The destiny of Israel is to uplift and
restore the fallen sparks of the divine effulgence. This
cabalistic mission is more practically translated into
Israel's destiny "to serve as His witness in the world of
men— that is, as a model society so organized and so con-
2
ducted as to give practical realization to his Torah."
Jacob (whose Biblical prototype was renamed Israel) realizes
this destiny in undertaking to indoctrinate Wanda and to up
lift her through the moral and ethical principles of
Judaism.
Jacob's role as Redeemer is reinforced by his "mission"
to the pagans. He is less concerned with the minutiae of
religious ritual than with the broad moral and theological
aspects of Judaism. To the peasants who deride his dietary
observances Jacob talks about the omnipresent God who gives
him strength. To Wanda he describes the Torah as a moral
code which "tells how a man should conduct himself" (p. 21).
The really strong man, explains Jacob, is one who can
^"The Redeemers: Themes in the Fiction of Isaac
Bashevis Singer," Kenyon Review, XXVI (Spring 1964), 383.
2
Theodor H. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year
(New York, 1952), p. 5.
125
control his passions. He also speaks about the force of
justice in the universe and of a God who "looked down from
heaven and rewarded and punished each man according to his
deeds" (p. 19). Even the peasants who taunt him are awed by
his reminder that the Bible which they vaguely remember from
Dziobak's sermon, prohibits murder, theft, and immorality.
Jacob even discusses the Cabala with Wanda and emphasizes
one of its major assumptions— the notion that Creation was
contingent upon Free Will. Hence Jacob transmits to his
pagan captors the essential ideas of morality, justice, and
Free Will, which constitute the major philosophical elements
of Judaism. One might venture to add that, abstracting the
occasional lessons in ritual in which Jacob instructs Wanda,
the code which he transmits to her is basically a universal
one. It is in this sense that Jacob's shtetl values become
transmuted into universal ones through his role as Redeemer.
While Singer projects Jacob as a symbolic Redeemer who
transmits morality to a degenerate pagan world, he also sees
his protagonist in the role of sinful man working to realize
God's end. Here, as in Satan in Goray, Singer explores the
cabalistic idea of the redemptive function of evil. Indeed,
Wanda's conversion owes as much to Jacob's sinful pre
marital union with her (there is some doubt about his wife's
126
fate) as it does to her indoctrination into the tenets of
Judaism. Singer's preoccupation with Jacob's intense con
sciousness of sin suggests the author's concern with yet
another cabalistic idea— the notion that God created evil so
that man might exercise free choice. Jacob's choice, how
ever, is not entirely "free." It is determined partly by
the driving sexual passions which afflict him. These pas
sions, nevertheless, appear to humanize him, for by allowing
Jacob to succumb to Wanda's irresistable physical charms,
Singer suggests that his protagonist's imperfections are all
too human.
Jacob's sin, however, is chiefly sexual and, unlike the
inhabitants of Goray, who wallow in excesses of all kinds,
Jacob manages to preserve his other shtetl virtues. Thus,
The Slave remains only a partial exploration of sinning man
as a force for redemption.
Like Singer's characterization of Jacob, his structur
ing of the novel also suggests Jacob's function as Redeemer.
The novel's first two sections ("Wanda," "Sarah") clearly
point to the process of conversion in which Wanda does in
fact become reborn as Sarah.
Jacob's various roles are not revealed chronologically.
His past as a pious teacher of the Talmud in Josefov is
127
revealed through flashbacks woven into Jacob's period of
enslavement to Jan Bzik. Simultaneously he also redeems
his pagan captives and Wanda by explaining the Judaism which
he inscribes into the rock.
Once having established Jacob in these various roles.
Singer places him in a remote seventeenth century Polish
mountain village among peasants barely removed from
paganism. This nameless village is significantly likened to
the "darkness of Egypt" and to Biblical times preceding the
Covenant. Significantly Singer provides a dual setting to
parallel the realistic and symbolic nature of his protago
nist. The realism evoked as Jacob prepares his coarse meal
on a primitive fireplace co-exists with the symbolism sug
gested by the primeval mountains and the timelessness of the
gliding hawk who appears to have "been flying without inter
ruption since creation" (p. 10).
The primitive paganism of the villagers is suggested by
the numerous malevolent spirits which haunt their fields and:
minds and by their harvest rituals which harken back to the
time when human sacrifices were offered to appease the gods.;
Their moral conduct, however, rather than their religious
behavior, offers the greatest contrast between the shtetl
I
and the pagan world. Unlike Jacob who reveres both men and j
128
animals, the peasants espouse a morality which is based on
physical power and human exploitation. If sex is a source
of religious conflict for Jacob, it is a way of life for the
pagans. From the lowest cowherd to Zagayek, the village
bailiff, and Dziobak, the priest, sex is an act of human
exploitation. Both bailiff and priest have fathered numer
ous bastards and maintained as many mistresses. Especially
emphasized in Singer's narrative is the repulsive Dziobak,
an ugly, disheveled, and unshaven man negligent in his
clerical duties and dissipated by excessive drinking.
Members of Bzik's own family are given to sexual debauchery
and irresponsibility. Even the old woman, Bzik's wife,
regards her dying husband's sexual impotence as a source of
amusement. Singer's artistry, however, prevents him from an)
all-inclusive stereotyping of the peasant. Jan Bzik,
Jacob's master, espouses a morality in which kindness and
love have a place. He does, in fact, love Wanda and
expresses admiration for her courage in defying the rest of {
the family. !
The most repulsive acts of sexual depravity are found
among the Yahoo-like cowherds whose excesses during an
i
autumnal harvest festival are reminiscent of Jonathan Swift.)
129
An awful stench rose from that mob; the odors of sweat
and urine mingled with the stink of something for which
there is no name, as if these bodies were putrefying
while still alive. . . . The men hee-hawed and whinnied,
supporting themselves on each other's shoulders, and
barked like dogs. Some collapsed on the path, but their
companions did not pause to assist them, but stepped
over the recumbent bodies. (p. 51)
Wanda's growing awareness of the differences between
the morality of the shtetl as represented by Jacob and the
exploitative immorality of her own society is an essential
element in Singer's first contrast. Repelled by the animal
like behavior of her family, Wanda chooses to sleep in the
hayloft in spite of the ever-present rodents. When her
mother cautions her about the rats, she replies, "Better to
have your nose bitten than your soul" (p. 30). To Stephan,
Zagayek's debauched son, who attempts to incite the peasants
against Jacob, Wanda admonishes, "There was a God in heaven
who avenged those who suffered injustice" (p. 68). Although
initially motivated only by her passion for Jacob, Wanda
soon comes to assimilate the sense of humanity and justice
characteristic of the shtetl.
The second major contrast concerns the gap between the j
letter and the spirit of shtetl values. To project this
contrast, Singer places his protagonist in Josefov, Lublin,
i
and Pilitz. Returned to Josefov by the townspeople who
130
ransom him, Jacob is overwhelmed by the scale of devastation;
which had also wiped out his own family. As he surveys the
now-rebuilt town, and the bustle of trade around him, he in
dicts himself and the townspeople for the speed with which
they have forgotten the dead. Rumors reach him that not
only gentiles, but Jews too "had fattened on the catastrophe
dealing in stolen goods and digging up caches hidden by
refugees" (p. 92).
The portrait of the widow from Hrubyeshoyv, who is pro
posed as a match for Jacob in order to help him forget the
past, underscores the new materialism of the rebuilt shtetl.
The widow, owner of a house and proprietor of a dry goods
store, arrives to meet Jacob. Dressed in silk and satin and;
displaying a gold chain with a pendant on her neck and rings
on her fingers, she hopes to acquire in Jacob, not merely a
husband but, more important, a reliable manager for her
business.
As if to underscore Jacob's rejection of this prosper
ous widow, Singer shows us, though briefly, another widow
who, despite the loss of her family, "exhibited no bitter
ness, envied no one, nursed no grievances, uttered no
slander" (p. 101). To Jacob, who bitterly inveighs against j
God for having allowed the brutality of the pogroms, the
131
pious widow, a charity worker who unselfishly cares for him,
was "a witness to God's mercy" (p. 101).
This pious widow, however, is a rare exception in
Josefov. All around him Jacob observes the selfishness and
greed which now characterize his former home. Although the
community observed the laws and customs concerning God, it
"broke the code regulating man's treatment of man with
impunity" (p. 99). Slander, intellectual pride, usury, and
avarice lie beneath the outward observance of ritual:
Yes, men and women who would rather have died than break
the smallest of these ritualistic laws, slandered and
gossiped openly, and treated the poor with contempt.
Scholars lorded it over the ignorant; the elders divided
privileges and preferments among themselves and their
relatives and exploited the people generally. Money
lenders gouged their clients— using loopholes in the law
against usury; merchandise was kept off the market until
it became scarce. Some went so far as to give false
weight and measure. (p. 99)
Singer is questioning the value of ritual in itself. Ritual
does not protect these shtetlach from the crass materialism
into which they have fallen. People, Singer feels, must be
judged by their basic humanity and not by their outward
observance of ritual.
Like Josefov, Lublin, where Jacob stays before reclaim
ing Wanda, has undergone almost identical changes. Its
citizens have already forgotten the massacred. In their
132
pursuit of power and money, the rabbis displayed "their
casuistic brilliance in long, time-consuming discussions
little connected with the spirit of the law" (p. 108), to
the despair of those who come to them with their problems.
The burden of excessive taxation is heaped on the poor,
whose wretched lives Jacob observes in the narrow alleys of
Lublin. Singer's picture of the complacent affluence of the
rabbis and elders closely resembles his portrait of the
widow from Hrubyeshoyv:
The catastrophes over, the stomachs of many of the
rabbis and elders had increased in size; their necks
wrinkled with fat. All this flesh was dressed in
velvet, silk, and sables. They were so heavy, they
wheezed; their eyes shone greedily. (p. 109)
Pilitz is another shtetl which loses sight of its
values. In the actions of its people and in the portrait of
Gershon, a town elder, Singer reveals the disparity between
the letter and the spirit of the Law. No sooner do Jacob
and Sarah enter Pilitz than Sarah becomes the object of
malicious gossip spread by outwardly pious women. It is
these women who "scowled and slapped their prayer books
I
angrily at the interruption" (p. 181) when Jacob comes to
i
the prayer house looking for a midwife for the agonizing !
Sarah. The angry outburst of the entire community, their j
inhumanity towards the dying Sarah, their refusal to accord j
133
her a proper burial, and finally the pillaging of Jacob's
house and the theft of money hidden there by the burial
society are examples of a community living by values anti
thetical to the spirit of the Torah.
The portrait of Gershon also reveals the disparity
between the letter and spirit of shtetl values. Respect
fully addressed as "Our Teacher," Reb Gershon uses his posi
tion as administrator of Pilitzky's estates to defraud
employer, peasant, and fellow Jews alike. Gershon appoints
his sons-in-law to the most respected and lucrative posi
tions in town and apportions taxes to benefit his lackeys.
It is the same slandering Gershon whom Jacob has in mind
when he finally understands the ease of man's obligations
toward God and the difficulty of his obligations to his
fellow man:
Men like Gershon cheated, but they ate matzoth prepared
according to the strictest requirements. They slandered
their fellow men, but demanded meat doubly kosher. They
envied, fought, hated their fellow Jews, yet still put
on a second pair of phylacteries. (p. 203)
As in Singer's first contrast, Wanda's reactions to the;
shtetl are used by Singer to objectify the contrast between j
the letter and spirit of shtetl values. Why Jews violate
i
some laws and obey others is unclear to Wanda who, posing as j
j
a deaf mute, becomes the victim of malicious gossip spread j
134
by the women of Pilitz. Like Jacob, she is plagued by the
inconsistencies she sees:
It was said in town that one of the storekeepers gave ■
false measure. There was a rumor that a man had stolen
from his partner at the time of the massacres. Sarah
had been told that the Jews were the chosen people and
she wanted to ask how they could be so favored when they
committed such crimes. (p. 135)
Pilitz is also the setting for the third and last of
Singer's major contrasts. This time he contrasts the spirit
of shtetl values as exemplified by Jacob to the perverted
Christianity of Adam and Theresa Pilitzky. Adam Pilitzky !
is a man of contradictions. One moment he rages at Jacob
about the purification of soul which Catholicism preaches
and the next moment he believes that man is "merely an ani
mal who returns to dust" (p. 146) and cites Democritus to
show that the world "was the result of blind powers"
(p. 155). Tormented by visions of his own brutality in
suppressing a revolt of his serfs, Pilitzky suffers mental
and physical anguish:
He knew that widows and orphans sorrowed because of him.
At night he had visions of bodies hanging from the gib- !
bets, their feet blue, their eyes glassy, their tongues
extended. He suffered from cramps and headaches; there |
were days when he prayed for death or planned suicide. 1
Not even wine and vodka could calm him now. (p. 146)
I
To discover new sensations, he has become a procurer
for his wife, whose infidelities and perversions he watches
135
in order to remain sexually stimulated and to "stave off
impotency." Theresa, in turn, has become her husband's
procurer in order to watch him corrupt peasant girls. In
short, "Husband and wife had driven each other into an
insane labyrinth of vice" (p. 146). Their sexual excesses
paradoxically are surpassed only by their outwardly reli
gious behavior:
But both were pious, lit candles, went to confession and
contributed money for the building of churches and reli
gious monuments. (p. 146)
There is an obvious parallel between the observance of
ritual by the Pilitzkys and the ritual observances of the
shtetl Jews. Mere ritual preserves neither from evil.
In her futile effort to seduce Jacob, Lady Pilitzky
rationalizes that her sexual promiscuity is morally justi
fied first because "everything comes from God— including
lust" (p. 157), and secondly, because sin committed
secretly— provided, of course, there is no sacrilege— is
harmless.
The sexual immorality of the Pilitzkys, symbols of the
perverted Christianity of seventeenth-century Polish nobil
ity, contrasts sharply with Jacob's moral behavior which
upholds the dignity and sanctity of marriage.
136
The Pilitzky manor is used by Singer as a physical
expression of this contrast in values. As Lady Pilitzky
guides Jacob through the halls and rooms of her castle,
Jacob admires the elaborate furnishings, hunting trophies,
armory, and ancestral portraits. To him, however, these
objects communicate more than an historical meaning:
Whichever way he turned, Jacob's eyes fell on crosses,
swords, nude statuary, paintings of battles, tournaments
and the chase. The very air of the castle smelled of
violence, idolatry, and concupiscence. (p. 160)
Singer's three major contrasts help to define the
nature and quality of shtetl values and clearly imply the
author's own emphasis upon the spirit of these values. The
spirit of Torah is as removed from barbarous paganism and
perverted Christianity as it is from that part of the shtetl
where ritual and piety have become "the cloak for envy and
avarice" (p. 100). It is precisely this same spirit to
which J. A. Eisenberg refers as the "crucial point" of
The Slave:
But the crucial point which Singer makes in The Slave,
more clearly than elsewhere, is in the realm of human
life. Man, he says, has a dual obligation— to God and
man. It is relatively easy to fulfill the former by
observing the laws of kashrut, putting on tefilin, and
praying. But it is more difficult (and rarer) to per
form one's obligation to man, by exhibiting humaneness,
comfort, concern, and understanding. Yet the formal
trappings of Judaism are insufficient by themselves.
For mechanical piety without genuine sympathy (hesed)
is empty, even immoral.3
Like the triple contrast, Jacob's encounter with Waclaw
the ferryman amplifies Singer's concept of the spirit of
shtetl values as a meaningful moral code. The obliging
ferryman, who offers food and shelter to the fleeing Jacob,
expresses an unwillingness to become involved in permanent
relationships because such involvement leads to responsibil
ities which he regards as ropes around his neck. In con
trast, Jacob asserts the necessity for involvement and
responsibility, for "man cannot be entirely free. . . .
Somebody must plow and sow and reap. Children must be
raised" (p. 213). His own actions in caring for his infant
son and his assumption of the resulting burdens and dangers
attest to Jacob's practical commitment to his ideals. Just
as Jacob has inadvertently fled from Pilitz, a shtetl which
represents ritual without humanity, so too has he rejected
the humanity without responsibility and involvement which
characterizes the ferryman. There seems to be, however, an
inexplicable inconsistency between the ferryman's philosophy
3
J. A. Eisenberg, "Isaac Bashevis Singer— Passionate
Primitive or Pious Puritan?" Judaism, II (Fall 1962), 355.
138
of noninvolvement and his actions. He is, in fact, the only
one who helps Jacob. Possibly Singer's concern with avoid
ing stereotypes sometimes leads him into paradoxes like that
of the ferryman's behavior.
Some critics regard the conclusion of "Sarah" as the
real ending of Singer's novel. At this point in the narra
tive, Jacob flees with his infant son, hoping to reach
Palestine. He has put himself entirely at God's mercy and
is resigned to the idea that everything, even evil, is part
of God's scheme for ultimate good. His unspoken thoughts
make it clear that the tragic span of Jewish history is part
of the same resignation to God's ultimate purposes:
Everything remained the same: the ancient love, the
ancient grief. Perhaps four thousand years would again
pass; somewhere at another river, another Jacob would
walk mourning another Rachel. Or who knew, perhaps it
was always the same Jacob and the same Rachel. Well,
but the Redemption had to come. All of this can't last
forever. (p. 223)
Nevertheless, Jacob does not wait for personal redemption.
He seeks God's forgiveness by dedicating his life to others.!
"The Return" is a hurried record of twenty years of such
dedication. Obviously Singer feels that man should offer
God more than mere resignation.
i
Although the novel's brief concluding section, "The
|
Return," is over-sentimental and marred by improbabilities, j
139
it, nevertheless, reinforces some previously developed
aspects of this work. Jacob's role as a symbol of the
shtetl Jew is expanded so that he becomes a part of the
tragic cycle of Jewish history as well. His story, twenty
action-filled years condensed into a few pages, chronicles
the precarious physical and spiritual upheavals in Jewish
life. He becomes both participant and observer of the
pogroms and the Sabbatian heresy that shook the Jewish world
during the seventeenth century.
Through his protagonist, Singer posits the essentially i
i
tragic though enduring aspects of Jewish existence. Nothing;
in Jacob's external reality really changes. The pogroms
recur, Pilitz' Jews maintain their hypocrisy from one gener
ation to the next, and the struggle for survival continues.
If anything changes it is the degree of Jacob's final accep
tance of the harsh reality of Jewish existence as part of
God's plan: "Well, but everything God did was for the good.
The older Jacob grew, the clearer this truth became to him" I
i
j
(p. 236). Most of all, Jacob's return to Pilitz suggests
the continuity of Jewish existence. Indeed, his most j
optimistic thoughts reflect this belief:
The leaves drop from the tree, but the branches remain;
the trunk still has its roots. Israel's lost children j
live in every land. (p. 236) j
True to form, Singer ends his story on an ambiguous
note. The glorification of Jacob and Sarah only seems to be
prompted by the atonement of Pilitz for its mistreatment of
the saintly couple. Actually, however, mere chance— the
accidental proximity of the two gravesites— fearfully
interpreted as the "hand of Providence" by the Jews of
Pilitz prompts the final sanctification of Jacob and Sarah.
CHAPTER VI
SATAN IN GORAY AND THE DESTRUCTION OF KRESHEV
Satan in Goray
Singer's historical novel, Satan in Goray, is an
exploration of the physical and spiritual collapse of
seventeenth-century shtetl Jewry. Both the physical details
of life during the aftermath of the horrendous Chmielnicki
massacres of 1648 and the spiritual deterioration following
the abortive pseudo-Messianism of Sabbatai Zevi are percep
tively rendered.
If Singer's complex characterizations, use of the
supernatural, and nature and death imagery convey the physi
cal harshness of the qalut, they also suggest the intensity
of the struggle for spiritual survival. In the latter sense,;
Satan in Gorav is also a cabalistic allegory in which the
characters and their actions appear as symbols of the battle;
between the orthodoxy of the shtetl and the nihilism of the
mystical heresy. This chapter will examine Singer's first
141
142
novel as an expression of its historical realities and alle
gorical implications.
Singer's fourth chapter, "The Old Goray and the New,"
chronicles shtetl life before and after the massacres of
1648. Torah, tsedokeh, and maasim tovim were the dominant
values of life in Old Goray. Men labored to provide their
daughters with husbands who studied Torah, while women
attended to the needs of the poor. Diligence in trade and
commerce were prompted by the desire to meet religious and
social responsibilities:
They needed board and lodging for sons-in-law and gifts
for bridegrooms; satin dresses and velvet coats for
brides and fur hats and silk coats for the men.^
Community obligations were met with a practical humanity:
If a poor man had a daughter over fifteen years old who
was still unwed, the community contrived to arrange a
trousseau, and give her in marriage to an orphan youth
or an elderly widower. (p. 29)
The spiritual life of Goray was sustained by its rabbi,
teachers and scholars. Old Goray did not hesitate to aid
less fortunate communities.
Instead of the altruism which characterizes life in
^Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in Goray, trans. Jacob
Sloan (New York, 1955), pp. 30-31. All references are to
the Avon Library edition.
143
Old Goray, selfishness pervades the scarcely resurrected
shtetl of New Goray whose inhabitants barely manage to sur
vive poverty, hunger, and disease. Fearful of having to
share their stock of food with their less fortunate breth
ren, the wealthy of Goray stay secluded at home, "fearful of
worshipping in congregation, lest they see the misery of the
poor and hear their complaints" (p. 28). Unlike their
predecessors, the inhabitants of New Goray are unwilling to
unite and share in community responsibilities.
Goray's progressive spiritual decline is apparent in
more than the moral apathy of its inhabitants. Rabbi Benish
Ashkenazi, Goray's spiritual leader and the defender of
halacha, is unequal to the task of uniting his shtetl
against the intrusion of discordant heresy. Considering
the bitter antagonisms that go unmended within the rabbi1s
own family, it is not surprising that Rabbi Benish cannot
manage his "flock." Unable to cope with the dissensions
between the shiftless Ozer, the indolent Levi, the pampered
Nechele and various relatives, Rabbi Benish withdraws into
the seclusion of his studies and into the despair of his
growing melancholy. Ultimately Rabbi Benish also withdraws
from Goray, which he exposes to the spiritual onslaught of
the Sabbatian heresy. By the time Rabbi Benish has left for
144
Lublin, representatives of the new heresy have already
appeared in Goray.
The chaos and disorder in Rabbi Benish's household
prior to his departure from Goray, significantly extend to
the rest of the community. The chaotic conditions in Goray
and the disorder in nature foreshadow the final disorder of
Goray. While awaiting the peasant-healer, the anxious
women of Goray gathered as if expecting a funeral, partici
pate in a "constant dance," and "Their faces, prematurely
aged, were pale with the frost and the new terror whose
shadow was slowly deepening over the town" (p. 81). Natural
events corroborate the events of the social breakdown. The
water freezes, adequately heated ovens are insufficient to
protect the homes, and stoves fail to function properly. As
a result, children suffocate and adults freeze. Nor does
Rabbi Benish fare any better. The ministrations of the
drunken peasant prove as ineffective as do the numerous folk
remedies attempted by the women of Goray. Singer uses a
similar kind of chaotic situation in portraying Rechele's
wedding for the same purpose. There the chaos is punctuated;
by the ambiguous gibberish of a one-eyed shoemaker who
doubles as a wedding jester, by the convulsive laughter of
the girls who perform the ritual dances, and by the jostling!
145
of the drunk and high-spirited men who force open the door
locked against them.
Singer's characterizations suggest the symbolic equiv
alents of his major characters with important spiritual
movements associated with the religious history of the
shtetl. Rabbi Benish's isolation from family and community,
his withdrawal into his studies, and the fact of his son
Levi's active defection to the ranks of the Sabbatians, sug
gest that the rabbi is the symbol of historical Rabbinism,
whose dissociation from the masses paved the way for the
rapid growth of Hasidism. Indeed, the facts of life in
Goray during the rabbi's short tenure parallel the histori
cal realities of shtetl life during the seventeenth century,
as succinctly noted by Jacob S. Minkin:
In their frightful catastrophe, the Jews had found
themselves without adequate and competent leadership.
There was no real understanding of the spiritual needs
of the people. The rabbis were more interested in
building up mountains of scholarship upon the point of
a needle than in bringing healing and comfort to the
afflicted parts of their flock. The result was that the
spiritual life of the unenlightened masses of Jews
became interpenetrated with all sorts of superstitious
beliefs and practices.2
2
"Hasidism, " The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, V, 238.
146
In the easygoing manners of the humble bookseller Itche
Mates who supplants Rabbi Benish are traces of the early
Hasidic tsadikim, whose sympathy and lack of pretence won
for them the hearts of the masses. The severe asceticism of
Mates recalls the self-mortification of the earlier Lurianic
Cabala, rather than the joyful doctrines of the succeeding
Hasidism. Mates is, in fact, a student of the Cabala who
testifies openly to the legitimacy of Sabbatai Zevi as the
true redeemer. He uses Cabala to undermine halacha by con
vincing Goray that the new messianism will eliminate not
only religious ritual, but even the need for sex. Signifi
cantly, his unconsummated marriage to Rechele suggests, as
J. S. Wolkenfeld observes, "the sterile, unfruitful nature
of his faith."^
Sex is not the only manifestation of Reb Itche's
sterility. He is repeatedly associated with death. Rechele
tells Chinkele the Pious of her reluctance to marry Mates
because "He has dead eyes" (p. 62). During the days pre
ceding his wedding, Mates has mortified himself to such a
degree that "his eyes were overcast and extinguished like a
3
"Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Faith of His Devils and
Magicians," Criticism, V (Spring 1963), 352.
147
blind man's" (p. 87). During his wedding, a young prankster
who jabs the mournful groom in the buttocks with a knitting
needle, is startled to discover the absence of any response
in his victim.
Ironically, it is not the mystical asceticism of Itche
Mates which is more often associated with the occult, but
the easygoing and luxury-loving Reb Gedaliya who impercepti
bly accelerates Goray's descent into impurity. Like Itche
Mates, Reb Gedaliya possesses formidable powers of persua
sion and paints vivid scenes of the forthcoming redemption
by Sabbatai Zevi. Like Mates, he too attempts to subvert
halacha through cabala. In the sermon he preaches before
Passover, Gedaliya describes the new order:
He demonstrated by means of cabala that all the laws in
the Torah and Shulchan Aruch referred to the commandment
to be fruitful and multiply; and that, when the end of
days was come, not only would Rabbi Gershom's ban on
polygamy become null and void, but all the strict "thou
shalt not's" as well. (p. 103)
Significantly, while the traditional shtetl sermon based on
scripture and Talmud appeals to reason and restraint, Reb
Gedaliya's sermons promise an easy and comfortable faith
unhampered by restrictions.
Almost imperceptibly Goray sinks into sin. Sexual
promiscuity is encouraged as a "religious duty,” innovations
148
are introduced into religious ritual, and the Law is shame- ,
lessly desecrated. The tithes and taxes Gedaliya levies on
the community, though seemingly designated for the poor, are
actually used to support the growing luxuries and debaucher
ies he oversees. In the midst of Goray's growing prosperity
more and more laws are permissively violated or voided.
Wife-swapping, incest, and pederasty follow quickly on the
heels of its newly-gained freedom. Goray's betrayal is sig
nificantly abetted by the "old conservative citizens" of the
town who remain silent because "they too relished a spoonful
of broth and a bit of meat, [so] they pretended neither to
see nor hear" (p. 101).
If the asceticism of Itche Mates is spiritually removed
from the mystical joy of Hasidism, Reb Gedaliya's love of
luxury is reminiscent of the corruption of later Hasidic
tsadikim, who enriched themselves through the blind devotion
of their credulous flocks. On an historical level, then,
Mates and Gedaliya represent extremes ir the spiritual life
of the shtetl. For Singer, neither the life-negating j
asceticism exemplified by Mates nor the soul-destroying
hedonism exemplified by Gedaliya are viable alternatives
from the Jewish point of view. Singer's preoccupation with j
i
the viability of these extremes is similarly evident in his j
149
characterizations of the self-denying Jacob and the self-
indulgent Yasha, protagonists of The Slave and The Magician
of Lublin.
On a symbolic-mystical level, Mates and Gedaliya repre
sent opposing extremes of conduct requisite to a proper
realization of the Jewish messianic ideal. The Messiah,
Jews believe, will appear either when Jews are so righteous
as to call forth God’s justice or so evil as to prompt His
mercy. Irving H. Buchen writing in Texas Studies in Litera
ture and Language, suggests that Mates and Gedaliya repre
sent opposing aspects of this messianic idea:
If Mates represents the attempt to hasten the messiah by
making the world perfect and pure, Gedaliya takes the
opposite tack and seeks to hurry deliverance by commit
ting every sin.4
Buchen also identifies the cause of their failure:
Through self-mortification Mates attempts to move the
world toward righteousness. Through self-indulgence
Gedaliya seeks to hurry the world toward sinfulness.
Their common errors, however, are twofold: first, each
makes his half the whole; second, in order to attain
such blanket totality, each pushes his half so far from
the center that excess results. Thus for all his piety,
Mates is a sadistic ascetic; for all his joy, Gedaliya
is a decadent sensualist. (pp. 137-138)
4
"Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Revival of Satan,"
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, IX (Spring 1967),
138.
150
While the contrast between the personalities of Mates
and Gedaliya is all too evident, so too are their similari
ties. Both men represent the Sabbatian heresy; they are
both persuasive and succeed in undermining halacha through
cabala. There remains the added possibility that the two
characters are actually aspects of the personality of the
historical Sabbatai Zevi. By referring to evidence garnered
from various books and letters written by contemporaries of
the false messiah, Gershom Scholem asserts that Sabbatai
Zevi actually suffered from manic-depressive psychosis.
During the depressive state of his illness he thought him
self pursued by demons and was subject to demonic and erotic
temptations. Mates, Singer's literary counterpart, similar
ly finds himself haunted by demons and enticed by the
sexuality of Lilith, who replaces Rechele in his sexual fan
tasies. While in the manic phase of his illness, Sabbatai
Zevi committed acts which ran counter to religious law.
Gershom Scholem suggests the possible mystical purposes of
the false messiah*s transgressions:
In his state of illumination he was the living archetype
of the paradox of the holy sinner, and it may well be
that, without his being able to express it, the image of
an act of tikkun through the infringement of the holy
151
law, was before his eyes in these exalted states of
mind.^
Similarly, Singer's literary counterpart, Gedaliya, breaks
every law in the Shulchan Aruch, explaining his actions as
the mystical requisites for redemption.
If Mates and Gedaliya symbolize various spiritual and
mystical forces associated with the shtetl, Rechele remains
the disillusioned and exploited symbol of the shtetl itself.
J. S. Wolkenfeld, writing in Criticism, places Rechele in
this precise role:
Indeed she remains as an image of Goray, the community
tortured by its position in history, by its desire for
a meaningful spiritual life, by an inner, perhaps
unavoidable weakness. (p. 354)
The parallels between Rechele and Goray are unmistak
able. She is the daughter of the wealthy and respected Reb
Eliezer Babad, whose life recalls the spiritual and material
abundance of Old Goray. Her tormented childhood and youth
span the violence of the Chmielnicki massacres and the
uprootedness of Jewish life in the years following that
holocaust. Separated from her family, Rechele comes to live
with her uncle, the ritual slaughterer, Reb Zaydel Bcr, a
5
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1961),
p. 293.
152
character continuously associated with blood and slaughter.
In story after story Singer tends to equate blood and
slaughtering with sexual evil and lust. The ritual
slaughterer in particular is associated with this kind of
impurity. Singer's story "Blood" is a good example of the
ritual slaughterer who is identified with sexual excess.
Rechele's traumatic existence as a victim of Reb Ber's
demon-ridden mother-in-law suggests the impact of supersti
tion on the fear-driven masses of Eastern European Jewry
during the seventeenth century.
Rechele's barren marriage to the cabalistic ascetic,
Reb Itche Mates, and her subsequent seduction by Reb
Gedaliya parallel the seduction of Goray by the Sabbatian
heresy. The final struggle between the sacred and the pro
fane within Rechele represents the factionalism that tore
apart shtetl life following the conversion of Sabbatai Zevi.
In addition to these broad parallels in which Rechele
acts out the agony of Goray, there are countless other allu
sions that identify her with the previously discussed forces.
She appears as a symbol of physical, psychological, and
mystical defectiveness and incompletion. She suffers from
epilepsy, partial paralysis, and lameness. Repeatedly dis
turbed by dreams and haunted by visions, she alternately
153
laughs and weeps. When Rechele first meets Mates and tells
him that no one except Satan will have her, a "pot slipped
from her hands and broke into shards" (p. 58). The tempo
rarily stunned Mates, we are told, experiences a sudden
illumination (he "suddenly grasped the secret"). Perhaps
the secret— which the reader never learns— is his under
standing that Rechele's carelessness is a symbolic reenact
ment of the cabalistic shevirath hakelim (the breaking of
the vessels), the mystical beginnings of evil. Thus, as
Wolkenfeld notes, "The disturbed girl, Rechele, is both the
embodiment of Shabsaism and its victim" (p. 351). Later,
during the chaos immediately preceding the wedding ceremony
which joins Mates and Rechele, another vessel breaks to
underscore the symbolic evil of this union.
Unlike Singer's obvious characterization of the lame
Rechele as a symbol of the broken shtetl, his picture of
Reb Mordecai Joseph is more subtle. Reb Mordecai too is a
cripple, but his defects are linked to the ascetic cabalism
he has embraced. Unlike the basically good-natured Mates,
who inadvertently becomes an instrument of evil, Mordecai
Joseph is a symbol of the brutal force of blind fanaticism.
His abusive tongue and uplifted crutch are employed equally
for and against the Sabbatians. Singer's disdain for blind
154
fanaticism is evident in the grotesque portrait in which
Reb Mordecai, "broad framed, ungainly, with unkempt red ear-
locks and green eyes" (p. 37), appears as a monster. In the
final chapter of the novel, written in the formal prose of
an ancient chronicle, Reb Mordecai is frequently referred to
with praise. 11118 praise, however, is deceptive, for it
serves as a parody and is significantly placed in parenthe
ses. In addition, the references to Reb Mordecai's goodness
are inserted in a larger context in the dybbuk's parody of
Goray. Though his cabalistic magic has succeeded in exor
cising the dybbuk, it has failed to save Rechele.
Both the author and his critics have commented about
the use of the supernatural. In an interview with Singer
which appeared in Commentary, the author refers to the
demonic and the supernatural as "a kind of spiritual stenog
raphy" in which "Demons symbolize the world for me, and by
g
that I mean human beings and human behavior." Michael
Fixler, writing in the Kenyon Review, speaks of Singer's
supernatural characters as "a kind of allegorical vehicle
g
Joel Blocker and Richard Elman, "An Interview with
Isaac Bashevis Singer," Commentary, XXXVI (November 1963),
371.
155
7
for the human predicament." Similarly, Irving Howe in
Encounter describes Singer's demons as "symbolic equivalents
8
and co-ordinates for human conduct."
The last two chapters of Satan in Goray make exclusive
use of the dybbuk, a mythical Jewish evil spirit, in order
to review the moral predicament in Goray. There is a clear
parallel between the character of the dybbuk as revealed in
the process of exorcism and the predicament of Goray as
revealed symbolically through its major characters. The
dybbuk's mortal past, like that of Goray, is a continuous
series of violations: desecration of the Sabbath, the eat
ing of forbidden food, sexual excesses, religious skepti
cism, and overweening pride. "I polluted my soul and
transgressed every transgression cited in the Torah"
(p. 151), boasts the dybbuk. He is the shtetl Everyman*
manque, who, like the citizens of Goray, has abandoned the
most sacred traditions of the shtetl.
An interesting stylistic device, not evident in the
English translation of the novel but clearly apparent in its
Yiddish version is used to underscore Singer's obvious
parody in the two chapters concerned with the dybbuk.
Unlike the rest of the novel, each paragraph in these two
chapters begins with a Hebrew word in large print
156
immediately followed by its translation into Yiddish in
normal print. This is the usual format for religious works
written in Hebrew and supplied with Yiddish translations.
By shifting from Hebrew, the holy language, to Yiddish, the
mundane tongue, Singer appears to be emphasizing the parody
in which the seriousness and holiness of an exorcism are
transformed into a satire on Goray.
The dybbuk also serves as an agent who not only freely
confesses his own sins, but also unmasks Reb Gedaliya and
discloses the secret sins of Goray. Like Goray's sinners,
the dybbuk finds ample rationalizations for his sinful past.
His possession of Rechele has brought her amelioration and
physical comfort. Gedaliya's presence in Goray also
restored its physical well-being. Ironically, the dybbuk's
exorcism corresponds with the debilitation of Goray via the
rains.
The failure of redemption is a reminder to Goray of its
own mortality and the despair which follows is another
reminder of the tragic nature of human existence. Neither
supplication through prayer nor the magic of cabala and
prophecy can hasten what must come "IN GOD'S OWN TIME."
This didactic conclusion is underscored by Singer's use of
the changing seasons as one of the novel's major unifying
157
devices. The cyclical nature of the seasons which parallels
the continuing condition of man's tragic existence is appar
ent in the beginning and ending of the novel. In both
instances torrential October rains signal both the morality
of New Goray which "had fallen on evil days" (p. 32) and the
debilitated condition of that shtetl after its delusion and
betrayal by false hopes of redemption. The changing weather
also punctuates the changing circumstances of Goray's con
frontation with evil. Winter marks the first news of the
redemption reported by the rabbinical legate from Yemen.
The violence of a winter storm echoes the bitterness of
Rabbi Benish's futile struggle against the supernatural
forces presumably encouraging the new heresy.
The illusion that spring has come in the middle of
winter parallels the arrival of Reb Gedaliya who joyously
announces news of the forthcoming redemption while subvert
ing Goray with the joys of hedonism:
Life seemed to have become more pleasant in Goray with
Reb Gedaliya's appearance. Despite the frost, the day
was sun-filled. The snowy hills around Goray reflected
sunlight, blinding the eyes and miraculously blending
earth with sky. The air smelled of Passover, of salva
tion, and of consolation. (p. 100)
With the growing evil of Reb Gedaliya's influence in Goray
158
the weather becomes oppressively hot:
This was a year of severe drought. The grass that was
to be used as fodder had been scorched, and the peasants
sold their beasts at half price. Wheat grew sparsely in
the fields, and the stalks were light and empty. Burn
ing winds threshed the yet unreaped grain, and ripped
the green fruit from the trees. (p. 117)
The approach of the High Holidays, the time of the expected
redemption, brings the return of winter and cold weather,
symbolizing the bitter disappointment which awaits the
faithful:
Rosh Hashana eve was cool and damp. The sky which all
summer long had been as blue as the curtain of the Torah
Ark and somewhat broader and higher than usual, con
tracted. Now the town seemed enclosed in a dark canvas
tent. (p. 124)
When devastating torrential rains return to Goray, Singer's
weather cycle is complete, for they mark the same sense of
despair and disillusionment announced at the beginning of
the novel in Singer's description of the New Goray devastat
ed by the 1648 massacres. While the opening rains herald
the purely physical destruction of Goray brought on by
external forces, the rain at the end of the narrative rein
forces the destruction brought on by the collusion of Goray
itself which results in not only physical but spiritual
disintegration.
159
In addition to the changing weather, Singer employs
death images to reinforce his vision of man's mortal and
tragic destiny. Goray1s heritage of death and its fear of
recurring pogroms punctuate the opening chapter of the
novel. Rechele, Singer's symbol for Goray, is continuously
identified with death through her periodical epileptic
seizures and trances, as well as through her association
with her uncle, Reb Zaydel, Ber, the blood-drenched
slaughterer, and her relationship with Reb Gedaliya, her
seducer, who, as the ritual slaughterer of Goray, is fre
quently knee-deep in blood. Significantly, Rechele*s mar
riage takes place in the prayer house courtyard overlooking
the old cemetery, while Reb Itche Mates wears the ritual
white gown, a shroud-like garment symbolizing the day of
death. Goray*s despair while awaiting the progressively
doubtful moment of redemption is reflected through its women
who "wailed as though they were mourning for the dead"
(p. 124). A death-like stillness hangs over Goray, and its
maidens carry water "reminiscent of the ablution rites for
the dead ..." (p. 126).
Aside from the use of changing weather to parallel the
changing spiritual and moral climate in Goray, the novel's
lack of clear structural design appears as its major fault.
The two parts or sections of the novel loosely introduce
the conditions before and after Goray's spiritual disinte
gration. The first part ends with Rabbi Benish's departure
from Goray and signifies the withdrawal of halacha, leaving
the field clear for Gedaliya's usurpation of Goray through
cabala. Individual chapters, however, serve mainly to
introduce the major characters, and to supply the appropri
ate physical and spiritual settings. One is hard put to
identify the transitional elements which make the shift from
chapter to chapter. There is, nevertheless, a gradual— even
dramatic— buildup and release of the tension growing out of
the prolonged expectation of redemption and of the abrupt
disillusionment following the return of Mates and Reb
Mordecai Joseph with news of the Messiah's unexpected con
version.
A possible explanation for Singer's failure to success
fully integrate his numerous separate chapters may be relat
ed to a story which may have served as the author's proto
type for Satan in Goray. Included in the Farlag Matones
Yiddish edition of Singer's novel is a story, as yet
untranslated (and the only one written in Poland in that
collection), entitled "The Jew from Babylonia." This story
details the psychological torments and final death of a Jew
161
who embodies nearly all the physical and psychological char
acteristics of Itche Mates, Mordecai Joseph, the legate from
Yemen, Gedaliya, and even of the dybbuk.
Yoetz Bar Matsliah, the septuagenarian traveler from
many lands in the Near East, intimates his familiarity with
the practical cabala, and even carries documents which
attest to his numerous powers. This secret follower of
Sabbatai Zevi is reputed to be able to cure the insane,
exorcise dybbuks, drive out melancholy, and summon images of
departed relatives. As grotesque as all of the lame and
deformed cabalists of Singer's first novel, Yoetz, like
Itche Mates, also practices self-mortification, mainly in
the form of fasts and visits to the ritualitorium. Like
Gedaliya, he is also reputed to be guilt of numerous moral
and sexual excesses. After a bout with the demons inhabit
ing the home of a wealthy man in Bilgoray, he is denounced
by the local rabbi, attacked by a hoard of demons, and unit
ed with a voluptuous woman in a chaotic marriage ceremony
which recalls Rechele's union with Mates. On the following
morning, he is found dead. His death appears as punishment
for his attempt to undermine halacha through cabala. Singer
appears to have used Yoetz's many physical and psychological
characteristics in the creation of his chief characters in
162
Satan in Goray. Thus, in terms of its apparent literary
prototype, Singer conceived of his novel as an allegory.
This allegory, as one reviewer recently put it, "transcends
9
the world of the mundane and the moment."
The Destruction of Kreshev
Satan in Goray, which was first serialized in Globus,
a Warsaw Yiddish newspaper, saw its first Yiddish publica
tion in New York City by Farlag Matones in 1943. This edi
tion also included four stories and a novella, The Destruc
tion of Kreshev. About these works the publisher says,
"These five stories are thematically and stylistically in
the spirit of Satan in Goray. A a r o n Zeitlin, the eminent
Yiddish writer and critic, writes in the foreword to this
edition, "These other stories which appear in this book, are
internally— in terms of mood, atmosphere, artistic
approach— tied to Satan in Goray.11' * ~ 1 As the work which most
9
Catherine R. Hughes, "The Two Worlds of Isaac Singer,"
America, November 18, 1967, p. 611.
^Yitshok Bashevis [Isaac Bashevis Singer], Per sotn in
Goray un andere dertseilunqen (New York, 1943), p. [iii].
My translation from the Yiddish.
^Aaron Zeitlin, "Forvort, " Per sotn in Goray un andere
dertseilunqen, p. 11. My translation from the Yiddish.
163
closely resembles Satan in Goray, The Destruction of Kreshev
merits close examination. The parallels are unmistakable.
Kreshev, like Goray, is a physically debilitated and
isolated shtetl whose houses are "half-sunk into the earth
and have patched roofs" (p. 144). Its leading citizen, the
wealthy and respected Reb Bunim Shor, has a beautiful and
intelligent daughter, Lise, who, like Rechele, dabbles in
religious lore. Lise, whose preference for booksellers
recalls the first meeting between Rechele and Mates, is
apprenticed to Kalman the Leech who resembles Reb Zaydel
Ber, Rechele's slaughterer uncle.
Married to Shloimele, an impotent young cabalist, the
modest Lise is soon persuaded by her husband to indulge in
sexual excesses with their handsome coachman, Mendel. When
the planned menage a trois backfires, and the three are sub
jected to public humiliation, Lise commits suicide,
Shloimele becomes a wandering penitent, and Mendel returns
later to incinerate Kreshev.
As in Satan in Goray, the surface realities of guilt
and punishment suggest an allegory concerning the subversion
of halacha by cabala. This is clearly evident from Singer's
characterizations.
164
Though first described as a poor student of the Talmud,
Shloimele emerges quickly as a follower of the severely
ascetic disciples of Sabbatai Zevi who "sought to corrupt
the principles of the Torah and of the cabala and each of
them in his own fashion paid hom!age to the forces of evil—
12
and Shloimele was one of them." The arguments he uses to
encourage Lise's sexual excesses are clear perversions of
cabala:
He assured her that it is preferable for a man to commit
a sin with fervour, than a good deed without enthusiasm,
and that yea and nay, darkness and light, right and left,
heaven and hell, sanctity and degradation were all
images of the divinity. (p. 167)
Shloimele talks about the cleansing power of sin and even
resorts to the canard that Lise and Mendel are reincarna
tions of Biblical personages who are destined to unite in
order to hasten the redemption:
Thus, when one soul lusts for another, the heavens
decree that they can find no peace until that lust is
gratified. It is written that the Messiah will not come
until all passions have been consummated, and because of
this, the generations before the Messiah will be com
pletely impureI (p. 174)
12
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Destruction of Kreshev.
trans. Elaine Gottlieb and June Ruth Flaum, in The Spinoza
of Market Street (New York, 1958), p. 168. All references
are to the Avon Library edition.
165
Like Gedaliya, Shloimele repeatedly refers to the cabalistic
motives for his actions. Indeed, during his confession
before the entire community he describes his own initiation
into the heretical sect and "how he had been taught that an
excess of degradation meant greater sanctity and that the
more heinous the wickedness the closer the day of redemp
tion" (p. 180).
Although the sinners threaten the safety of Kreshev
by their immorality, and indeed death and disease quickly
follow their confession, there are several ironies in
Kreshev's treatment of the sinners. The mildest punishment
is meted out to Shloimele whose repentance and confession is
motivated not by the desire to restore halacha, but b y the
vengeance he seeks to exact from Lise and her lover for
their unexpected betrayal of him. The merciless torment
which Kreshev inflicts on Lise and its refusal to accord her
a proper Jewish burial are significant. In the emotions
which Lise's death evoke within the reader Singer appears to
criticize the rigidity of halacha in a situation which calls
for compassion.
Ironically, Kreshev's humiliation of Mendel backfires,
for like the dybbuk in Goray, Mendel, who freely admits his
own sins, also implicates the leading women of Kreshev.
166
Significantly, the excitement generated by the public sham
ing of the sinners is likened by the author to the exorcis
ing of a dybbuk. The failure of Kreshev to show compassion,
like the protagonist's failure to abide by shtetl values
leads to devastating destruction. The confusion of values
suggested by these ironies prompts Ben Siegel, writing in
Critique, to draw the following conclusion:
Satan has made his point: so interwoven are love and
hate, mercy and cruelty, joy and pain, that values are
easily confused and perverted. With the world distorted,
the soul can only be lost.13
As in Satan in Goray, nature is used to unify, empha
size, and foreshadow the events of Singer's novella. There
is an irony in the fact that summertime marks the beginning
of the friendship between Shloimele and Mendel, reminding
one of the summer-like winter which signals Gedaliya's
arrival in Goray. Also underscored by hot and dry summer
weather are the death and disease which follow the exposure
of sin. A strong gale introduces the suicide of Lise; and
Mendel's razing of Kreshev occurs in spite of the rain.
Other aspects of nature introduce the action in the
story. The confused chirping of birds and the croaking of
13
"Sacred and Profane: Isaac Bashevis Singer's
Embattled Spirits," Critique, VI (Spring 1963), 43.
167
frogs respectively convey the sense of death, disease, and
evil. Images of death and decay are everywhere. The sunken
houses of Kreshev, the metamorphosis of Reb Ozer whose
"white beard and sidelocks became a corpse-like yellow"
(p. 179), and the humiliation of Lise by the women of the
burial society, reinforce this sense of death and decay.
It is the returning Reb Bunim, however, who represents
the spirit of shtetl values as Singer conceives it. Despite
the tragedy which has befallen him, Reb Bunim continues to
study the Torah, to pray, and to be sustained by a faith,
which, acknowledging the tragic nature of human existence,
asserts that "Man is obliged to be grateful for the bad as
well as the good" (p. 190).
When all is said and done, Goray and Kreshev retain
their suffering and despair. Nothing has essentially
changed. Singer uses his works of man's futile attempt at
redemption to illustrate the thesis that neither the
extremes of goodness nor the extremes of evil is compatible
with human nature. Hence, redemption cannot be forced. It
can come, perhaps, when man has worked out a comfortable
balance between his drives towards good and evil. In any
case, the burden rests on his shoulders. When he comes to
live by the spirit of shtetl values and when the rigidity of
halacha is mitigated not by magic but by human compassion,
then perhaps, the redemption will begin. The same tension
between freedom and restraint which undergirds Satan in
Goray and The Destruction of Kreshev is also explored in
greater detail in his other novels, especially in The Magi
cian of Lublin and The Slave.
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSIONS
The ritual orthodoxy of Isaac Bashevis Singer's boyhood
in Warsaw and Bilgoray is the artistic backdrop for his fic
tional shtetl. Writing apart from the tradition of Yiddish
literature which sentimentalized the shtetl as a spiritual
paradise and glorified dos klaine menchele as a paragon of
virtue, Singer's memoir in My Father's Court shows the
shtetl as the physically impoverished habitat of both saints
and sinners.
In the undercurrent of admiration with which Isaac
Bashevis describes his older brother's break with orthodoxy
and in "The Studio" in which he reveals the intrusions of
European secularism, the author suggests his own restrained
longing to share in this escape from this "stronghold of
Jewish Puritanism" and from its personal and sexual repres
sions.
169
170
At the same time— especially in his accounts of the
beth din, and in his individual portraits— Singer transcends
the shtetl of Jewish rituals to reveal the shtetl as a
repository of justice and humanity. What becomes meaningful
for the author in a deeply personal way is not the ritualis
tic shtetl but the shtetl as a representation of spiritual
and moral values that are universally applicable.
The ambiguity of Singer's attitude toward the shtetl of
his boyhood is expressed in a memoir which juxtaposes the
humanitarianism of the humble and generous Reb Asher the
dairyman with the scheming hypocrisies of his worldly rabbis
in "A Major Din Torah" and the compassionate justice of his
father Pinchos Mendel, with the calculating deception of the
Talmudic scholar in "The Salesman."
While Singer's boyhood shtetl has great spiritual
wealth, despite its grinding poverty, his fictional
shtetlach invert these qualities. By endowing his protag
onists with wealth and power, he gives them freedom from the
determinism of poverty and focuses moral responsibility
directly upon them. Meshulam, the wealthy patriarch of
The Family Moskat, supports a generation of weaklings whose
outward orthodoxy barely disguises their boredom and hypoc
risy. They are significantly introduced by Singer and shown
171
at the dawn of life as effete and ineffectual. Their mar
riages and affairs, like the third marriage of the aged
Meshulam, prove fruitless Equally fruitless is the search
for enlightenment undertaken by the younger generation of
strangers on whom the bulx of the novel focuses. The intel
lectual life, as represented by the Western Enlightenment,
demonstrated by Asa Heshei's journey from Tereshpol Minor to
Warsaw, is associated with spiritual and emotional death.
Paradoxically the pious rabbis of Singer's family
chronicles who dedicate themselves to the study of Torah and
to the observance of mitzvoth, suffer the doubt and despair
that afflict their worldly oriented counterparts. The dedi
cation of the joyous Moshe Gabriel to Torah and Hasidism
results in the collapse of his marriage and in the dissolu
tion of his family life.
Although neither ritual orthodoxy nor secular ideol
ogies save the characters who await certain death in the
Nazi holocaust, the Yiddish edition of The Family Moskat in
its final chapter suggests that the universal values of
justice and humanity which are inherent in the shtetl will
ultimately triumph over the forces of evil which have
temporarily subdued the House of Jacob.
17 2
Wealth and enlightenment also bring emotional and
spiritual death to the Jacobys and to those with whom they
have become involved in Singer's other family chronicle,
The Manor. Rabbis and saints suffer as well, though not
nearly as much by comparison, as those who are exclusively
self-serving and those who abandon the shtetl altogether.
In his portrait of the wealthy hasidic court of Marshinov
and in the divisiveness within the Rabbi's family, Singer
suggests that the study of Torah and the adherence to ritual
alone are inadequate for personal salvation. Nor is
Jochanan, the holiest of Singer's tsadikim free from moral
blemish.
Most of all, in his portrait of Caiman Jacoby, Singer's
shtetl "Everyman," the author reveals his ambiguity about
the efficacy of the shtetl as a ritualistic entity. Pro
pelled into the secular world of Clara Kaminer because of
his newly acquired wealth, Caiman soon discovers the empti
ness and despair connected with his new, enlightened sur
roundings. His final solution, a withdrawal into his
private prayerhouse in order to study Torah and to devote
himself to prayer and ritual, is also a withdrawal from
life. In effect, Caiman's spiritual freedom comes through
his physical enslavement to God. Caiman Jacoby's fate.
173
however, is incomplete. Singer plans a sequel to this novel
in the near future.
The author's most ambiguous attitude toward the shtetl
is apparent in his symbolic novels. Yasha Mazur, the pro
tagonist of The Magician of Lublin, is Singer's metaphor for
this ambiguity. Balanced on a symbolic tightrope, the man
of many identities attempts to rediscover his roots in the
shtetl. The secular ideologies embodied in his multi
faceted personality provide him with intellectual life but
leave him spiritually dead. Skeptical about the truth and
the efficacy of revealed religion, Yasha is, nonetheless,
envious of the pious Jews of Lublin who are sustained by
their faith. Following an abortive attempt at robbery and
the nightmarish consequences of his actions, Yasha finally
withdraws into a tiny cell as a penitent ascetic, in order
to study Torah and observe mitzvoth. Yasha, like Caiman
Jacoby, withdraws from the life of the shtetl in order to
find spiritual comfort. Significant in Singer's portrayal
of Yasha is the Christian-like asceticism which marks his
protagonist’s withdrawal as Jacob the Penitent and the irony
of his final resemblance to Yasha the magician and performer
as he is besieged by a clawing mob. Salvation is an illu
sion for Yasha, for though he becomes reconciled to the
174
ultimate beneficence of evil in God's greater plan and
although he had discovered "One wife, one God," he continues
to suffer in his "slavery" to God. Once again, ritual has
failed to redeem.
Another of God's slaves is Jacob, the physically
enslaved ex-Talmud teacher of Josefov. In his complex char
acterization of Jacob and in the triple contrast which
opposes his protagonist to the paganism of his captors, the
false piety of shtetl Jewry, and the debased Christianity of
the Pilitzkys, Singer reveals to us the true nature of
shtetl values as universal moral and ethical guides to human
conduct. His penance for sin is not the ritual kind such as
Pinchos Mendel dispenses in his beth din. Jacob's suffering,
like Yasha's descent into hell, is a deeply emotional experi
ence which awakens him to compassion for all of suffering
mankind and which prompts his final twenty years of "slav
ery" (in the sense of "service") to God through selfless
devotion to humanity.
In the cabalistic allegory Satan in Goray, Singer
explores the historical shtetl of seventeenth-century Poland
as a focus for the ambiguous tension between his concept of
the shtetl as a ritual entity and the shtetl as a universal
moral and ethical entity. Though Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi
175
appears as the embodiment of shtetl orthodoxy, his with
drawal into Torah suggests the sterility of a purely intel
lectual existence devoid of emotional and spiritual meaning.
His withdrawal paves the way for the excesses of the mysti
cal heresy just as the failure of historical rabbinism ulti
mately generated the rapid growth of Hasidism.
It is in Satan in Goray that Singer efectively uses
demonology as a shorthand for the human condition. The
dybbuk's exorcism not only recapitulates the previous action
of the novel but parodies the secret sins of Goray and
exposes the disguise of ritual as a mask for Goray's
immorality.
Although Singer's fictional shtetl ultimately appears
as a universal moral and ethical entity in which justice and
humanity emerge as the surest guides to human conduct, few
of Singer’s fictional protagonists are able to completely
realize these ideals. Singer's fiction precludes a perfect
realization of these ideals because unlike traditional
Yiddish fiction in which tachlis or an immanent destiny con
trol human behavior, Singer's characters are moved to action
through a paradoxical combination of free choice hedged in
by psychic and environmental determinism. Only perfect
people are perfectly predictable.
176
Singer's reputation and appeal among a growing body of
his non-Yiddish-reading audience is a complex product of the
author's vision and artistry. In an age dominated by mass
culture, the appeal of a fiction centered upon the individ
ual is easy to understand, particularly when this fiction
abounds in irony, paradox, and ambiguity— aspects of modern
writing which reflect the fragmented quality of contemporary
life. Except for his very early fiction, most of Singer's
works depart from the basic focus of Yiddish literature upon
the collective destiny of the Jews in the galut. Instead,
Singer is concerned, as Irving Howe reminds us "with the
enigmas of personal faith,"'*’ and with the operation of free
choice hedged in by psychic and environmental determinism
within the moral microcosm of his imagined shtetl.
Perhaps J. S. Wolkenfeld, writing in Criticism, best
identifies Singer's ultimate appeal:
In its relentless insistence on the lonely neccessity to
decide how one is to live, what to believe, and especial
ly in its conclusion that while man must choose, the
best he can hope for is commitment and never certitude,
Singer's work is enormously meaningful for man today,
Jew or non-Jew.2
■*■"1. B. Singer," Encounter, XXVI (March 1966), 64.
2
"Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Faith of His Devils and
Magicians," Criticism, V (Spring 1963), 358.
g l o s s a r y
177
GLOSSARY
Beth din.— Rabbinical court.
Chevra.— Association, usually for religious or charitable
work.
Din. ■ — Judgment.
Galut.— Exile, diaspora.
Geder.— Preventive religious regulation.
Halacha.— Rabbinical law or the legal part of the Talmud.
Haskalah.— Enlightenment.
Kahal.— Jewish community organization.
Kapote.— Has id ic coat.
Kashruth.— Religious dietary laws.
Maasim tovim.— Good deeds.
Maskilim.— Enlightened persons.
Mitzvoth.— Divine commandments.
Nogid.— Leader, important member of the community.
01am habo.— The world to come.
01am hazeh.— This world.
Rosh Hashanah.— The Jewish New Year.
178
179
Shaddai.— One of God's names.
Shevirath hakelim.— The "breaking of the vessels," the
mystical beginning of evil.
Shtetl (pi. shtetlach).— Small Eastern European Jewish town.
Skulchan Aruch,— The Set. Table, a popular compendium of
rabbinical law by Joseph Caro.
Syacr.— Preventive religious regulation.
Talith.— Prayer shawl.
Tefilin.— Phylacteries, leather cases, containing quotations
from the Pentateuch, worn on the forehead and on the
left arm during morning prayers.
Tikkun.— The cabalistic concept of cosmic restoration.
Tsadik.— Hasidic saint.
Tsedokeh.— Charity.
Tsimtsum.— Cabalistic doctrine of the "shrinking" or
"recoiling" of God within Himself.
Tsitsis.— Ritual fringes on the prayer shawl.
Yiddishkayt.— Jewishness, Jewish way of life.
Yikhus.— Social status.
b i b l i o g r a p h y
180
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Novels, Short Story Collections,
and Memoirs
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Der sotn in Goray un andere
dertseilungen. New York, 1943.
Di familie Mushkat. 2 vols.
New York, 1950.
m The Family Moskat. New York, 1950
• Satan in Gorav. New York, 1955.
• Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories.
New York, 1957.
The Magician of Lublin. New York,
1960.
• The Spinoza of Market Street.
New York, 1961.
The Slave. New York, 1962.
• In My Father's Court. New York,
1962.
• Short Friday and Other Stories.
New York, 1964.
The Manor. New York, 1967.
182
Literary Criticism
Bashevis, I. [pseud.]. "Arum der Yidisher literatur in
Poilin," Zukumft, XLVIII (August 1943), 468-475.
Varshavsky, Yitshok [pseud.]. "I. L. Peretz un zein role
in der Yiddisher literatur," Forverts, April 8, 1945,
p. 6.
. "Venig forshrit in der
literatur," Forverts, April 22, 1951, sec. 2, p. 5,
cols. 1-5.
______________________________. "Veleche literarishe verk
veren nit fargesen," Forverts, May 6, 1951, sec. 2,
p. 5, cols. 1-8.
______________________________. "Taana az di Yidishe
literatur iz kleinshtetldig," Forverts, June 30, 1957,
sec. 2, p. 5, cols. 1-8.
______________________________. "Vos iz di mos far
literatur?" Forverts, August 10, 1958, sec. 2, p. 5,
cols. 1-8.
______________________________. "Iz meglich a neier zugang
tsu critik?" Forverts. January 11, 1959.
______________________________. "Di tsukumft fun Yiddish in
Yiddisher literatur," Forverts, April 9, 1967, sec. 2,
p. 5.
______________________________. "Progress un natsionale
eigenartigkeit," Forverts, May 14, 1967, sec. 2, p. 5,
cols. 1-8.
183
Articles
Bikel, Shlomo. "Der dertsayler I. Bashevis," Zukumft,
LXIII (December 1958), 502-504.
Blocker, Joel, and Richard Elman. "An interview with
Isaac Bashevis Singer," Commentary, XXXVI (November
1963), 364-372.
Buchen, Irving H. "The Art and Gifts of Isaac Bashevis
Singer," The Chicago Jewish Forum, XXIV (Summer 1966),
308-312.
____________ . "Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Eternal
Past," Critique, XII (Spring 1966), 5-18.
_________________. "Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Revival
of Satan," Texas Studies in Literature and Language,
IX (Spring 1967), 129-142.
De Mott, Benjamin. "Jewish Writers in America," Commentary,
XXXI (February 1961), 127-134.
Eisenberg, J. A. "Isaac Bashevis Singer— Passionate
Primitive or Pious Puritan?" Judaism, II (Fall 1962),
345-356.
Fixler, Michael. "The Redeemers: Themes in the Fiction of
Isaac Bashevis Singer," Kenyon Review, XXVI (Spring
1964), 371-386.
Flender, Harold. "An Interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer,"
The National Jewish Monthly, LXXXII (April 1968),
14-16.
Fogelman, L. "I. Bashevis' 'Mein Taten's Beis Din Shtub'
oif der bina," Forverts, December 14, 1957, p. 5.
Hindus, Milton. "Isaac Bashevis Singer," Jewish Heritage
Reader, ed. Lily Edelman. New York, 1965. Pp. 342-
352.
184
Howe, Irving. "Demonic Fiction of a Yiddish 'Modernist,'"
Commentary, XXX (October 1960), 350-353.
_. "I. B. Singer," Encounter, XXVI (March 1966),
60-70.
Hughes, Catherine R. "The Two Worlds of Isaac Singer,"
America, CXVII (November 18, 1967), 611-613.
Hughes, Ted. "The Genius of Isaac Bashevis Singer,"
New York Review of Books, IV (April 22, 1965), 8-10.
Hyman, Stanley Edgar. "The Yiddish Hawthorne,"
On Contemporary Literature, ed. Richard Kostelanetz.
New York, 1964. Pp. 586-590.
"I. Bashevis vegen dos Yiddishe leben in Argentina un vegen
di perspectiv fun unser kampf mit der asimilatsia, "
Di Presse (Buenos Aires), November 20, 1957, p. 5,
cols. 1-6.
Jacobson, Dan. "The Problem of Isaac Bashevis Singer,"
Commentary, XXXIX (February 1965), 48-52.
Jelenitz, Joel. "Yitshok Bashevis— der Yiddisher proz-
meister," Folksblatt (Montevideo), November 19, 1957.
Knapheim, Moshe. "Geshtaltiker fun undser groisen amol, "
Literarishe Bleter (Buenos Aires), July-August 1957,
p. 13.
Lehrer, Leibush. "Isaac Bashevis un zein simbolik,"
Seviva, No. 7 (April-May 1944), pp. 56-64.
Margoshes, S. "Bashevis* 'A Devil's Game,'" The Day
(New York), November 21, 1959, p. 1.
Niger, S. [Samuel Charney]. "Stefan Zweig vegn Roman
Rolan," Zukumft, XXXVI (April 1931), 295-297.
(A review of Singer's translation from German into
Yiddish of a critical biography of Romain Rolland
written by Stefan Zweig.)
185
Ravitch, Melech. "An interview far an interview— noch
35 yor, " Keneder Adler (Montreal), May 1, 1961.
Shepard, Richard F. "I. B. Singer Telks of Translations,"
New York Times, January 29, 1967, sec. 1, p. 14,
cols. 2-4.
Shmulevitch, I. "A shmues mit Yitshok Bashevis bei zein
tsurikkumen fun dorem-America," Forverts. December 11,
1957.
Shtern, Sholem. "A shundist vegen 'freie kinstler,'"
Morgen Freiheit, July 22, 1951, p. 10, cols. 4-8.
Siegel, Ben. "Sacred and Profane: Isaac Bashevis Singer's
Embattled Spirits," Critique, VI (Spring 1963), 24-47.
Sloman, Judith. "Existentialism in Par Lagerkvist and
Isaac Bashevis Singer," The Minnesota Review, V
(August-October 1965), 206-212.
Trunk, I. I. "Yiddishe prozaiker in Poilin," Unzer Tsait.
December 1958, pp. 38-42.
Yanasovitch., Yitshok. "Yitshok Bashevis— der Balzac fun
der Yiddisher proze," Di Presse (Buenos Aires),
October 6, 1957, p. 6.
Zhitnitski, L. "I. Bashevis un zein ort in der Yiddisher
literatur," Di Presse (Buenos Aires), November 10,
1957.
Reviews
The Family Moskat
Angoff, Charles. "Pulp-Fiction Jews," Congress Weekly,
XVIII (May 14, 1951), 42.
Bloom, Solomon F. "Before the Deluge," Commentary, XI
(February 1951), 201.
186
H. K. "A gesprech mit I- Bashevis vegen Zein dramatishen
roman 'Di familie Mushkat, Forverts# August 11, 1950,
p. 7.
Kunitz, Joshua, "Passion without Nobility,1 1 New York
Tribune Book Review, November 19, 1950, p. 24,
cols. 1-4.
Lewis, Theodore N. "Singer's Chronicle of Disintegration,"
The JWB Circle, VI (January 1951), 3.
Mukdoni, A. "Kevorim-shender," Der Morgen Journal, April 1,
1951, p. 10, cols. 1-5.
Niger, S. [Samuel Charney]. "Di familie Mushkat," Der Tog,
June 10, 1951, p. 6, cols. 1-8.
Plant, Richard. "Frustrated, Undying," New York Times Book
Review, October 22, 1950, p. 34.
Shudofsky, Maurice M. "A Novel of Depth and Power,"
Jewish Frontier, XVII (December 1950), 32-34.
Zeitlin, Aaron. "Mishpachat Mushkat," Hadoar, VIII
(November 30, 1951), 92-93.
Satan in Goray
Cahan, Ab[raham]. "Ah tchikaver vichtiger historisher
roman," rev. of Der sotn in Goray un andere
derzeilungen, Forverts, April 25, 1943, sec. 2, p. 5,
cols. 1-6.
Howe, Irving. "In the Day of a False Messiah,"
New Republic, CXXXIII (October 31, 1955), 20-22.
Niger, S. [Samuel Charney]. "Der sotn," rev. of Der sotn
in Goray, Der Tog, March 22, 1936.
____________________________. "Der sotn hat dos vort," rev.
of Der sotn in Goray un andere derzeilungen, Der Tog,
October 4, 1943, p. 6.
187
Niger, S. [Samuel Charney]. "Sotn in Varsha," Der Tog,
June 3, 1951, p. 6, cols. 4-5.
Popkin, Henry. "Sabbatai Zevi's Disciples," Jewish
Frontier, XXIII (November 1956), 30-34.
Zeitlin, Aaron. "Forvort," Der sotn in Goray un andere
dertseilunqen. New York, 1943.
Gimpel the Fool and
Other Stories
Ribalow, Harold U. "A Personal Devil," Saturday Review,
XLI (January 25, 1958), 19.
Weinman, Jack W. "Yiddish Stories," Jewish Currents,
XII (November 1958), 27-28.
Weisel, Eliezer. "A buch erseilungen fun I. Bashevis in
English," Forverts, January 5, 1958, sec. 2, p. 5.
The Magician of Lublin
Fogelman, L. "'Der kuntsenmacher fun Lublin' fun Yitshok
Bashevis (Zinger)," Forverts, September 4, 1960,
sec. 2, p. 5, cols. 1-8.
Rubenstein, Annette. "An Obscurantist Yiddish Novel,"
Jewish Currents, XV (May 1961), 36-38.
The Spinoza of Market Street
Angoff, Charles. "A Universal Story Teller," Congress
Bi-Weekly, XXIX (February 5, 1961), 13-14.
Feldman, Irving. "The Shtetl World," Kenyon Review,
XXIV (Winter 1962), 173-175.
188
Goodheart, Eugene. "The Secrets of Satan,1 1 Saturday
Review, XLIV (November 25, 1961), 28.
Hindus, Milton. "The Surface Isn't All," New York Times
Book Review, October 22, 1961, p. 4.
Howe, Irving. "New, Old, and Sometimes Good," New Republic,
CXLV (November 13, 1961), 18-23.
Kupferberg, Herbert. "Where Evil and Good Walk Side by
Side," New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review,
XXXVIII (November 19, 1961), 7.
Simon, Shlomo. "Alts in nomen fun kunst," Freie Arbeter
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Asset Metadata

Creator Adler, Sidney (author)

Core Title The Shtetl In The Novels Of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Schulz, Max F. (committee chair), Flower, Dean S. (committee member), Schutz, John A. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-654573

Unique identifier UC11361270

Identifier 6906483.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-654573 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6906483.pdf

Dmrecord 654573

Rights Adler, Sidney

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA