Isaac Bashevis Singer

Between 1926 and 1935, he lived with Runia Shapira, a rabbi’s daughter and a Communist who was expelled from the USSR for supporting the Zionists. The couple were never married but had a son named Israel Zamir, born in 1929. The couple got separated when Singer moved to USA in 1935 while Runia moved to Moscow and finally to Palestine along with her son.

He met Alma Wassermann in 1938. Their relationship became intimate and Alma divorced her husband Wassermann and married Singer in 1940.

He had affairs with several women including Dvora Menashe, a Hispanic maid, Lester Goran, his colleague at the University of Miami and Dvora Menashe, his assistant. His wife Alma endured his infidelity patiently.

He was one of the four children born to Rabbi Pincus Menachem and Bathsheba Zylberman. He had an elder sister and brother (who later became eminent writers) and also a younger brother, Moshe.

In 1908, his family lived in Krochmalna Street, the Yiddish-speaking poor Jewish province of Warsaw that became the background for most of his novels.

Life became difficult for the family after war. In 1917, along with his younger brother Moshe and his mother, he moved to his mother’s hometown Biłgoray, whereas his father, his elder brother and sister continued to live in Warsaw.

He came back to live in Warsaw when his father became a village rabbi. In 1921, he was put in Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary, but could pursue his course only for a year.

With the help of his elder brother Joshua, who was an editor for the journal, ‘Literarische Bleter,’ he started his career as a proof-reader in 1923. Simultaneously, he worked as a translator and journalist.

He had translated the works of famous European novelists into Yiddish. His translated works of “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann and “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque are noteworthy.

From 1933 to 1935, he worked as an associate editor of “Globus,” a Yiddish literary magazine, where his first novel, ‘Satan in Goray’ was serialized.

In 1935, he immigrated to New York and worked for ‘The Forward’, a Yiddish-language newspaper aimed at Yiddish readers.

He wrote under the pen name “Bashevis" to honor his mother Bathsheba and to distinguish himself from his elder brother, Joshua Singer who was also a renowned writer.

His first book, “Satan in Goray” was published in 1935 - was written before Hitler’s entry into Poland and before the Holocaust. The novel is about a false messiah Sabattai Zevi. Under the supervision of the author, the novel was translated into English by Jacob Sloan.

“The Slave”, published in 1962, was in line with John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” an allegory written in realistic terms. The novel speaks about Jacob, a Jewish scholar who was sold as a slave to a Pagan peasant community, where he fell in love with Wanda, his master’s daughter.

“Enemies: A Love Story,” his personal novel was filmed and directed by Paul Mazursky in 1989. The novel deals with the life of Herman Broder, a Holocaust survivor who lost his faith in religion and life and about the complication in his relationships.

“Shosha,” the remarkable novel that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, is about Aaron Greidinger, an ambitious young writer and son of a Hasidic rabbi..