Customer Reviews

Journey to My Father, Isaac Bashevis Singer

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I read this book in the language it was originally written, Hebrew. I found it to be a convincing and moving account of a relationship between a decent son and a not- so- decent great- writer father. Zamir's journey to his father, his efforts at befriending him have some success. But IB Singer who is without question one of Literature's greatest writer of stories was not very generous or welcoming. In time their relationship improves and the son translates the father's work into Hebrew. The sense is that the son is simply a very good human being, and the father a very great writer.

Of course, this memoir can be read as one son's quest for his father after a twenty year seperation. But it is also a book about the vicissitudes of European Jews before and after World War II. For those souls, three fates awaited them: death by the evil force of Nazism, exile in America or some other safe haven, or settlement in Palestine and later the State of Israel. Isaac Singer wound up in American, and his son in Israel. In many ways, they became the separate embodiments of the solution to the Jewish "problem." Zamir took on a Hebrew last name (Singer in Hebrew) became an ardent Communist and Kibbutznik, participated in the War of Independence, and later, the Yom Kippur War. His father became a secular Jew (in action if not in thought), a writer and intellectual, at home in the American milieu, and a triumph on the American model: ultimate accolades in his field and monetary accomplishment. Zamir and Singer are clearly opposites; Singer's personality is cold and distant, and convoluted by a sense of estrangement from the world and others. Zamir, the man of the kibbutz collective, is adept at dealing with people and organizations. He carries a machine gun into his father's Tel Aviv hotel during the Yom Kippur War and the Golus Jew and the Sabra are clearly distinguished. It is also enlightening to read Dvorah Telushkin's memoir of Singer before his son's. Singer reveals far more of his nature to women, and is far from afraid of letting his dark side show. [Teluskin appears in the memoir briefly, a bit player, lacking the centrality she gives herself in her own memoir, understandably.] For Zamir, Singer's motives are more veiled, although he is not afraid to speculate or show his father's deep flaws and shortcomings. If the book accomplishs anything, it shows how profoundly influential the 20th century was for the Jews both individually and collectively. Eveything was transformed.

to learn about our father, i had to read his sons book. my father has brought me on a journey into vast spaces that needed him. he has made me understand when i had no one to understand, he came to me in a vision..in a book..in many books, yet he is my father and your his son. thank you for the only book that knows him, we know his thoughts..what is it that i cannot comprehend, but thank you for sharing.all my love mina..daughter of mahnaa