Barbara Albert

The 12th meeting of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club was held on January 23rd hosted by Mrs. Judi Woods. President Lucille Richardson welcomed 13 members.

Ms. Priscilla Bernatz read the minutes from the January 16th meeting. The minutes were approved as written.

The Club’s area of study this year is Nobel Prize Winners. Mrs. Barbara Albert read her paper “Nobel Prize in Literature 1978 “which is summarized as follows:

Isaac Bashevis Singer, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 wrote almost exclusively in Yiddish. It was the language of his childhood, the language of his thoughts, and the language of his creativity.

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Nobel acceptance speech began: “People ask me often, ‘Why do you write in a dying language?’ And I want to explain it in a few words. Firstly, I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love Yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it. Secondly, not only do I believe in ghosts, but also in resurrection. I am sure that millions of Yiddish speaking corpses will rise from their graves one day and their first question will be: “Is there any new Yiddish book to read?” For them Yiddish will not be dead. Thirdly, for 2000 years Hebrew was considered a dead language. Suddenly it became strangely alive. What happened to Hebrew may also happen to Yiddish one day. There is still a fourth minor reason for not forsaking Yiddish and this is: Yiddish may be a dying language but it is the only language I know well. Yiddish is my mother language and a mother is never really dead.”

In this way Isaac Bashevis Singer introduced himself to the Nobel Banquet in December of 1978. In Granting the award, the Nobel Committee stated that Singer received the award for “his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.”

Mr. Singer ALWAYS wrote in Yiddish, depending at first on translators, and then working WITH translators to publish his works into English and other languages. The Yiddish language was, perhaps, to Mr. Singer what a favorite paintbrush was to a great painter… a necessary part of the creative process.

With the beginning of hardship due to World War 1. His father remaining in Warsaw, Isaac’s mother moved with Isaac and his younger brother Moshe to Bolgoraj, his mother’s hometown. It was a traditional Jewish Shtetl, or small Jewish town, where his mother’s brothers were rabbis as her father had been.

In 1921 Singer returned to Warsaw and entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary. He realized that he was right when he was younger, that it was not his path. He returned to Bilgoraj, where he tried to earn money giving Hebrew lessons but failed to earn a living and returned to his parents’ home. By this time his older sister and brother were both writers, his sister writing stories, and his brother working for a magazine. His brother offered him a job in Warsaw working as a proofreader for a Jewish interwar literary magazine “Literarische Bleter” which translates as Literary Pages, or leaves. This was the beginning of Singer’s lifelong passion of writing.

His brother became a major influence on both his writing and thinking, encouraging spiritual liberation and consideration of the social, political and cultural upheaval in both the Jewish community and the world. There was a clash between tradition and renewal, between what was called “other-worldliness”, faith and mysticism on one hand, and, in contrast, free thought, the secular world, doubt and nihilism. Singer’s short stories and novels contrasted these themes with an emphasis on the Jewish perspective and in a Jewish context, which unfolded alongside similar conflicts in the broader surrounding Gentile communities. Singer studied the contrasts between preservation and renewal, especially focusing on character studies of families caught in the conflicts of the new age and the old, those who try to hold to tradition in a world of changing values, and those for whom the values have changed.Singer also clearly portrayed characters broken by those conflicting values who led sad and empty lives.

Singer wrote several epic novels: The Family Moskat, The Manor, and The Estate, among others which were compared by some to the writing of Thomas Mann and Leo Tolstoy. His early emphasis, however, was on short stories and Novellas, in which his style, characterization, and storytelling painted clear pictures in the minds of his readers.

Probably the best known of Mr. Singer’s work in the United States was made into both a play and a movie, Yentl was the story of ” a rabbi’s daughter with ”the soul of a man and the body of a woman.” The orthodox Judaism of Poland, when the story was set, in 19th century Poland, had very distinct roles for men and women. Women were not allowed to stand at the Bimah, the podium from which the Torah was read in Synagogues. There were clear gender roles in the Judaism of that time, assigning women responsibilities and control in their homes, and Men responsibilities OUTSIDE of the home, In synagogues, and in the larger community. There are communities of Jews that still hold these views that are no longer a part of the larger Jewish community. Yentl was, therefor, a feminist story, of a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to attend the Yeshiva. Mr. Singer’s book (co-authored by Leah Napolin,) “Yentl the Yeshiva boy” was first produced as a musical play in 1974 with Tovah Feldshuh in the leading role. The play was made into a movie in 1983.

Singer’s was a unique voice that created bridges between the culture of his childhood, steeped in religion, tradition and superstition… one that spoke in a language no longer in that place ….. and a modern culture of Jewry, displaced and often more contemporary in it’s views, it’s worship, and it’s cynicism. Singer was a man with a foot in BOTH worlds, but who importantly wrote in the language of the world that exists now primarily in ancestry, in memory, and in great part literarily in the published works of Nobel prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Ms. Gail Crowe assisted at the tea table.

The next meeting of the Club will be hosted by Dr. Irene Strychalski when Dr. Irene Strychalski will read her paper Nobel Prize in Literature 1928.