More Stories from My Father's Court
A Collection
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4.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A delightful sequel to a cherished autobiographical collection by the Nobel Laureate
In My Father's Court is one of Isaac Bashevis Singer's most affecting autobiographical works. The stories in it, published serially in the Jewish Daily Forward, depict the beth din in his father's home on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw. A unique institution, the beth din was a combined court of law, synagogue, scholarly institution, and psychologist's office where people sought out the advice and counsel of a neighborhood rabbi.
The thirty-one stories gathered here, none previously published in English, show this world as it appeared to a young boy: In "A Guest in the Prayerhouse," a man who has converted to Judaism embarrasses the community with his extreme piety; in "She Will Surely Be Ashamed," a couple come for a divorce after forty years of marriage even though they are still in love; in the extraordinary "He Begs Forgiveness," a jeweler apologizes to his former fiancée for abandoning her twelve years before, igniting the imagination of the young Singer, who dreams of writing stories about dark, eternal love. From the earthy to the ethereal, these stories provide an intimate and powerful evocation of a world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published between 1955 and 1960 as a series of columns in the Jewish Daily Forward, and now issued in Singer's fifth posthumous collection, these 28 autobiographical sketches are set in and around the beth din (rabbinical court) run by Singer's father in their native Warsaw in the early 20th century. These brief stories lack the gravity of Nobelist Singer's more substantial works, but cumulatively conjure up the clannish, confounding and often melancholy world of ghetto Jewry. The young SingerDwho as narrator uses techniques that clearly are fictionalDobserves some marital consternation: a man complains to the rabbi about his unfaithful wife, yet acknowledges the cuckold "brings some joy into the house"; another, seeking forgiveness from the fianc e he dumped, reunites with her after 12 years, leaving Singer inspired "to write a storybookDfull of secrets and mysteries." At another point, the author declares, "one person can never really know another"; he can't decide whether a traveling salesman trusts the wife he leaves behind or whether he simply doesn't care what she does. Leviant's translation renders Singer's prose in an appropriately contemporary vein: "Regret is not businesslike," declares a man sued by an old woman who wanted him to say kaddish (the prayer for the dead) for her. After watching the ritual slaughter of chickens, the young narrator asks, "How could God see all this and remain silent?" PerhapsDif one can speculate about the author's unspoken rejoinderDbecause Warsaw Jews were to see much worse.
