The typewriter used by Isaac Bashevis Singer on his visit to Israel in the 1970s
Israel, 1950s
Metal, plastic, Bakelite, rubber
Courtesy of the Zamir Family, Beit Alfa
Must Know
Isaac Bashevis Singer is considered to be one of the greatest and most well-known Yiddish writers of all time. In his youth he lived and worked in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and from an early age his stories were published in magazines. In 1925, two of Singer’s short stories in hebrew were published in a literary magazine. These were the first and only stories which he wrote in hebrew, afterwards he returned to writing in Yiddish and never wrote in another language again. 40 years later, Singer said in an interview that he had written in hebrew because he wanted to stand out and to be distinctive in comparison to his older brother. In 1935 he emigrated to the U.S., joining his brother who had emigrated there a year earlier, and there he built his personal and professional life. In Paris, 1978, Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in his acceptance speech he began by talking in Yiddish and then continued in english. he explained that Yiddish was a language without a country and without limits, a language despised by both Jews and gentiles, but that Yiddish is a language that describes human relationships. It expresses pleasure and appreciation for humanity and humour in everyday life. Some would call Yiddish a dead language, but so was hebrew for two thousand years. he remarked that Yiddish represented the hidden world of Eastern European Jews.
Singer, with the help of Yiddish, restored life to the Ashkenazi Jews in the most traditional form, despite his staying away from religious beliefs over the years. he wrote about and for the sake of the Ashkenazi Jewish world in which he grew up, despite this world disappearing after the Holocaust. Singer wrote in Yiddish in order to produce creative cultural continuity in his works and to tell the story of a hidden world in a forgotten language.
More Info
Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in around 1902 to a religious family; his father was a Torah scholar and his mother was an educated woman who had learned a lot from her father and grandfather. Within the marriage she was unable to exercise her intellectual skills and she was frustrated with her place in the home where there was no recognition of, or ability to use, her skills. The family lived in Warsaw and after a few years returned to the mother’s hometown, Bilgoraj. In this town, Singer became acquainted with all manners of the life of religious Jews. At the age of 19 Singer returned to Warsaw with his brother and added his mother’s name to his own after she died: his mother’s name was Batsheba which became Bashevis. he worked with his brother in a Jewish newspaper and published his stories and articles in it. The tension between the brothers was a staple element of their relationship and within their writings over the years. Singer, his older brother Israel Joshua Singer, and his sister Esther Kreitman, were all writers and translators who wrote their stories in Yiddish. Israel Joshua emigrated to New York in 1934, and a year later Isaac joined him. At this point Israel Joshua was already a Yiddish writer famous among the Yiddish literary circles in the United States. His writings dealt with modern Jewish life from a secular perspective which reflected the decline of Jews subjected to religion. It was only after the death of Israel Joshua in 1943 that Singer returned to writing. His stories described the Jewish community from within and the life of the Jewish community in the small village and was filled with mysticism, demons and reincarnation. His books were translated into hebrew by his only son, Israel Singer, and into english by a team of translators who only knew Yiddish partially. The english translation was actually done by Singer. he would read the story in Yiddish, speak the english translation and the translator would write it down, then Singer would proofread the book. According to his request, the translations of the books into other languages were done from the english translation. he claimed that the Yiddish language has certain intent and messages which cannot be translated into another language.
