Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 53 July 27, 1991 1) I.B. Singer (Joseph Galron) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 19:12:30 EDT From: Joseph Galron Subject: Isaac Bashevis Singer I am forwarding this article from UPI service about Isaac Bashevis Singer: MIAMI (UPI) -- Yiddish storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winner whose writings spawned the popular movies ``Yentel'' and ``Enemies, A Love Story,'' has died in a nursing home. Singer, who was 87, had been ill for several months and had been shuttled between St. Francis Hospi- tal and the Douglas Gardens Home for the Aged before he died Wednesday about 4 p.m. with wife Alma at his side at the nursing home. Singer's Yiddish langauge stories of life in eastern European villages before the holocaust of World War II went largely unnoticed in his adopted United States and abroad until 1978 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He and his wife, whom he married Feb. 14, 1940, divided their time between New York and Miami. He is survived by one son, Israel, and several grandchildren. His wife said Singer would be buried in New Jersey. Singer's work ``Yentl the Yeshiva Boy'' was the basis for the Barbra Streisand movie ``Yentl.'' More recently, Ron Silver starred in the movie ``Enemies, A Love Story,'' which was adapted from his 1972 novel of the same name. In ``Yentl,'' Streisand portrayed a woman who was forced to disguise herself as a man so she could pursue an education among Orthodox Jews in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe. In ``Enemies,'' Silver's character was a Jew who fled the Nazis for the United States and found himself with three wives. Though Singer, son and grandson of Polish rabbis, rarely made it to the best-seller lists, the world's highest literary honor brought him belated internation- al recognition and devoted readers. ``His impassioned narrative art which, with roots in Polish-Jewish cul- tural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life,'' the Swedish Academy said in honoring Singer. Singer was born in Radzymin, Poland, July 17, 1904, and received a formal Jewish education at the Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw 1920-1927. But he aban- doned family tradition to become a secular writer rather than a rabbi or religious scholar. He fled Nazism in 1935 and settled in New York City. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943. First writing in Hebrew and later switching to Yiddish -- Hebrew mixed with the languages of other lands where Jews emigrated -- Singer drew his inspira- tion from the ``shetls,'' the small towns of Eastern Europe in the decades before the Nazi Holocaust. ``I was born with the feeling that I am part of an unlikely adventure, something that couldn't have hap- pened but happened just the same,'' he once told an interviewer. The Jewish Daily Forward in New York published some of the stories Singer had brought with him from Poland, but there was a period of seven or eight years during which he did not write. The Forward then pub- lished his ``Satan in Goray'' in serial form in 1943 and other new stories. He continued to write for the newspaper, now a weekly. He remained a relatively obscure writer until the publication in 1950 of the English version of his novel, ``The Family Moskat.'' After that, his books and stories in The New Yorker, Harper's, Commentary and other magazines attracted a devoted following. Fame mattered little to Singer. ``I didn't write for prizes, but if it comes it's good. If it doesn't come, I would have been writing anyhow,'' he said after learning he had won the Nobel award. ``I expected nothing because I was already 45 and no one knew me except for a few Yiddish readers. If it came it seems that this is destiny, if it would not come, I would have made peace with that too.'' The Swedish Academy said the author's experiences in the Polish ghettos ``set their stamp on Singer as a man and a writer and provide the ever-vivid subject matter for his inspiration and imagination.'' ``It is the world and life of East European Jewry, such as it was lived in cities and villages, in poverty and persecu-tion, and imbued with sincere piety and rites combined with blind faith and superstition. '' The Academy particularly mentioned Singer's book, ``A Memoir: In My Father's Court,'' published in 1966, in which he light-heartedly depicted his childhood in one of the teeming poor quarters of Warsaw. Among his other works are ``Satan in Glory,'' about the 17th century Cossack mass murders of Jews, and ``The Magi-cian of Lublin,'' about a Jewish Don Juan turned saint. ``Shosha,'' published in 1978, is a lyrical tale of a young man's search for his childhood sweetheart, a mentally retarded girl. Many of his works have a mystical air to them, and Singer shied away from strict interpretations. ``Asking an author for an interpetation of his books is like asking a chicken what chemicals it used when it laid an egg,'' he said. The Swedish Academy's announcement Oct. 5, 1978, that Singer had won a Nobel Prize sent reporters scur- rying for titles of his works. When informed of the honor by his wife, Alma, the author took the news calmly. ``I didn't jump. I didn't dance. I couldn't be- lieve it,'' Singer recalled. ``But I said to her, 'In any case, let's eat breakfast.''' Singer's other novels include ``The Manor'' (1967); ``The Estate'' (1969); ``The Slave'' (1962); and ``The Penitent'' (1983). Among his short stories are ``Gimpel the Fool'' (1957) -- first translated to English by Saul Bellow; ``The Spinoza of Market Street'' (1961); ``Short Friday'' (1964); ``The Seance'' (1968); ``A Friend of Kafka'' (1970); ``A Crown of Feathers'' (1973); ``Passions'' (1976), and ``Old Love'' (1979). He wrote many children's books including ``A Day of Pleasure,'' which won the 1970 National Book Award, and ``The Golem'' in 1982. Singer received numer-ous awards besides the Nobel Prize, among them the Epstein Fiction Award, 1963; the Playboy Award for fiction-short story 1967; and the Poses Creative Arts award, 1970. He received an honor- ary doctor of literature degree from New York's Long Island University in 1979. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.53