Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

After spend­ing the last few days up at the Nation­al Yid­dish Book Cen­ter, it’s only fit­ting that we would be drawn to an arti­cle on one of the Singer sib­lings, pub­lished yes­ter­day in The New Repub­lic​‘s online review.

Some of you may remem­ber our post last year on the reis­sue of Esther Singer Kreitman’s The Dance of the Demons: A Nov­el , ​“The Oth­er Singer”, which you can find here.

Now, as the reis­sue of The Broth­ers Ashke­nazi draws near (fall, Oth­er Press), Rebec­ca New­berg­er Gold­stein sheds light on the old­er broth­er of Isaac Bashe­vis Singer (I.B. Singer), Israel Joshua Singer (I.J. Singer). As Gold­stein points out, iron­i­cal­ly, while the two broth­ers lived, it was I.J. who was famous, while Isaac ​“lan­guished dark­ly in his inter­nal con­tra­dic­tions and his old­er brother’s shad­ow.” She goes on to exam­ine I.J.’s polit­i­cal engage­ment and inter­est in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion (rather than the era of the Tal­mud), as well as his sto­ries and his role in his brother’s path to publication.

Read the full arti­cle in The Book: The Online Review of The New Repub­lic here