ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Stromberg presents newly translated and collected essays by Isaac Bashevis Singer on the Yiddish language and the Jewish community.

In this third volume of selected Yiddish essays by Singer, translator/editor Stromberg focuses on the period between 1956 and 1973, when the Polish American author’s stature was growing among the English-speaking public. (He would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.) Included in this volume are essays on Yiddish literature on the world stage and its uses, as in “The Claim That Yiddish Literature Is Provincial,” as well as Singer’s complex feelings on the Torah, other religious writings, and their interpretations, as in “Torah—Yesterday and Today.” Through it all, Stromberg highlights the division in Singer’s work and his focus on the concept of the Jewish exile as opposed to the Jewish diaspora, an idea that was central to his writing in this period. As translator, Stromberg works within the untranslatable, including those words in Yiddish that have no equivalent in English (or, in some cases, have multiple equivalents), and he does so deftly while keeping Singer’s brash and forceful voice intact. For example, Stromberg opted to translate the Yiddish word “gayst” as “spiritual” instead of “mind,” but he also notes that “when the words ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’ or ‘genuine intellects’ appear, their deeper sense points not just to a mental quality but to a spiritual quality as well.” As editor, he provides useful context for each essay, though this context could have been expanded for readers who are not as familiar with Jewish intellectual life, particularly in the United States, during this time period. In “Yiddish and Yiddish Literature,” Singer reflects on the Ashkenazi Yiddish writer Hillel Zeitlin, but extra information about Zeitlin would have been useful to understand how Singer was influenced by him. But this volume is effective at continuing Stromberg’s efforts to both render Singer readable to an English-speaking audience and situate him within and as vanguard of the larger Jewish literary and philosophical community.

A well-crafted anthology of a literary giant’s complicated and assertive thoughts.