Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; 1903[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][excessive citations] – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator.

The often-quoted birth date, July 14, 1904, was made up by the author in his youth, possibly to make himself younger to avoid the draft.

There his father served as a rabbi, and was called on to be a judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader in the Jewish community.

[32] The move separated the author from his common-law first wife Runia Pontsch and son Israel Zamir (1929–2014); they emigrated to Moscow and then Palestine.

Singer settled in New York City, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist for The Jewish Daily Forward (פֿאָרװערטס), a Yiddish-language newspaper.

Singer's first published story "Oyf der elter" ("In Old Age", 1925) won the literary competition of the Literarishe Bleter, where he worked as a proofreader.

Singer published his first novel, Satan in Goray, in installments in the literary magazine Globus, which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin in 1935.

His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of Yom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945).

He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue.

Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish.

In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.

Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about "Max Spitzkopf" and his assistant "Fuchs".

[44] He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: "I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays...

His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions,[46] were influenced by Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant.

[citation needed] From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces.

[49] Singer's themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness.

[citation needed] An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj.

[50] The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, include Raphael Soyer, Maurice Sendak, Larry Rivers, and Irene Lieblich.

Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children, A Tale of Three Wishes and The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City.

As their memories of shtetl life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts.

Alan Arkin starred as Yasha, the principal character in the film version of The Magician of Lublin (1979), which also featured Shelley Winters, Louise Fletcher, Valerie Perrine and Lou Jacobi.

This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.

Although Singer believed in a God, as in traditional Judaism, he stopped attending Jewish religious services of any kind, even on the High Holy Days.

He struggled throughout his life with the feeling that a kind and compassionate God would never support the great suffering he saw around him, especially the Holocaust deaths of so many of the Polish Jews from his childhood.

After he had achieved success as a writer in New York, Singer and his wife began spending time during the winters in Miami with its Jewish community, many of them New Yorkers.

He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: "How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?"

Strictly based on Jewish family doctrine rather than politics and socialism, his former partner Runya Pontsch and his son Israel Zamir emigrated to Palestine in 1938, in order to live a typical kibbutz life there.

Interestingly enough, he notes the cultural tensions between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish people during the boat trip from Naples to Haifa and during his stay in the new nation.

With the description of Jewish immigration camps in the new land, he foresaw the difficulties and socio-economic tensions in Israel, and hence turned back to his critical views of Zionism.

[73] Note: Publication dates refer to English editions, not the Yiddish originals, which often predate the versions in translation by 10 to 20 years.