David Herman
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Summary
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) was a renowned Polish-born Jewish-American writer. His breakthrough came in 1953 when his Yiddish story “Gimpel the Fool,” originally written in 1945, was translated into English and published. The story is set in an East European shtetl and centers around Gimpel, a gullible man who maintains an unwavering belief in human goodness. David Herman takes us through Singer’s life and his relationships with family and other fellow writers.
David Herman
David Herman is a freelance writer based in London. Over the past 20 years he has written almost a thousand articles, essays, and reviews on Jewish history and literature for publications including the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Quarterly, Jewish Renaissance, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Prospect. He has taught courses on Jewish culture for the London Jewish Cultural Centre and JW3. He is a regular contributor to Jewish Book Week, the Association of Jewish Refugees, and the Insiders/Outsiders Festival on the contribution of Jewish refugees to British culture.
He was born in a small town in Northeastern Poland. He spent his life in Poland moving between small shtetls where his father had a job as a rabbi, and later in Warsaw until his mid thirties.
Well, no, they didn’t acknowledge it. And the truth is Bellow was interested in the past and Roth was very interested in the past, but they were interested in the Jewish-American past. They were not really interested, by and large, in the world of Jewish East Europe.
At the moment I would have to say I don’t think it’s in great shape, the future of Yiddish. It really went through a revival in the eighties, nineties. But I think at the moment, outside of certain wonderful literary archives and Yiddish centres in America, it really is not in great shape.