In the Court of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Abstract

This article examines the family life that the Polish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer stages on In My Father’s Court. From the autobiographical perspective, the author narrates cases brought to his father’s judgment in the Beit Din that ran in Warsaw, and reconstructs the life in this city and Bilgoray, where his family moved during the First World War. By means of the analysis of the past brought up by Singer, we intend to explore the life of the Jewish-Polish community in the early years of the twentieth century and seek for contributions that allow us to understand the context in which it was immersed. Singer judges not only his father, his family, himself and the cases brought to the rabbinical court. Throughout the narrative, Singer establishes his own Beit Din: there, the true object of judgment are the first decades of the twentieth century and the network of philosophical, religious, political and scientific influences that permeated Judaism in Eastern Europe in the period before the Shoah.