A Crown of Feathers by Isaac Bashevis Singer

But God, the inexpressible Other, the unfathomable Father who dominates pious lives, is to SingerĪn endlessly surprising thinker whose uncountable variables of creation are so many that Singer has an amused understanding of classical paganism, made up of irreconcilable spirits who were nevertheless behind every bush. Pious folks are obsessed with obeying the will of God. World to Isaac Bashevis Singer still represents the mind of God. Though necessarily secularized, he still has access to the mystical Jewish theology in which he was brought up by the rabbis on rabbis who were his father, grandfathers, uncles. And this new collection of stories, like so much that he writes, represents the most delicate imaginative splendor, wit, mischief and, not least, the now unbelievable life that Jews once lived in Poland.īut Singer is also a rarity among Jewish novelists. Isaac Bashevis Singer is an extraordinary writer.

Hawthorne, must astonish Him as much as He astonishes us. God may even be a novelist ceaselessly creating characters who, as Melville said to The historic problem for Isaac Singer-as witness those other children of devout families, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane-is that whereas the orthodox believe that truth is personified by God and God is the truth, the Jewish novelist who derives from orthodoxy may find truth always protean and amazing because this is the way God actually thinks and moves. Interested in truth as he was when a young Chassid in gabardine and earlocks timidly looking at the street life in Warsaw. This should be obvious, but isn't to a great many Jews who still read novels but can't understand why, since he is the one Jewish novelist who can write about the unchanging Jewish struggles through the ages, Isaac Bashevis Singer is just as That ''It is not possible for an orthodox Jew who was committed to esthetics to be honest to both traditions.'' On ''the sources of Jewish creativity'' to which Isaac Bashevis Singer was probably not invited (he embodies so many ''sources of Jewish creatively'' all by himself), the orthodox Chaim Potok admitted The Atheist Who Hears God's Voice By ALFRED KAZINĪst European Jews have produced many stories, narratives, legends, but until our day, very little fiction.

A Crown of Feathers by Isaac Bashevis Singer