The Hope and Humor of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Early Essays
A timely review of Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939–1945
By: Helen Schulman, video still, by Tetsou Kogawa, 1977.
Of all the emotions I have been struggling with since Hamas’s brutal and sickening terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in Israel in early October, followed by the indiscriminate cruelty with which Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded in Gaza, tyrannizing and killing equally innocent civilians in his quest to punish and oust Hamas, I didn’t think I would be grateful for the work piling up untended on my desk. But then I remembered that I had been recently assigned a review of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939–1945 (White Goat Press, November 2023) by Public Seminar, and perhaps a modicum of perspective could be provided by cracking it open and reading Singer’s reactions as news of Nazi atrocities in Europe reached the United States, his new home.