The Certificate (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Leonard Wolf (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1997 | Series: Penguin Twentieth Century Classics

Penniless, 18-year-old David Bendier arrives in the big city, Warsaw, in 1922, determined to become a writer. He is hungry for philosophy and culture, the worlds of Spinoza and the spirit. But the path from innocence to experience is a slippery one. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A bittersweet posthumous finale to a distinguished career, this novel by the 1976 Nobel laureate returns one last time to the now-vanished universe of Polish Jewry between the world wars. Its narrator, David Bendiger, is a would-be writer, "at eighteen and a half . . . no longer a day student" but still a dreamer, "digging away at eternal questions" and trying to survive on his own in 1920s Warsaw. Offered the opportunity of a certificate that will permit him to emigrate to Palestine, he vacillates among three women--Sonya, a simple working girl; Edusha, a sexually active young Communist; and Minna, a daughter of the once-rich bourgeoisie--unable to decide whom he should choose. At the same time, he is pummeled by the movements that have shaped Jewish life in this century--communism, Zionism and the Jewish Enlightenment--while he tries to reconcile himself to the distance he has come from his Orthodox upbringing. Singer tells David's story with cool detachment, allowing the young man's mix of self-importance and self-doubt to give his narration a fine, ironic edge. As events swirl around David, plunging him into a whirlpool of lost loves and family tensions, he grows before our eyes, maturing into a wounded but wise adult, one who comes to realize the futility of his struggles. Although written early in the author's career, this novel languished untranslated until now. It proves to be vintage Singer, a welcome addition to his oeuvre.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140187855
• ISBN-13: 978-0140187854
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,906,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Passionate and sad account, June 13, 2000

By 

Esther Nebenzahl - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Certificate (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

David Bendiger is a penniless young man, willing to make a name for himself as a writer in Warsaw. But 1922 is a time of turmoil, war, anti-Semitism, the rise of communism, all of which deeply affecting a young generation that cannot find its place in society. More so for the Jewish community, torn itself between tradition and the new rationalism. David is a puppet in a world of chaos, who gets himself carried and involved in the lives of three women, each one of them with their own dilemma in life. Like in all his other works, I.B.Singer masters his depiction of human despair, love, greatness, and despicable existence.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait Of An Aspiring Writer As A Young Man, August 13, 2002

By 

IRA Ross (LYNDHURST, NJ United States 07071) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Certificate (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

David Bendiger is at a crossroad in his life. He is 18-1/2 and like his brother, Ahron, he aspires to be a writer. David also has the opportunity to obtain a certificate of passage to Palestine, a British protectorate in 1922. The only catch is that if he had a wife entry into Palestine would be that much easier. David enters into a fictitious marriage with Minna, a woman from a well-to-do Jewish family living in Warsaw. Minna plans to reunite with her adored fiance in Palestine and then dissolve her union with David. Needless to say problems ensue.

_The Certificate_ is a splendid and engrossing story full of unexpected plot turns. It captures that moment in a young man's life when he is just becoming an adult and must make important decisions that will affect the rest of his life. In David's case he chooses to begin his writing career by endeavoring to have some of his writings published. Newly discovering women, he ponders about the kind of woman he will eventually marry. The son of an orthodox rabbi, David also faces a challenge to his Judaism and his belief in God when he meets two Communist women at a rooming house, as well as from Minna, a self-denying Jew. Even his beliefs and his value system, much of these derived from Spinoza, are shaken. Whether David finds a new life in Palestine or takes an altogether different road may be discovered by reading this small, but important and engrossing work in the I.B. Singer canon.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A SINGER WORTH RESCUING, October 19, 2007

By 

John Stahle (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Certificate (Paperback)

I.B. Singer's "The Certificate" is one of the books his estate unearthed from the pages of the Jewish Daily Forward after his death, a Yiddish text Singer himself chose not to translate into English in his lifetime. That alone makes us wonder if it should have been brought out. But unlike other posthumous issues (the thin "Meshugah" or the squalid "Shadows on the Hudson"), "The Certificate" is a real work of merit, if not top Singer, mainly because it is so autobiographical.

The nineteen-year-old David Bendiger, son of a Polish village rabbi, arrives in Warsaw in 1922 to start his career as a writer, and is cast adrift there. He is penniless, weak, feckless, unkempt, tongue-tied, unable to hold onto either keys or money. Zionists offer him an expense-paid trip to Palestine if he will marry the woman paying, then divorce her after they get there. While strings are pulled to get "the certificate" to emigrate, David lives as passively as a leaf tossed in the wind--exactly like Singer when he first came to Warsaw. Of special interest are the scenes when David's older brother, also a writer, shows up, a kind but dominating figure before whom David is still a dependent child, much like I.B.'s relationship with his own older brother, I.J., an established Yiddish writer. In real life, I.J. did everything for I.B., even bringing him to New York before the war and placing him at the Forward, but I.B.'s tormented resentments made it impossible for him to write anything of significance until I.J. died of a heart attack in 1944. Freed by this, I.B.'s writing took off at once, and by 1950 Knopf had published the English translation of his greatest work, "The Family Moskat."

"The Certificate" is one posthumous work that deserved unearthing: sad yet warm, philosophical yet filled with contempt for all forms of fanaticism, especially the young Jewish communists who practice their politics with the exact same cultic obsessiveness of Hasidim. This lesser-known Singer is well worth reading.