Customer Reviews

The Family Moskat: A Novel (FSG Classics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a warm, multi-generation story about a large Jewish family in Warsaw and in my view Singer's finest novel. The focus is on the human relationships within the family, magnificently and movingly described; but the novel's edge comes from the constant intrusion of grim outside reality, the tormented history of Poland between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the second-world-war Nazi storming of the Warsaw Ghetto. Counterpoint between inner and outer reality, between public and private life, between flesh and spirit, makes this book not just another family saga but a statement about Jewish (and non-Jewish) humanity at large. In that, "The Family Muskat" is characteristic of Singer's work - it is his universality, not his particularity, which makes him one of the most respected writers in modern times.

A powerful tale of a Jewish family over several genrations ending with the German army at the gates of warsaw and the destruction of the vibrant Jewish communities in Warsaw close at hand.An in depths description of the life of the Jews in Poland over the last century writen in a highly realistic unsentimental style but with a certain affection on the part of the author. Better than any history textbook.

Back in the 70s I read whatever was available by Singer. This was one of the first, and my favorite. I love long, involved stories with lots of characters. I don't remember much about any of his stories because it's been over 20 years since I read them, but I remember my impressions. I prefer all his stories that take place in Poland over those that are set in US. The textures are different. I found the North American based tales to be somewhat interesting, but the characters were less appealing. I think his feel for the European context was stronger in him, and was conveyed with more warmth than the American contexts.

As strange as it sounds, there is a parallel between The Family Moskat and Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Both start from a semi-mythic past where the family patriarch is larger than life, and then slowly spiral towards an ending in time where historical and psychological decay in the family and in society devolve into a nasty and brutish finale to the family line.

And in both, the overarching movement of history serves to eventually crush the life out of the family, despite secular individual eruptions of creativity, wealth, or love. For Marquez, history is driven by the crushing oppression of poverty and the unjust Latin American social structure. For Singer, history is driven by the crushing oppression of European anti-Semitism.

Believe me, Singer is not the writer that Marquez is--the narrative arc bogs down in parts, and he does not use magical realism to inflate his characters, as Marquez does. Singer's people remain much flatter and closer to life. They are common people, ones we can imagine meeting on the street, perhaps getting pinned in a corner at a party by one, or maybe brushing by them in a store.

But in some ways this makes The Family Moskat even more harrowing. For we know from the beginning that Polish Jewry in the early 1900's was doomed to be destroyed in the Holocaust--we already know the end with a dread certainty. Yet in this book we watch each character struggle for individual freedom, we cheer for them to succeed and rue their human failures, despite the fact that it all has to end in a pogrom or a gas chamber.

Singer shows us the full range of means Jews used to try to deny the chains of anti-Semitism that constrained their lives. There are Chasidim who fervently believe that the Messiah is coming any minute, and other Chasids who dervishly dance the Messiah home. Mystics lose themselves in the Kabbalah, if religious, or in seances, if agnostic. There are those who try to deny reality by living in the fleshly moment of sex and food, and those who live to accumulate wealth. Some run to America, and others to Palestine, and there are even those who convert to Christianity.

Communists, socialists, capitalists, the devout, converts, agnostics, atheists, scholars, debauchers--all have one thing in common; they are Jewish, and so are hated by all non-Jews around them. No matter how they try, they are defined by their birth and circumscribed and twisted by its mark. And eventually, they all will die in a chamber where the gas does not make discriminations between an agnostic Jew, a converted Jew, and a Chasid.

For American Jews, it is easy to forget that anti-Semitism has been a form of oppression as deep and destructive as that of the poor in Latin America. I am certain that Singer did not mean for this when he wrote The Family Moskat in the near aftermath of the Holocaust--it seems more a reverie for a lost world--yet this book is a potent reminder to never forget the dynamic of oppression and hatred that made the Holocaust not only possible, but desired by so many Europeans. It is a reminder that only a generation ago Jews shared the same oppression that others now face, so that perhaps for once someone can help the oppression end short of genocide.

By any standard, the word sweeping well suits Singer's novel "The Family Moskat." The novel spreads over almost a century of transformative history, ending at the outbreak of World War II, which will see before its end the entire civilization represented transformed into nothing but ash. Yet in the fashion of Tolstoy, Singer does not allow the great events he illustrates - WWI, the birth of modern Poland, the destruction of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the 1917 Revolution, the rise of Zionism - to consume the story he tells, instead using it as a canvas on which he brings his characters to life.

His diverse cast is also linked through their ties of either blood or marriage to Mashulam Moskat, the patriarch of the family of the novel's title. A wealthy Jew with many children, Singer uses his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to move over every crevice of Jewish life in Poland, from those who emigrated to America or Palestine, to the Hasidim of the small towns, to the urban intellectuals and merchants. In every case he paints a portrait at once sensitive yet real. Indeed, much of the criticism of this work has come from those who found Singer's portrayal, with its often flawed characters, as "too real." Yet Singer was a man seeking to offer later generations a window into a world that vanished in his lifetime in a flash of gas and violence; who can blame him for wishing to make it as true to life as he was able?

I must also mention that this FSG edition is truly beautiful, complete with a useful family tree that can help the reader navigate the maze of relationships in the Byzantine Moskat clan.

I moved to this book just after finishing a fast-paced historical novel ("Pompeii" by Robert Harris), and had to change gears before I could begin to really enjoy this. It isn't the type of novel where a lot "happens"--but it is a beautifully nuanced portrayal of life in a particular community--eastern European Jewish, early 20th century--and even more, of universally human life. The characters interact in believable ways, the descriptions are deep without being stultifying, and I was left deeply satisfied.

Diverse boeken van IB Singer heb ik jaren geleden gelezen, op één of andere wijze is me toen De familie Moskat ontschoten. Singer schreef dit joodse familie epos direct na de Tweede Wereldoorlog om de weggevaagde joodse gemeenschap in Polen te schetsen. Alle schakeringen, van de godsdienst, politiek, grote gezinnen, ontwikkelingen in werk, kleding, woonplaats en opvattingen, maar vooral de pendule tussen assimiliatie en vasthouden aan de eigen traditie. Wat maakt iemand jood(s)? Wat laat je als pater familias Mesjulam Moskat achter als je sterft? Wat breng je in als buitenstaander (Asa Hesjel)? Wat brengen Spinoza en Herzl aan de 'moderne jood'? Wat is het nut van een filosofie die netjes Het laboratorium van geluk heet, maar volgens de feitelijke hoofdpersoon in het boek, Asa Hesjel, neerkomt op 'meer bed, minder kinderen'? Wat is liefde als je polygaam, zelfs nymfomaan bent, en hoe rijm je dat met je godsdienst? Het boek beschrijft de decennia vóór de Tweede Wereldoorlog en Hitlers bombardementen van Warschau, de komst van concentratiekampen en de naderende vernietiging van het joodse ras. Het laat ongeveinsd de antisemitische wortels in de Poolse samenleving, maar ook de ambivalente levenswijze van de joden in dit land zien. En waar bijvoorbeeld de sluwe Koppel dacht in Amerika veilig te zijn, komt hij uiteindelijk toch in Polen te overlijden, evenmin als Hadassa (Griekse naam: Esther) ondanks haar meelijwekkend verhaal ontkomt aan het noodlot. De tientallen kinderen, verhalen en intriges komen in een seidermaaltijd vlak voor het begin van de oorlog weer bij elkaar, maar de verlossing is anders dan verwacht. Beklememnd eindigt het boek met de constatering 'De dood is de Messias. Dat is de eigenlijke waarheid." Niet voor niets heeft Singer de Nobelprijs voor de literatuur!

The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century, a bad time to be a Polish Jew. We know that the Nazis are right around the corner. This is not a story of Nazis, though. It's about the very active but painfully confused lives of Jews caught in between traditionalism and the modern world. Warsaw is as lively as New York's Lower East Side when it was throbbing with the vitality of Jewish immigrants. The main character of this book, Asa, is a young man whose grandfather was a revered rabbi, but who doesn't really believe in anything himself. His personal life is shattered, not only by traditionalism, but by his own modern faults. It's a good book but it's something of a train wreck, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

It was Singer's desire to portray eastern European Jews in all their diversity before the coming of Hitler. He favored no particular solution to the Jewish problem, neither Marxism, Communism, nor the outmoded Jewish religion. But it seems to me that only Zionism had a realistic solution: emigration to Palestine and the building of Israel.

Due to two major snowstorms I did not receive this book until several weeks after I ordered it.