Israel Joshua Singer

Israel Joshua Singer

Israel Joshua Singer
photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1938
Born (1893-11-30)November 30, 1893
Biłgoraj, Congress Poland
Died February 10, 1944(1944-02-10) (aged 50)
New York City, USA
Occupation Novelist
Language Yiddish
Ethnicity Polish Jew
Citizenship United States
Genre fictional prose
Notable works The Brothers Ashkenazi

Israel Joshua Singer (Yiddish: ישראל יהושע זינגער; November 30, 1893, Biłgoraj, Congress Poland — February 10, 1944 New York) was an American novelist who wrote in Yiddish. He was born Yisruel Yehoyshye Zinger, the son of Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman. He was the brother of author Isaac Bashevis Singer and novelist Esther Kreitman.

Singer contributed to the European Yiddish press from 1916. In 1921, after Abraham Cahan noticed his story Pearls, Singer became a correspondent for the American Yiddish newspaper The Forward. His short story Liuk appeared in 1924, illuminating the ideological confusion of the Bolshevik Revolution. He wrote his first novel, Steel and Iron, in 1927. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States. He died of a heart attack at age 50 in New York City in 1944.

His memoir Fun a velt vos iz nishto mer (English: Of a World That is No More) was published posthumously in 1946. His other works include:

In the introduction to A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg stated that Singer's books are organized "in a way that satisfies the usual Western expectations as to literary structure. His novels resemble the kind of family chronicle popular in Europe several decades ago [that is, the turn of the century]".[2]

Citations

  1. Sorrel Kerbel - The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers 1135456070 2004 -"The repeated attacks made on Singer's anti-communist attitudes embittered him, and after the appearance of his first novel, Shtol un ayzn (Steel and Iron), "
  2. Howe, Irving; Greenberg, Eliezer, eds. (1954). A treasury of Yiddish stories. New York: Viking Press. p. 84.

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