YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents:

The Family Singer

on view through August 31, 2009

Originally presented at YIVO in the winter of 2004 in celebration of Isaac Bashevis Singer centennial, this exhibition chronicles the lives and works of three Singer siblings : the brothers Israel Joshua (1893-1944) and Isaac Bashevis (1904-1991), and their elder sister Esther (1891-1954), all of whom well acclaimed and famed figures in Yiddish Literature. It further explores the source of their inspiration, much influenced by their upbringing at the time of vanishing world of shtetl and of the insidious encroachment of modernity in Eastern Europe. The very contradiction, between the shtetl life of piety and tradition and the rebellious secularism, proved to be a rich soil that would nourish the three sibling's future writing.

The eldest child, Esther, was given up to a foster family as an infant, then reclaimed by her family at the age of three. Esther was moody and an epileptic. Her brother Bashevis later wrote that "times, she seemed possessed by a dibbuk." Esther was self-educated. Her early works include Der sheydim tants (The Devils Dance), a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about a woman who consents to an arranged marriage. Esther's own unhappy marriage to Avrom Kreitman, a diamond cutter from Antwerp, served as an escape from her brilliant though disturbed family. It also made her an exile to London, where she spent almost all her adult life. She wrote Brilyantyn (Diamonds) in 1944 and short stories, and she translated Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw into Yiddish. Her book Deborah, translated by Maurice Carr, was published by The Feminist Press (New York, 2004).

The elder Singer son, Israel Joshua, lost interest in religious studies and moved out of the house at 18. He joined the Warsaw Jewish bohemia, working as a newspaper correspondent and writing tales of Hasidic life. His first collection of stories, published in 1922, entitled Perl und andere dertseylungen (Pearls), was an international success. He wrote for Yiddish newspapers in Kiev and Moscow, then returned to Warsaw, where he cofounded a literary magazine. Impressed with Singer's writing, Abraham Cahan, a writer and editor of the Jewish Daily Forward in New York, hired him as a correspondent. In 1934, I.J. Singer immigrated to the United States, where his writings were serialized in the Forward. He also wrote The Brothers Ashkenazi and The Family Carnovsky. Israel Joshua Singer died prematurely of a heart attack at age 50.

Isaac Bashevis Singer's memoir, In My Fathers Court, depicted his early childhood in a shtetl. After the family moved to Warsaw, he attended kheyder and a rabbinical seminary, then abandoned religious studies. In 1923, his brother found him a job as a proofreader. Isaac admired his older brother, whom he referred to as his mentor. His first story, Af der elter (In Old Age), was published in 1925. He wrote under the pen name Bashevis; his mother's name was Basheve. His first novel, Satan in Goray, was serialized in the magazine Globus, which he cofounded with poet Aaron Zeitlin in 1932. In 1935, Bashevis moved to New York and began his long association with the Jewish Daily Forward, where most of his work was serialized. A prolific writer of novels, short stories, memoirs and children's books, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.