Concerning the Question of Literature and Politics

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born into a strictly observant family in Leoncin, near Warsaw. During World War I, his mother moved the family to Biłgoraj, where his grandfather was a rabbi. As a young man, Singer followed in the footsteps of his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, and moved to Warsaw to become a writer himself. Publishing in Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages) and Unzer ekspres (Our Express), Singer began to use the pseudonym Yitskhok Bashevis. Together with Aaron Zeitlin, he founded the monthly Globus in 1932, in which he attacked Jewish leftist aspirations. In 1935, he moved to the United States and became part of the Forverts (Forward) staff in New York. After the Holocaust, he actively pursued the translation of his work into English and became one of the most read Yiddish writers, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Much of what he wrote in Yiddish was never published in book form. The vast majority of his books are English translations of his original work. 

[Note: Some scholars consider 1904 to be the correct year for Singer’s date of birth.]