Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער or יצחק בת־שבֿעס זינגער; pseudonym: Icek Hersz Zynger; born 21 November 1902 as Icek Zynger, died 24 July 1991) was a Polish-American writer of short stories and novels in Yiddish; he used his mother's name in devising his pe

42 quotes
0 likes
0Verified
17 days agoLast Quote

Timeline

First Quote Added

April 10, 2026

Latest Quote Added

April 10, 2026

All Quotes by This Author

"Basically, this modern Yiddish literature detected and depicted a paradox that casts a sharp light on the situation of Yiddishkeit at the start of the new century: it was a literature of rupture that the rabbis rejected as impious, a literature turned towards the realities of life, towards the world of the underdog, but if it testifies in this way to the earthquakes that were shaking Yiddishland, it did not take flight beyond the linguistic and cultural frontiers of this world and set foot in universal culture. Though very many Jews in Poland were moved by reading Adam Mickiewicz, how many Polish intellectuals between the two wars were aware of Peretz? This literature remained entirely focused on the Yiddish world, its fund of religious mythology, its customs and traditions, a literature that prospered at the heart of the crisis this world was undergoing, for the exclusive use of those who were its direct witnesses or its agents. Curiously, it is only posthumously, one could say, decades after the disappearance in fire and blood of the world from which it arose, that this literature has begun to enter the pantheon of human culture in general, and, paradox of paradoxes, the broad non-Yiddish-speaking public has begun to discover Sholem Aleichem and Shalom Asch by way of Isaac Bashevis Singer."

- Isaac Bashevis Singer

0 likesnovelists-from-the-united-statesshort-story-writers-from-the-united-statesplaywrights-from-the-united-statesplaywrights-from-polandnovelists-from-poland