Isaac Bashevis Singer, the celebrated Jewish-American author of novels, short stories and essays, was a leading figure in Yiddish writing and development, winner of a Nobel Prize in 1978 for literature.
Singer was born in 1902, and brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home. His father was the rabbi in the Polish shetl.
As a religious young man living in Warsaw at the time of the Russian Revolution and the Balfour Declaration, Isaac Bashevis Singer decided to become a writer.
His choice had to be between Yiddish and classical Hebrew as neither Russian, Polish nor German were languages where he felt comfortable in expressing himself and his beliefs.
Though later, when the family migrated to America, English was certainly another option.
“I wanted to reach out to the Jewish people at large. I turned to Yiddish.”
After he chose to write in Yiddish, he soon realised the language had limitations and peculiarities inherent, perhaps to no other language.
“Yiddish was the language of the tailor, the storekeeper, the Talmud teacher, the rabbi, the matchmaker, but never of the engineer, the scientist, the army officer, the judge, even the University student or people of influence.”
He remarked that nobody could have written Russian classics like War and Peace or Crime and Punishment in Yiddish.
It was the language of the Ashkenazi Jew in exile throughout Europe and later in other countries in the Diaspora, notably America.
The Feeling of Yiddish
But there was more to Yiddish than just a spoken language for Jewish people in exile.
It had a hidden meaning relating to Biblical times.
Isaac Bashevis Singer felt that Yiddish was remarkably appropriate, not just to his experience in earlier and current life, but also to his spirit.
Likewise to Jews in Eastern Europe who buried themselves in a language for those who were afraid, not of those who arouse fear.
“If a day passes without a misfortune in life, it’s a miracle from heaven.”
You cannot go through life straight and directly. One can only sneak by, smuggle one’s way through.
Whereas modern Hebrew has become the official language of the State of Israel and has been rejuvenated and worldly, it no longer draws association to the Bible and its commentaries like Biblical Hebrew.
It is not a holy tongue, but a language as secular as English, French or Russian.
As for Yiddish, even though it may become the language of past generations, it may still serve as the language of Yiddishkeit, the hallmark of feeling and being Jewish.
Isaac Bashevis Singer was shocked to see modern Hebrew literature becoming more and more worldly.
The modern Jew’s ambition to be like “all other nations” at a time when other nations around the world were becoming infiltrated with mixed cultures overlapping, deprives literature its vitality in shaping a national spirit of its society.
For generations, great treasures of folklore, wisdom and uniqueness are hidden in Yiddish.
“Yiddish shared and is still sharing the lot of the Jew who resigned from the promises of this world, its vanities and its wickedness. A lot of what is to be learned about this Jew can be found in Jewish literature.”
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