Who are the Jews? What do Jewish writers have in common with each other? What, strictly speaking, is a "Jewish" writer . . . and, for that matter, what is meant by "strictly speaking"?
A look at the life of Isaac B. Singer, the Nobel Prize-winning author who wrote in Yiddish, may help us answer these questions. Singer died on July 24, 1991, 15 years ago tomorrow.
To understand Singer it is necessary to appreciate the stark religious bifurcation that characterized Polish Jewish life in the first half of the 20th century. Singer not only straddles both elements, he epitomizes them.