Singer’s Petition to God
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Petition to God
A searingly personal, deeply moving prayer is discovered in the Nobel Laureate’s papers.
The prayer below was composed by Polish-born Jewish-American author Isaac Bashevis Singer (ca. 1903-1991), whose published work includes numerous volumes of fiction, essays, memoir, and stories for children. It was handwritten on the back of a rent receipt made out to Singer by Riesner & Gottlieb, which shows he lived on 410 Central Park West, Apartment 12F, and that he paid $73.50 for March 1952. According to the articles he was writing for the Yiddish daily Forverts in March, Singer appears to have been in Miami Beach, so it is likely that he used the back of this receipt some time later. On November 15, 1952, he published an article in the Forverts using one of his better-known pseudonyms, Yitskhok Varshavski, titled “Mentshn vos gloybn un mentshn vos tsveyfln” (People that Believe and People that Doubt, page 2), which discusses the faith of skeptics, a category under which he includes the Jewish patriarch, Abraham, whose brand of skepticism, he argues, created Judaism. The article ends with a personal credo: “Di elementn fun yidishkayt zaynen aynfakh: es iz a gloybn in an eyntsikn got un az der got iz in grunt gut un farlangt fun mentsh tsu zayn gut oyf zayn shteyger. Oyf di dosike aksiomen ken men boyen in yedn dor. Dos is der fundament, vos keyn shum vintn konen nit avekblozn” (The elements of Judaism are simple: it is a faith in a single God, a God who is fundamentally good, and who wants people to be good in their way. Every generation can be built on these axioms. It is a foundation that no winds can blow away).