"The Paradoxical Theology of I.B. Singer: A Literary Analysis of Secular Influences on the Jewish Canon"
Advisor Information
Dr. Jeanette Gabriel
Location
MBSC Gallery Room 308 - U
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
4-3-2022 2:00 PM
End Date
4-3-2022 3:15 PM
Abstract
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel prize-winning writer, was a Jewish man of the 20th Century who lived along with the events of that fateful century, a time in which Jewish life endured the greatest calamities and achieved the most glorious triumphs. A millennia of persecution culminated in the incomprehensible Holocaust, and within the decade a new State of Israel was declared returning the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland. These events starkly divided the Jewish past from its future, and Singer while drawing from these phenomena maintained a timeless quality in his writings. His work draws from the entire religious Jewish canon, interspersing wisdom sayings, whether they be from Proverbs or the Talmud, throughout his stories. Many of his sentences contain references from the liturgy, and the inhabitants of his story are often prayerful people (Singer, 1988). He had a vast reservoir to draw from, from the Yam HaTorah(the Sea of Torah). These wells ran deep, and he quoted them, providing his own commentary by giving the teachings life within his characters. ”Herman talked to her in Polish, and sometimes in Yiddish, which she did not understand; he would throw in a few Biblical quotations in the holy tongue, or even phrases from the Talmud, as the mood struck him” (Singer, 1988)
Scheduling Link
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"The Paradoxical Theology of I.B. Singer: A Literary Analysis of Secular Influences on the Jewish Canon"
MBSC Gallery Room 308 - U
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel prize-winning writer, was a Jewish man of the 20th Century who lived along with the events of that fateful century, a time in which Jewish life endured the greatest calamities and achieved the most glorious triumphs. A millennia of persecution culminated in the incomprehensible Holocaust, and within the decade a new State of Israel was declared returning the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland. These events starkly divided the Jewish past from its future, and Singer while drawing from these phenomena maintained a timeless quality in his writings. His work draws from the entire religious Jewish canon, interspersing wisdom sayings, whether they be from Proverbs or the Talmud, throughout his stories. Many of his sentences contain references from the liturgy, and the inhabitants of his story are often prayerful people (Singer, 1988). He had a vast reservoir to draw from, from the Yam HaTorah(the Sea of Torah). These wells ran deep, and he quoted them, providing his own commentary by giving the teachings life within his characters. ”Herman talked to her in Polish, and sometimes in Yiddish, which she did not understand; he would throw in a few Biblical quotations in the holy tongue, or even phrases from the Talmud, as the mood struck him” (Singer, 1988)