54 | MARCH 14 • 2024 
J
N

ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW

S

ometimes a publisher 
gets lucky. The pub-
lisher works to bring 
out a book of historical interest 
that seems to have a modest 
potential readership, and then 
events make that book suddenly 
widely relevant. Many of Isaac 
Bashevis Singer’s essays, pub-
lished in the Yiddish newspaper 
Forverts in the grim years from 
1939 to 1945, unfortunately 
read as contemporary now. 
White Goat Press and editor/
translator David Stromberg have 
brought us, in Singer’s Writings 
on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt, the 
writer’s observations about a 
world in which antisemites had 

achieved extraordinary success-
es, just when our world seems 
again enraptured by antisemi-
tism. 
In one essay, for example, 
Singer asks, “Is Being Powerless 
a Jewish Ideal?” Some of the 
intellectuals in his day idealized 
the weak condition of Jews in 
the diaspora. Where other peo-
ples committed acts of coercive 
violence, Jews did not. We could, 
therefore, criticize persecutors 
from a position of moral supe-
riority because we always find 
ourselves among “those pursued, 
and not the pursuers.
” 
Singer answers their claim 
with bitterness: “Why should 

powerlessness ‘raise its flags’ and 
‘be exulted with fanfare?’ All in 
all, because of our powerlessness 
we have lost our nearest and 
dearest. Our dignity has been 
trampled by dirty feet. Had 
we not been so powerless, so 
defenseless, the Nazis could not 
have with complete impunity led 
millions of Jews to the slaughter 
like sheep.
”
Singer wrote that in 1944, and 
now, Jewish diasporists, passion-
ately anti-Zionist, again make 
the case for renouncing worldly 
power. Many of these intellectu-
als, now as in Singer’s day, make 
this case without the religious 
belief that victims would enter 
Gan Eden and murderers would 
suffer in Gehenna. That belief, 
at least, according to Singer, 
“Endowed their powerlessness 
with some meaning.
”
Those without that belief, 
Singer writes, modern Jews, 
need to accept that “the world 
is full of murderers who eat and 
drink and even act like great 
heroes. Jew killers are the least 
punished of all murderers.
” 

THEN AND NOW — 
THE SIMILARITIES
In another essay, published 

in 1938, “
Agunot — Wives of 
Missing Husbands Not Allowed 
to Remarry by Jewish Law,
” 
Singer explains the anguish 
caused when a husband dies, 
and not enough evidence exists 
to prove that he has died. The 
woman may remain unable to 
marry according to Jewish law 
if there were no witnesses to 
the death and the body was not 
recovered or was recovered with 
insufficient identifying features, 
or even if the husband just left 
for parts unknown. The risk 
of becoming an agunah would 
become more prevalent in the 
next few years, as masses of Jews 
were murdered or displaced 
around the globe. 
Now, more than 85 years later, 
the anguish of agunot remains a 
serious problem; if we thankfully 
have fewer husbands murdered 
in parts unknown, we have more 
husbands who leave their wives 
and simply do not authorize a 
Jewish divorce.
In 1941, Singer wrote that 
“Jews Would Oppose Nazis Even 
if Fascists and Hitlerites Were 
Not Antisemites.
” In Singer’s 
terse definition, fascism asserts 
that “The ruler is everything — 
the subject is nothing.
” 
For Fascists, power is right; 
control comes from above. In 
Singer’s analysis, the principles 
of fascism have ancient roots: 
“The strongest person is god 
and might is right — these are 
the two core principles of both 
idolatry and fascism.
” And Jews 
stand for rejecting idolatry. In 
fact, according to Singer, char-
acteristically, we “Jews do not 
acknowledge authority.
” Rather, 
“Jews are the living denial of 
human deities, petty meaning-
less creatures who want to make 
themselves into gods.
”
Now, decades later, some Jews 
accuse other Jews of accepting 
the principles of fascism; but I 
think the preponderance of Jews 
continue to recoil from identify-
ing themselves with the morality 

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ‘Writings 
on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt.’ 

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A Timely 
Publication 
of Essays

David 
Stromberg

