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A Shmues with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Mark S. Golub (Sh'ma 9/162, November 24, 1978)

(Thir interview is part of a project by Jewish Education in Media, Inc. to produce a new form of public affairs broad casting for the Jewish community. Sponsorship for this non-profit agency is needed. Write Ste. 3.18, 888 Seventh Ave., N. Y, N. Y 10019 - E. B. B.)

Golub: I guess the first question I want to ask you is: When did it begin? When was the first time that Isaac Bashevis Singer took pencil to paper?

Singer: Well I took pencil to paper when I was boy of twelve years old. I read in Yiddish a translation from Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. And immediately I tried to imitate Conan Doyle. But after half an hour or so I got tired of it, and I saw I didn't like it. Then I waited another few years, and I began, about sixteen, to write in Hebrew. And I wrote in Hebrew a number of years. I even published a few things. But in this time, when I began to write, Hebrew was not yet what it is today. It was a language of the Book. You had to look up in the dictionary words which didn't really exist I remember I wanted to look up how you say a "salt shaker" in Hebrew. They didn't have salt shakers in those times.

Golub: There's no salt shaker in the Torah.

Singer: Not even in the Mishnah. So I began to write in Yiddish, where we did have salt shakers - very many, of all kinds. And also, the people whom I describe were speaking Yiddish. Yiddish was the natural language for me. I, myself, spoke it with my parents - with my friends. And since then I'm writing Yiddish.

Golub: When did you publish your first book?

Singer: Oh, the first translation in English came out in 1950 - The Family Moskat.

Golub: I believe you have said that a book loses something like 40% in translation.

Singer: It depends on the translator. If he's very bad, it can lose 80%!

Golub: Are you comfortable with the translations into English?

Singer: I am not comfortable, but I'm prepared to lose. The only thing is I do the editing in English lately, so whenever I feel I lose, I work on it in order not to lose. So I am not really a bad loser in English. The only thing is what happens to me in Japanese, this is the question.

Golub: How many languages have your books been translated into?

Singer I always say the truth - 16. And the printers make it 6O. I don't know why- it's wishful thinking, wishful mistaking.

Golub: Do you find it difficult to write? You are obviously a creative person when it comes to writing- Is it difficult?

Singer- It may be difficult but since I love to do it it's not difficult. You will not call a work which you love really, which gives you pleasure, difficult. If a writer says that I hate writing - and there are such writers - I have some doubts about their talent.

Golub: Really. I have heard writers say that the typewriter drinks blood. It has not drunk your blood.

Singer: I hope not. Maybe it does it stealthily without my knowledge.

Golub: Why always in Yiddish? Why have you not written lately in other languages, like English?

Singer: I will tell you. It is my mother language. It is the language which I think I know best. Also I feel best in this language. I am not self-conscious. In English, I always think I'm going to make a mistake - like all foreigners. So I have to think about the language all the time, which is not good for a writer - to put too much stress on the grammar and the syntax. Where in Yiddish, I feel like a man at home - you take off your tie, you take off your jacket although I don't take off my tie and my jacket at home, but this is my own business.

Golub: Am I correct that your father was chasidic and your mother came from a family that was misnagid (opposed to the chasidim)?

Singer: Not completely misnagid. My maternal grandfather also went to a "rabbi" from time to time, but he wasn't so hot about him.

Golub: Were you frightened of your father?

Singer: Never. But I loved him, which is even better than being frightened

Golub: What was he like?

Singer: A most good-natured human being. He had blue eyes, and a red beard, very white skin. And his life was his religion. There was nothing but religion, in his life. He ate religion, he slept religion, he studied religion, he breathed religion. And he wanted his children to be like him. He also wrote books -

Golub: He was a scholar.

Singer: A scholar, sure.

Golub: He was also a dayan (a judge).

Singer. Yes.

Golub: So obviously, one of your books refers to -

Singer: My Father's Court was our house -- this is a memoir. My mother was also a very sweet person. But already there was a sharpness about her.

Golub: She sounds, by the way, from the little I have read about her, like a very unusual person.

Singer: Very unusual - very clever - and logical. Let's say, my father would come back from his "rabbi" and he would say, "Ach! The 'rabbi'- he's such a saint." So my mother said, "How do you know that he's a saint" He said, "He was praying -" So my mother said, "This is his business!" "This is the kind of a person she was, skeptical, clever -and highly religious, of course.

Golub: She had a sense of humor, too, obviously.

Singer: A sense of humor. He also had a sense of humor, my father. They were both excellent story-tellers. I all the time milked them for stories, though my father didn't have as much time. But my mother she always had stories to tell.

Golub: Have these stories worked their way into your books at all?

Singer: Into my books for children, mostly like Mazal and Shlmazel, Zlotta the Goat - a number of stories, and they all have roots in my mother's stories.

Golub: Were they proud of you?

Singer: No. They were ashamed both of my brother and of me, because we shaved our beards. My father was especially ashamed that we wrote books because he considered all secular books blasphemy - pornography. So my father used to tell people when they asked him, "What are your sons doing?" he would say, "They sell newspapers." He considered this a very dignified way to make a living. But a writer? So after a while he began to believe in it. Once when he came to Warsaw and he asked me, "Are you selling enough newspapers to make a living?" I said, "Not too many, but somehow I manage."

Golub: They at no point in their lives ever came to accept the fact that you and your brother were writers?

Singer: I don't think so, no. They wouldn't have. My mother might have accepted but the only trouble is that my first book, Satan in Goray, is full of diabolic business and sex - and this they certainly would not accept! They would have rather accepted The Family Moskat, let's say, or The Slave, than Satan in Goray - which was really away from the Yiddish tradition as much as possible.

Golub: Where did it come from in you? You certainly were steeped in the chasidic tradition, you were a part of traditional observant Judaism.

Singer: Yes. But I was also a skeptic. In other words, my father believed that every little law --every Jewish custom -- was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, of course. But I saw, already as a young boy, that most of these things are man-made. It is true that man, himself, was made by God - so what is man-made is also, in a way made by God. Just the same, my belief in all these customs was not as strong as it was in my father. I am until today an ardent believer in God. I never doubted the existence of God for a moment. But I don't keep all these dogmas and all these things. According to my father, I am a complete goy.

Golub: Is there any wistfulness in you for those days when you were observant?

Singer: Yes. I still have great respect for these Orthodox Jews, for these pious Jews, because they had a compass - they knew exactly where to go, what is right and what is wrong. And even if they were overdoing it, it was also no tragedy. Of course, they were overdoing it mostly when it comes to what man does to God - shehbayn adam l'Makom, not sbehbayn adam l'chavayro (what man does to his fellow man). When it came to shehbayn adam l'chavayro, they were like all other people I Mean, they were not worse than other people; but neither were they much better. There was competition, and envy, and greed- - like among other people. Of course, this was a contradiction to what, really, a religious person should be. But of course, according to my father, a man had to believe, and not to ask any questions - not to have any doubts. He had no doubts; he didn't ask any questions.

(To be continued next week.)

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