(Author: Gloria Sandak-Lewin, Vol. 68, No. 3, Chanukah 2013)
This is the fourth and final part of a four-part essay on Isaac Bashevis Singer, the first three having since appeared in Jewish Affairs.
Before analysing the several plots and stylistic features of the novel, a few comments are necessary. Note that Isaac Bashevis Singer intimates that all three books, The Manor (1967), The Estate (1969) and The Family Moskat (1950), are interrelated – The Family Moskat is actually a continuation of the other two books although it was written earlier.1 He thus apparently considers all three books to be family sagas, with The Manor and The Estate spreading the events over two novels and The Family Moskat containing all the events in one volume.
All three books start with a strong male patriarchal figure – Calman Jacoby in The Manor and The Estate and Meshusalem Moskat in The Family Moskat – although they are very different kinds of characters and personalities, and end with the grandchildren, Moishele, Ezriel Babad’s little boy in The Estate, and Hadassah and Masha and Dosha in The Family Moskat. Also, while the The Manor starts with the Polish Uprising against the Czar in 1863 and ends more or less at the turn of the century, The Family Moskat, while starting at approximately the same time, ends with the rise of Hitler and the Polish Fascists, and the bombing of Warsaw by the Germans. Finally, it is important to note that The Family Moskat, Singer’s first work to be translated into English, won international success and brought him instant recognition in America.2
The following is a brief summary of The Family Moskat. The novel spans three generations of Moskats, the head of whom is the old, thrice-married Meshusalem Moskat, as well as of the Bannet and Katzenellenbogen and Berman families. The main member of the Bannet family is Asa Heshel Bannet, the most important character of the novel. The Berman family is headed by the thief and womaniser Koppel Berman, bailiff to Meshusalem who later marries one of his daughters, Leah.
Meshusalem Moskat is a selfish, cantankerous, demanding and in general very unappealing old man. Punctilious in matters of Halacha and immensely rich, he spawns a mass of children by his first and second wives, Minna and Yente Malkah respectively. By Minna he has four children, of whom the only one of any importance is Hama. She is unhappily married to Abram Shapiro, a colourful extrovert character who is unfaithful to her and deeply in love with the artist, Ida. By Yente Malkah, he begets Pinnie (who features little in most of the book but comes into his own at the end), Nyunie, a weak character married to Dacha and father of one of the main characters, Hadassah, and Leah, frustrated in her marriage to Moshe Gabriel Margolis and in love with Koppel Berman. Leah and Moshe Gabriel have four children: Meyerl (Mendy), Zlatele (Lottie), Masha and Aaron. Mendy is a successful lawyer in America and Lottie a teacher at an American college. Masha marries the son of a Polish count, Yanek Zazhitsky, who treats her abominably, and Aaron, the youngest, remains with his father Moshe Gabriel in Poland, becomes a Hasidic rabbi and eventually leaves to found a Hasidic colony in Palestine.
As his third wife Meshusalem marries Rosa Frumeti Landau. Through an earlier marriage, she has a daughter, Adele, who becomes the first wife of Asa Heshel Bannet, through mendaciously telling him that the woman he loved and who loved him, Hadassah Moskat, had become betrothed to someone else. After eloping with Asa Heshel, an impoverished teacher of Hebrew, Hadassah returns home alone in disgrace – she has been imprisoned for not having papers and a passport. Her mother forces her to marry Fishel Kutner, a good and wealthy man who loves her but whom she detests. In the meantime, Asa Heshel has married Adele: he is still in love with Hadassah and the marriage is not happy. Hadassah contacts him, they have a tempestuous love affair but eventually he is conscripted into the Russian army in which he spends several years. Before he leaves for the army, Adele informs him that she is pregnant (she has a son whom she names David, whom Asa Heshel hardly ever visits on his return).
Hadassah has been writing to Asa Heshel while he is away and she is the first person whom he contacts on his return. She asks her husband for a divorce – he reluctantly grants it and at last she marries Asa Heshel. For a few years they are very happy; but Hadassah, who is herself frail and sickly, has a sickly daughter (Dacha) when Asa Heshel wanted a boy, is a very poor housekeeper and is extravagant. Eventually, she starts complaining and nagging and they quarrel. One night they go to a ball where he meets Barbara Fishelsohn, a Jewess whose father, a missionary, converted her to Christianity when she was very young. Now a confirmed Communist, she entices him away from Hadassah, they have an affair and Hadassah moves out with her daughter to a house on the landed estate in the forest of Shubresov. Asa Heshel then spends his time between the two women and Hadassah, who still loves him, has to accept the situation.
On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland Asa Heshel, who for some time has been teaching at a girls’ seminary, decides to go on holiday with Barbara somewhere far away in the country. While on holiday war breaks out and he and Barbara return to Warsaw after an exhausting six days’ journey. His main concern is about Hadassah’s (and his daughter Dacha’s) safety and on arriving back in Warsaw he learns from Hadassah’s uncle Pinnie (Moskat) that Hadassah is dead: she has been killed by a bomb in Otwotsk. Dacha is with the Moskat family, who are planning to leave Poland. At first Asa Heshel does not react to the news but his pain, shock and sorrow are manifested when he and Barbara walk through a bombed-out, devastated Warsaw to his sister Dinah and her family. Dina and her useless Hasidic husband, deeply religious but now almost simple, and their three children are living in abject poverty and Asa Heshel is unable to help them financially. He leaves his distraught, lamenting sister and goes outside to meet Barbara waiting in the streets, furious that he has kept her so long. She informs him that she has made a decision to leave Poland. He is determined to stay.
The book ends with Asa Heshel’s visit to an old friend, Hertz Yanovar, who proclaims in Polish that the Messiah is dead. (It is significant that, despite her decision to leave, Barbara has once again accompanied him, although she says that it is on her way.) It is also significant that Adele has had to return to Poland, her ship having ‘wandered’ in the seas for a long time and having then been debarred from allowing its passengers to disembark. The question is: what happens to Asa Heshel after his decision to remain in Warsaw and does Barbara stay with him or leave Poland for Russia? Or does he return and reconcile with his first wife, Adele? How does he live? Does he survive? And where does he live – with his sister or alone? Singer keeps one guessing and asking questions about the future of the main character even after the book has ended.
The plot of this huge, sprawling novel is very involved, and at first it is difficult to identify the vast entanglement of characters. Three genealogical tables at the beginning of the three main families involved – those of Meshusalem Moskat, Bannet and Katzenellenbogen and Koppel Berman – help the reader to sort out the complicated interrelationships of its various characters.
One of the most interesting features of the novel is the intricate interweaving of the personal histories of certain characters and the social history of the times. Unlike in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, where individual chapters separate the personal lives of the various personae from the descriptions of the military-related events, Singer subtly interlaces personal and social mores and features. For example, early in the novel the young Asa Heshel Bannet shows an interest in reading secular books – mostly on philosophy, especially on Spinoza – much to the alarm, distaste and condemnation of his grandfather, a rabbi. Such books were hard to come by in the religiously observant country communities of early-to-mid 19th Century Poland. Later, we see the contrast between Asa Heshel, a penniless young teacher in Warsaw, and the affluent, sophisticated Adele Landau, stepdaughter of Meshusalem Moskat, who has been educated in Switzerland, speaks French fluently, plays the piano and dresses in “modern” fashionable clothes. Later still, we see Asa Heshel as a conscript in the Russian army tramping through various villages, including his own village (shtetl) Tereshpol Minor. There, he has the opportunity to visit his grandfather’s house, which has been taken over by a gentile pig-farmer with a part of the house being used to scour, scald and skin the pigs. Then there is the comparison between the Hasidic-garbed Jews with long ear-locks and wives wearing wigs, still practising Judaism in the old ways, and the modern secular Jews in ‘gentile’ clothes, the women showing their own hair or wearing hats, trying to be as Jewishly inconspicuous and fashionable as possible.
Finally, although the earlier part of the book records merely the separation of the Jews from their Polish neighbours, it gradually reveals the terrible antisemitism amongst the Polish people. An example is the violently antisemitic attitude of Count Zazhitsky towards Masha even before she has married his son, Yanek, and the latter’s extreme and growing antisemitism during their marriage that eventually compels her to leave him.
As the book progresses and the Nazi occupation approaches, two facts stand out in sharp relief to the normalcy of Polish society. One is the existence of the Polish Fascists, known as Nara – Polish students who stand outside Jewish shops to warn prospective customers that the owner is Jewish and that therefore they should not do business there. This happens to Nyunie Moskat. The other is the shocking custom of making Jewish students stand during lectures at the university or sit on separate benches, known as “ghetto benches”, during lectures, in the case of, for example, one of Pinnie Moskat’s grandsons.
Undoubtedly the outstanding feature of I. B. Singer’s novels and short stories is his exceptional story-telling ability combined with the striking realism of his descriptions of places, situations and events and his ability to ‘get inside’ his various characters – from the intricate and at times puzzling complexity of his protagonist Asa Heshel to the coarseness and criminal astuteness of the thief Koppel Berman; from the pure loyal and unswerving love of Asa Heshel by Hadassah Moskat to the selfish, deceptive and beguiling love of his first wife Adele Landau; from the colourful, extrovert, almost Falstaffian exuberance of Abram Shapiro to the intrinsic goodness, devoutness and uprightness of Moshe Gabriel Margolis, first husband of Leah Moskat. Towards the end of the book Pinnie, the oldest surviving Moskat, and Leah are slightly more fully drawn. Pinnie maintains a firm adherence to Judaism and asserts himself as the head of the Moskat family while Leah, temporarily forgetting the secularism she has learnt in America, enthusiastically and nostalgically helps with the Passover preparations on her second return visit to Poland.
Singer’s facility for story-telling is evident in the twists and turns, sudden surprises and unexpected shocks in the skilful development of his various intricate plots and his ability to “hold on” to the changing events in the lives of his multiple characters. Who, for example, would have thought that Asa Heshel, after years of loving the beautiful and loyal Hadassah, would suddenly become involved with the unappetising converted Communist Barbara Fishelsohn? And who would have thought that Leah would give up her good and devout (albeit dull and uninspiring) husband for the calculating and dishonest Koppel Berman?
Then there is the realism of place: see, for example, the following almost pictographic description of Warsaw after it had been bombed by Hitler, seen through the eyes of Asa Heshel as he and Barbara walk through its streets:
The street was crowded – Asa Heshel could not remember ever having seen such mobs on Iron Street. People jostled each other on the sidewalk and in the middle of the road. They carried valises, packages, bundles, rucksacks. One tall man held a floor lamp in one hand and a basket in the other. In an open place on which timber lay scattered a crowd of Jews and gentiles were digging a wide trench. The Chasidim [sic] threw up the earth with quick, eager strokes and wiped the sweat from their brows. Somewhere in the vicinity a bakery was open; Asa Heshel saw women carrying fresh loaves. Many of the passers-by were in semi-military clothes: girls had soldiers’ capotes on; men in civilian clothes wore helmets. Nurses, stretcher-bearers, and scouts wove their way through the throng. Here and there civilians carried gas masks slung over their shoulders. In the midst of the confusion two tall nuns stood arguing. Barbara clung to Asa Heshel’s arm, afraid of losing him.4
Note the reference to the two nuns, immediately juxtaposed with the mention of Barbara: is this I. B. Singer’s way of reminding us that she was a converted Jewess – converted to Christianity by her father?
After visiting Pinnie, Asa Heshel and Barbara set out to see his sister Dinah on Franciskaner Street. Planes are roaring overhead, machine guns rattling, bombs exploding and houses burning. People are fleeing in every possible type of conveyance: “…on foot, platforms on wheels, carts, droshkies, motorcycles, buses, and taxis. A limousine was tangled in the traffic…. The half-shattered church on Gzhybov Place, opposite Reb Meshusalem Moskat’s house, had been converted into a hospital, where nuns attended the wounded. The broad flight of steps was sprinkled with blood.”5
Or, again, Asa Heshel’s heart-breaking impression of his grandfather’s house in his home town as he and his regiment march towards the front:
Before the Purim season Asa Heshel’s regiment was sent to the front…. For three whole days Asa Heshel was even able to stay in the town of his youth, Tereshpol Minor. A gentile swine-slaughterer had moved into his grandfather’s house. In the yard stood a wooden tub in which the pig was scalded after it was killed. The study house was being used as a storage space for fodder. On the day Asa Heshel arrived the ovens were being lighted in the ritual bath house, and the village gentiles were entering. It was strange to see Tereshpol Minor emptied of Jews.6
Then there is the shock and unexpectedness – though one is filled with a sense of foreboding – at the news of Hadassah’s death. On his return to Warsaw after his holiday with Barbara, “Asa Heshel telephoned Nyunie [Hadassah’s father, his father-in-law], but there was no answer. He looked up Pinnie’s number and called him:
Pinnie answered; his voice was hoarse and quavery. ‘Who is that?’‘
This is Asa Heshel, Hadassah’s husband.’
Pinnie was silent. Asa Heshel continued: ‘I telephoned my father-in-law, but no-one answered.’
At last Pinnie said: ‘Your father-in-law has moved in with us.’
‘Can he come to the telephone?’
‘He’s just gone out.
’Can you perhaps tell me where Hadassah is?’
Pinnie began to stammer something, broke off, coughed, and then said, reproachfully: ‘We thought you were going to stay out there.’
‘I got back last night.’
‘How did you manage it? But it doesn’t matter.
Hadassah is dead.’
There was a long silence at both ends of the line. Finally Asa Heshel asked: ‘When did it happen? How?’
‘In Otwotsk. The first bomb.’
Again a long silence. ‘Where is Dosha?’
‘Here, with us. Do you want to speak to her?’
‘No. I’m coming right over.’”7
One cannot conclude this essay without including Asa Heshel’s reactions to Hadassah’s death which are perhaps the most poignant, moving, beautiful passages in the book. He is enduring intense anguish and sorrow:
Asa Heshel walked with bowed head. He was prepared for the worst. Perhaps Dinah [his sister], too, was dead. He recalled the verse of the Psalmist: For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me. His heart was contracted as though squeezed in a fist. Fantastic! He had had a foreboding the last time that he would never see Hadassah again. She had looked at him so strangely, so timidly. If she died, she said, she wanted to be buried with her mother. It had never occurred to her that she would be buried in Kartchev….
It is noteworthy that throughout the novel Singer arouses the readers’ curiosity and keeps him/her in suspense and guessing right till the end: after Asa Heshel’s visit to his friend Hertz Yanovar, we do not know whether he and Barbara ever part (note how she clings to him – how desperate and vacillating she is, and also how selfish, begrudging him the short time that he has spent with his sister). We do not know what becomes of Asa Heshel himself. And what becomes of the Moskat family, gathered, their luggage packed and ready in Pinnie’s house? Do they succeed in leaving Poland and starting a new life elsewhere? Do Leah and her daughter Masha manage to return to America? Does her son Aaron, the Hasidic rabbi, succeed in returning to Palestine? Singer does not answer these questions: readers are kept guessing, having to work out possible solutions for themselves.
One final point: unlike his two later novels, The Manor and its sequel The Estate, there is an underlying didacticism in this earlier Singer novel. This didacticism is not overt but implicit: with a few exceptions (Dinah’s husband whose Hasidism – and poverty – has made him almost feeble-minded; Moshe Gabriel’s absentmindedly lighting his cigarette at the flame of the or tamidand later, when he sees his daughter Lottie in Poland after her mother Leah has brought her from America to Poland to see her other children, he half pushes her away because she is a female and he turns away guiltily to make sure that no-one sees him alone with his daughter when she wants to discuss a private matter with him), Singer is at pains to point out the negative consequences of deviating from Judaism and becoming more modern, assimilated and secular. Witness in this regard Asa Heshel’s turning away from the strict but secure Judaism of his grandfather’s home and his gradual divestment, literally and metaphorically, of his Judaic habiliments and upbringing, how though he teaches Hebrew for a living, he turns to philosophy and ultimately embarks on two adulterous relationships. And there is the prime example of Leah’s children, two of whom, Meyerl and Zlatele, are quickly absorbed into American culture on their arrival there while their siblings left behind in Poland, Aaron and Masha, become respectively, a Hasidic rabbi and an apostate. Nor does Masha’s charm, erudition, sophistication and elegance help her when she marries into a viciously antisemitic Polish family.
Perhaps, then, the only certainty at the very end of the novel is Hertz Yanovar’s proclamation in the face of the devastation caused by Hitler on the eve of the Holocaust: “The Messiah will come soon … death is the Messiah. That’s the real truth.”9
Gloria Sandak-Lewin is a poet and writer in Cape Town. She has taught and lectured in English Literature at Herzlia High and the Department of English and the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies, University of Cape Town. She has published a long historical poem, My Father’s House (1985, 1997), a collection of poetry, My Father’s House and Other Poems 1965-1985 (2000), and a collection of short stories, A Separate Life: Tales of a Woman Estranged (2006).
NOTES
- The Family Moskat (1950) … though “written a few years earlier, … is in a way a continuation of the same saga.” (I. B. Singer, “Author’s Note” at the beginning of The Estate(London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 to 1991) – pseudonym Warshofsky: the source is www.kirjasto.sci-fi/ibsinger.htm
- His affinity with Tolstoy has been asserted in a review for the Sunday Telegraph on the inside back cover of The Estate: I came to the same conclusion before reading the review.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Family Moskat. Translated from the Yiddish by A.H. Gross. A Borzoi Book. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p.604.
- I. B. Singer, The Family Moskat, p.606.
- Ibid.,p370.
- Ibid.,p603.
- Ibid.,p607.
- Ibid.,p611
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