Isaac (right) with his brotherIsrael Joshua Singer (1930s)Krochmalna Street inWarsaw near the place where the Singers lived (1940 or 1941)Singer's bench inBiłgorajCommemorative plaque at 1 Krochmalna Street in Warsaw
Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1903[1] to a Jewish family inLeoncin village nearWarsaw,Poland.[10] The Polish form of his birth name wasIcek Hersz Zynger.[11] The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but most sources say it was probably November 11, a date similar to the one that Singer gave to his official biographer Paul Kresh,[12] his secretary Dvorah Telushkin,[13] and Rabbi William Berkowitz.[14] Some sources mention 1902. The year 1903 is consistent with the historical events that his brother refers to in their childhood memoirs, including the death ofTheodor Herzl. The often-quoted birth date, July 14, 1904, was made up by the author in his youth, possibly to make himself younger to avoid the draft.[15]
The family moved to the court of the Rabbi ofRadzymin in 1907, where his father became head of the Yeshiva. After the Yeshiva building burned down in 1908, the family moved to Warsaw, a flat at Krochmalna Street 10. In the spring of 1914, the Singers moved to No. 12.[19]
The street where Singer grew up was located in the impoverished,Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter of Warsaw. There his father served as a rabbi, and was called on to be a judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader in the Jewish community.[20] The unique atmosphere of pre-war Krochmalna Street can be found both in the collection ofVarshavsky-stories, which tell stories from Singer's childhood,[21] as well as in those novels and stories which take place in pre-war Warsaw.[22]
In 1917, because of the hardships of World War I, the family split up. Singer moved with his mother and younger brother Moshe to Biłgoraj, a traditionalshtetl, where his mother's brothers had followed his grandfather as rabbis.[20] When his father became a village rabbi again in 1921, Singer returned toWarsaw. He entered theTachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary and soon decided that neither the school nor the profession suited him. He returned to Biłgoraj, where he tried to support himself by givingHebrew lessons, but soon gave up and joined his parents, considering himself a failure. In 1923, his older brother Israel Joshua arranged for him to move to Warsaw to work as a proofreader for the Jewish magazineLiterarishe Bleter, of which the brother was an editor.[23]
In 1935, four years before theNaziinvasion, Singer emigrated fromPoland to the United States.[24] He was fearful of the growing threat in neighboring Germany.[25] The move separated the author from his common-law first wife Runia Pontsch and son Israel Zamir (1929–2014); they immigrated toMoscow and thenPalestine. The three met again in 1955.
Singer settled in New York City, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist forThe Jewish Daily Forward (פֿאָרװערטס), a Yiddish-language newspaper. (When he arrived in the US, he only knew three words of English: "Take a chair".[24]) After a promising start, he became despondent and for some years feltLost in America (title of his 1974 memoir published in Yiddish; published in English in 1981).
In 1938, he met Alma Wassermann (née Haimann) (1907–1996), a German-Jewish refugee fromMunich. They married in 1940, and their union seemed to release energy in him; he returned to prolific writing and to contributing to theForward. In addition to his pen name of "Bashevis", he published under the pen names of "Warszawski" (pron. Varshavsky) during World War II,[26] and "D. Segal".[27] They lived for many years in theBelnord apartment building on Manhattan'sUpper West Side.[28] He became a US citizen in 1943.[24]
In 1981, Singer delivered a commencement address at theUniversity at Albany and was presented with an honorary doctorate.[29]
Singer's first published story "Oyf der elter" ("In Old Age", 1925) won the literary competition of theLiterarishe Bleter, where he worked as a proofreader.[33] A reflection of his formative years in "the kitchen of literature"[34] can be found in many of his later works. In 1933, Singer published his first novel,Satan in Goray, in installments in the literary magazineGlobus, which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poetAaron Zeitlin. It is set in the years following 1648, when theChmielnicki massacres, considered one of the greatest Jewish catastrophes, occurred. The story describes the Jewish messianic cult that arose in the village ofGoraj. It explores the effects of the faraway false messiah,Shabbatai Zvi, on the local population. Its last chapter imitates the style of a medieval Yiddish chronicle. With a stark depiction of innocence crushed by circumstance, the novel appears to foreshadow coming danger. In his later workThe Slave (1962), Singer returns to the aftermath of 1648 in a love story between a Jewish man and agentile woman. He portrays the traumatized and desperate survivors of the historic catastrophe with even deeper understanding.
Singer became a literary contributor toThe Jewish Daily Forward only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer publishedThe Family Moskat in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening ofYom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief,Abraham Cahan, but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue.[citation needed] After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in theForward as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.
Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview inEncounter (February 1979), he said that although theJews of Poland had died, "something—call it spirit or whatever—is still somewhere in the universe. This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it."
Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality ("Zeitl and Rickel",[35] "Tseytl un Rikl"), published inThe Seance and Other Stories,[36]transvestism ("Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" inShort Friday), and of rabbis corrupted by demons ("Zeidlus the Pope" inShort Friday). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.
Singer had many literary influences. Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about Max Spitzkopf and his assistant Fuchs byJonas Kreppel.[37] He read Russian, includingDostoyevsky'sCrime and Punishment at the age of fourteen.[38] He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: "I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays... I readRajsen,Strindberg, Don Kaplanowitsch,Turgenev,Tolstoy,Maupassant andChekhov."[38] He studied the philosophersSpinoza,[38]Arthur Schopenhauer,[18] andOtto Weininger.[39] Among his Yiddish contemporaries, Singer considered his elder brother to be his greatest artistic example. He was also a life-long friend and admirer of the author and poetAaron Zeitlin.
His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions,[40] were influenced byAnton Chekhov andGuy de Maupassant. From Maupassant, Singer developed a finely grained sense of drama. Like those of the French master, Singer's stories can pack enormous visceral excitement in the space of a few pages.[citation needed] From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces.[citation needed] In the foreword to his personally selected volume of his finest short stories, Singer describes Chekhov, Maupassant, and "the sublime scribe of theJoseph story in the Book of Genesis" as the masters of the short story form.[41]
Of his non-Yiddish-contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the writings ofKnut Hamsun, many of whose works he later translated, while he had a more critical attitude towardsThomas Mann, whose approach to writing he considered opposed to his own.[42] Contrary to Hamsun's approach, Singer shaped his world not only with the egos of his characters, but also from Jewish moral tradition embodied by his father in the stories about Singer's youth. There was a dichotomy between the life his heroes lead and the life they feel they should lead—which gives his art a modernity his predecessors did not express. Singer's stories often involve highly individualist and anti-conformist characters rebelling alone against society. In a 1974 interview, Singer stated that "every human being, if he is a real, sensitive human being, feels quite isolated. It is only the people with very little individuality who always feel that they belong." He added that "Since I believe that the purpose of literature is to stress individuality, I also, unwillingly, stress human lonesomeness".[43]
Singer's themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.[citation needed]
An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj. This is the central theme in Singer's family chronicles such asThe Family Moskat (1950),The Manor (1967), andThe Estate (1969). Some critics believe these show the influence of Thomas Mann's novelBuddenbrooks; Singer had translated Mann'sDer Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) into Yiddish as a young writer.
Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish. His novels were serialized in newspapers, which also published his short stories. He edited his novels and stories for publication in English, which was used as the basis for translation into other languages. Some of Singer's stories and novels have not been translated.[44]
The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, includeRaphael Soyer,Maurice Sendak,Larry Rivers, andIrene Lieblich. Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children,A Tale of Three Wishes andThe Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City. AHolocaust survivor, Lieblich was from Zamosc, Poland, a town adjacent to the area where Singer was raised. As their memories ofshtetl life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts. Of her style, Singer wrote that "her works are rooted in Jewish folklore and are faithful to Jewish life and the Jewish spirit."[45]
Singer published at least 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles. He is best known as a writer of short stories, which have been published in more than a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short stories in English,Gimpel the Fool, was published in 1957. The title story was translated bySaul Bellow and published in May 1953 in thePartisan Review. Selections from Singer's "Varshavsky-stories" in theDaily Forward were later published in anthologies such asMy Father's Court (1966). Later collections includeA Crown of Feathers (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such asThe Spinoza of Market Street (1961) andA Friend of Kafka (1970). His stories and novels reflect the world of the East European Jewry in which he grew up. After his many years in America, his stories also portrayed the world of the immigrants and their pursuit of an elusive American dream, which seems always beyond reach.
Prior to Singer's winning the Nobel Prize, English translations of dozens of his stories were published in popular magazines likeThe New Yorker,[46]Playboy andEsquire that published literary works.
His novelEnemies, A Love Story was adapted as afilm by the same name (1989) and was quite popular, bringing new readers to his work. It features a Holocaust survivor who deals with varying desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith.
Singer's story, "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" was adapted intoa stage version by Leah Napolin (with Singer), which was the basis for the filmYentl (1983) starring and directed byBarbra Streisand.
Perhaps the most fascinating[48] Singer-inspired film isMr. Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupkos Beard (1974) directed byBruce Davidson, a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.
Singer's relationship to Judaism was complex and unconventional. He identified as a skeptic and a loner, though he felt a connection to his Orthodox roots. Ultimately, he developed a view of religion and philosophy which he called "private mysticism". As he put it, "Since God was completely unknown and eternally silent, He could be endowed with whatever traits one elected to hang upon Him."[49][50]
Singer was raised Orthodox and learned all the Jewish prayers, studied Hebrew and learned Torah and Talmud. As he recounted in the autobiographical short story "In My Father's Court", he broke away from his parents in his early twenties. Influenced by his older brother, who had done the same, he began spending time with non-religious bohemian artists in Warsaw. Although Singer believed in a God, as in traditional Judaism, he stopped attending Jewish religious services of any kind, even on the High Holy Days. He struggled throughout his life with the feeling that a kind and compassionate God would never support the great suffering he saw around him, especially theHolocaust deaths of so many of the Polish Jews from his childhood. In one interview with the photographer Richard Kaplan, he said, "I am angry at God because of what happened to my brothers": Singer's older brother died suddenly in February 1944, in New York, of athrombosis; his younger brother perished in Soviet Russia around 1945, after being deported with his mother and wife to SouthernKazakhstan in Stalin's purges.
Despite the complexities of his religious outlook, Singer lived in the midst of the Jewish community throughout his life. He did not seem to be comfortable unless he was surrounded by Jews; particularly Jews born in Europe. Although he spoke English,Hebrew, andPolish fluently, he always consideredYiddish his natural tongue. He always wrote in Yiddish and he was the last notable American author to be writing in this language.[citation needed] After he had achieved success as a writer in New York, Singer and his wife began spending time during the winters in Miami with its Jewish community, many of them New Yorkers.
Eventually, as senior citizens, they moved to Miami. They identified closely with theAshkenazi Jewish community. After his death, Singer was buried in a traditional Jewish ceremony inCedar Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery inParamus, New Jersey.
Singer was a prominentJewish vegetarian[51] for the last 35 years of his life and often included vegetarian themes in his works. In his short story "The Slaughterer", he described the anguish of an appointed slaughterer trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job of killing them. He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: "How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?" When asked if he had become a vegetarian for health reasons, he replied: "I did it for the health of the chickens."
Vegetarianism is a recurrent theme in Singer's novelEnemies, a Love Story. One character, a Holocaust survivor, declares that "God himself eats meat—human flesh. There are no vegetarians—none. If you had seen what I have seen, you would know that God approves of slaughter,"[52] and another character points out "that what the Nazis had done to the Jews, man was doing to animals."[53] InThe Letter Writer, Singer wrote "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternalTreblinka,"[54] which became a classic reference in thecomparison of animal exploitation with the Holocaust.[55]
In the preface to Steven Rosen'sFood for Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions (1986), Singer wrote, "When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard."
Singer described himself as "conservative," adding that "I don't believe by flattering the masses all the time we really achieve much."[56] His conservative side was most apparent in his Yiddish writing and journalism, where he was openly hostile toMarxist sociopolitical agendas. InForverts he once wrote, "It may seem like terribleapikorses [heresy], but conservative governments in America, England, France, have handled Jews no worse than liberal governments.... The Jew's worst enemies were always those elements that the modern Jew convinced himself (really hypnotized himself) were his friends."[6][57]
The typewriter that Singer used during his visits to Israel in the 1970s
Issac Bashevis was ambivalent on the question ofZionism, and he viewed the immigration of Jews to Palestine critically. As a Polish Jew from Warsaw, he was historically confronted with the question of the Jewish fate during Nazi persecution. He exercised social responsibility towards the immigration of European and American Jewish groups to Israel afterWorld War II. Strictly based on Jewish family doctrine rather than politics and socialism, his former partner Runya Pontsch and his son Israel Zamir immigrated to Palestine in 1938, in order to live a typicalkibbutz life there. In his storyThe Certificate (1967), which has autobiographical character, he fictionalizes this question from a time in the mid-1920s when he was himself considering moving to theBritish Mandate Palestine. The protagonist of the story decides to leave Palestine, however, to move back into his shtetl. For Singer then, Zionism becomes the "road not taken". However, through his journalistic assignments in late 1955, Singer made his first trip to Israel, accompanied by his wife Alma. Describing the trip to his Yiddish readers, he introduces the world for the first time to the young state of Israel. In a change of mind, he then describes the Land of Israel as a "reality, and part of everyday life." Interestingly enough, he notes the cultural tensions betweenSephardic andAshkenazi Jewish people during the boat trip fromNaples toHaifa and during his stay in the new nation. With the description of Jewish immigration camps in the new land, he foresaw the difficulties and socio-economic tensions in Israel, and hence turned back to his critical views of Zionism. He scrutinized the ideology further, as he was advancing his thought of critical Zionism.[58][59]
Singer was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group.[60] In 1984, he signed a letter protesting German arms sales toSaudi Arabia.[61]
A street in New York City named in his honor (W. 86th St.)
A street inLeoncin, Poland, named in his honor (ul. Isaaca Bashevisa Singera)
Acommemorative plaque attached to a front wall of a building where Singer and his family resided inRadzymin, Poland (ul. Stary Rynek 7, 05-250 Radzymin)
A park square in Radzymin, named in his honor (skwer im. Isaaca Bashevisa Singera)
A city square inLublin, Poland, a hometown of the protagonist ofThe Magician of Lublin novel, named in writer's honor (pl. Isaaka Singera)
A street inBiłgoraj, Poland, named in his honor (ul. Isaaca Bashevisa Singera)
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1967) [1963],In My Father's Court, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux—Yiddish original:מיין טאטנ'ס בית דין שטוב
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1969),A Day of Pleasure, Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw, New York: Doubleday. National Book Award, Children's Literature[8]
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1976),A Little Boy in Search of God, New York: Doubleday.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1978),A Young Man in Search of Love, New York: Doubleday.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1981),Lost in America, New York: Doubleday.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1984),Love and exile, New York: Doubleday.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1999),More Stories from My Father's Court, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
^Several of his professional identification cards using localized spellings and further variants of these names are reproduced in:Wollitz, Seth L. (2001). Staley, Thomas F. (ed.).The Hidden Isaac Bashevis Singer. Literary Modernism Series. University of Texas Press.ISBN978-0-292-79147-3. RetrievedJuly 28, 2012.
^Leociak, J (2011),Spojrzenia na warszawskie getto. Ulica Krochmalna [Glimpses of the Warsaw Ghetto], Warszawa: Dom Spotkań z Historią, p. 29,OCLC800883074
^Surfside's History: Celebrating 90 Years,Surfside, Florida, October 19, 2023. Accessed July 21, 2025. "Some of the Town’s most infamous guests and residents include organized crime figures like Tony Accardo and Sam Tucker, as well as famed author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Surfside’s 95th Street is co-named Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard in honor of the great Yiddish poet and short-story author."
^Searls, Damion (September 1, 2012)."A Guide to Isaac Bashevis Singer".Los Angeles Review of Books. RetrievedApril 27, 2022.The opinion seems to have hardened into indisputable fact that Singer's stories are better than his novels, but I'm not convinced.
^Searls, Damion (September 1, 2012)."A Guide to Isaac Bashevis Singer".Los Angeles Review of Books. RetrievedApril 26, 2022.There are several novels still untranslated into English.
Burgess, Anthony (1998),Rencontre au Sommet (in French), Paris: Éd. Mille et une nuits.
Richard Burgin.Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer. NY: Doubleday, 1985.
Carr, Maurice (December 1992), "My Uncle Itzhak: A Memoir of I.B. Singer",Commentary.
Lester Goran.The Bright Streets of Surfside: The Memoir of a Friendship with Isaac Bashevis Singer. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994.
Hadda, Janet (1997),Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kresh, Paul (1979),Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Magician of West 86th Street, New York: Dial Press.
Roberta Saltzman.Isaac Bashevis Singer: a bibliography of his works in Yiddish and English, 1960–1991. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002.ISBN0-8108-4315-3
Dorothea Straus.Under the Canopy. New York: George Braziller, 1982.ISBN0-8076-1028-3
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