The Singer Siblings: Different Views of Hassidic Life

Abstract

The renowned Yiddish writers, brothers Isaac Bashevis and Israel Joshua Singer, shaped the modern understanding of Hassidic life before the Second World War. Their stories and autobiographies describe the Old Country from a male perspective with an emphasis on the Hassidic law court their father presided over. However, they minimize or ignore the female participants in their stories. Their mother, sister, grandmother, and women of the community are flat presentations who love the feeding their families, have little education, and have a narrow world view. Their description is not wrong, rather it’s incomplete. This study considers the importance of their oft-forgotten sister equally talented Yiddish writer Esther Singer Kreitman, in creating our understanding of this Hassidic life. While the Singers were masters in the Yiddish literary world well published and received, their sister has been overlooked until recently partially because of her own insecurities and because of the misogyny of the publishing world then. Some scholars have let her mental-health issues and their own anti-women ideologies influence their critiques, but most critics praise her work as insightful. Yet, her perceptions of the pre-World War II Polish Hassidic community are as valid as her brothers’.