79. The Collected Stories, 83.
80. Intended or not, the “cracked eggs” bring to mind Freud’s use of the egg as a metaphor for the fragility of the human psyche. To this point, Fischelson’s mental breakdown seems largely a result of external stresses. The link between Black Dobbe and “cracked eggs” speaks to the pent-up eros in Fischelson, and foreshadows its eventual bursting out of his ego’s overdelicate shell in the lovemaking at story’s end. See Freud, The Ego and the Id (New York, 1923), 24. I thank my colleague Max Ticktin for this insight.
81. I. B. Singer, “The Destruction of Kreshev,” in The Collected Stories, 94.
82. Morris Golden notes that “the wedding is the pervasive Singer symbol for the attempted miracle,” the site of supernatural intervention that might lead either to good or to bad. See Golden, “Dr. Fischelson’s Miracle: Duality and Vision in Singer’s Fiction,” 29.
83. The Collected Stories, 92–93. In the Yiddish original of the story, the unforgettable “Divine Spinoza” is simply “Borukh Shpinozah,” which means, literally, “Blessed Spinoza,” but is also, of course, Spinoza’s name.
84. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics (New Haven, 2003), 166–67.
85. I. B. Singer, “Isaac Bashevis Singer: An Interview,” by Cyrena Pondrom, 93.
86. Ibid., 69.
87. I. B. Singer published two articles about Spinoza and his philosophy in Der Forverts in the 1940s that coincided with the run of The Family Moskat. On these occasions, the reader would encounter the latest installment of the novel, under the name Isaac Bashevis, on the top half of the page, while the bottom half contained Singer’s expository texts on the philosopher, under the pseudonym Isaac Varshavsky.
88. I. B. Singer, The Family Moskat, trans. A. H. Gross (New York, 1950), 20.
89. Ibid., 26–27.
90. On the habitual inertia and resignation to fate of male protagonists in Singer’s fiction, see Dan Miron, “Passivity and Narration: The Spell of Bashevis Singer,” Critical Essays on Bashevis Singer, ed. Grace Farrell (New York, 1996), 149–64.
91. Yitshok Bashevis, Di familye Mushkat, vol. 1 (New York, 1950), 83.
92. The Family Moskat, 237.
93. Ibid., 238.
94. Ibid., 262.
95. Ibid., 286–87.
96. Ibid., 259–60.
97. Ibid., 359.
98. Ibid., 398.
99. Ibid., 493–97.
100. Ibid., 237.
101. Ibid., 558.
102. Ibid., 559.
103. Di familye Mushkat, vol. 2, 759. The English translation is by Joseph C. Landis, in Yiddish 6, nos. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 1985): 105–16, 115.
104. Di familye Muskhat, vol. 2, 760; Landis, 116.
105. Thus argues Jospeh Landis in an editorial note to his own translation of the last chapter. See Landis, 105.
106. For this view, see Irving Saposnik, “Translating The Family Moskat: The Metamorphosis of a Novel,” Yiddish 1, no. 2 (1973): 26–37.
107. Di familye Mushkat, 749–50; Landis, 105–106.
108. Di familye Mushkat, 757; Landis, 113.
109. Di familye Mushkat, 758; Landis, 114.
110. See, for example, the novels Shosha (New York, 1978), The Certificate (New York, 1992), Meshugah (New York, 1994), and Shadows on the Hudson (New York, 1998), as well as the short stories “Her Son,” in A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (New York, 1973), “A Tutor in the Village,” in Passions and Other Stories (New York, 1975), and “The Impresario,” in The Death of Methuselah and Other Stories (New York, 1988)
111. What part Singer himself had in the decision to delete chapter 65 from the English translation is unclear. On the one hand, Alfred Knopf conditioned his offer to publish The Family Moskat on Singer’s making extensive cuts to the translated manuscript, and the letters between them indicate that Singer was initially resistant to Knopf’s demands. On the other hand, Singer would become famous (some might say notorious) for the active role he took in tailoring the English translations of his work to the tastes of an American audience, and in an interview from 1963 he boasted of having “worked together with the translators of The Family Moskat.” Saposnik, in any event, is inclined to believe that Singer agreed with the excision of the final chapter. See Paul Kresh, Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Magician of West 86th Street (New York, 1979), 182–84; Grace Farrell, ed., Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations (Jackson, MS, 1992), 16; Saposnik, “Translating The Family Moskat.”
Epilogue: Spinoza Redivivus in the Twenty-First Century
1. Irving Howe, “The End of Jewish Secularism” (New York, 1995), 15. The master bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) is said (perhaps aprocryphally) to have once quipped that “the task of Jewish studies is to provide the remnants of Judaism with a decent burial.”
2. See Michael Stanislawski, “The Crisis of Jewish Secularism,” in Creating the Jewish Future, eds. Michael Brown and Bernard Lightman (Walnut Creek, CA, 1999), 133.
3. This “tripartite description of Israel’s culture conflict” is indebted to the work of the late Charles Liebman, one of the most astute observers of the complex and shifting relationship between the secular and the sacred in Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel. See his “Reconceptualizing the Culture Conflict among Israeli Jews,” in Israel Studies 2, no. 2 (1997): 172–89.
4. Tom Segev, Elvis in Jerusalem, trans. Haim Watzman (New York, 2002).
5. Jonathan Sarna, “The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Secular Judaism,” in Contemplate 4 (2007): 4–13.
6. The reference is to Egon Mayer and Barry Kosmin, American Jewish Identity Survey: AJIS Report: An Exploration in the Demography and Outlook of a People (New York, 2002).
7. On the controversy within the field of Jewish studies over the academic grants made by the Posen Foundation, see Eric Herschtal, “Jewish Studies Sans Religion?,” in Jewish Week, February 22, 2011. For a list of current grantees and approved syllabi related to the study of secular Jewish culture, see http://www.posenfoundation.com/academicprograms/grantshighereducation.html.
8. See Lior Dattel, “Posen Foundation Hit by Madoff Fraud,” Haaretz, January 8, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/posen-foundation-hit-by-madoff-fraud-1.267692.
9. Yirmiyahu Yovel and David Shaham, eds., Zeman Yehudi hadash: Tarbut Yehudit be-‘idan hiloni: mabat entsiklopedi, 5 volumes (Jerusalem, 2007).
10. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses, 10.
11. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Shpinozah ve-kofrim ’aherim (Tel Aviv, 1988).
12. Badly damaged by the Madoff fraud, the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute has survived, but only by being absorbed—at least for the present—by the Jerusalem Van Leer Foundation. It has continued to organize lectures and conferences on Spinoza’s thought, however. My thanks to Professor Yovel for furnishing me with this information.
13. Leslie Susser, “Spinoza and the Religion of Reason,” Jerusalem Post, March 9, 1989.
14. Daniel Williams, “Jewishness Debate: Once Again, Spinoza Stirs a Furor,” LA Times, February 10, 1989.
15. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1: The Marrano of Reason, ix.
16. Williams, “Jewishness Debate.” The professor in question was Dr. Maurice Kriegel, then of the University of Haifa, who lit into Spinoza and the modern Jewish effort to reclaim him at one of the symposia held in the wake of Yovel’s book. See Ya’acov Friedler, “Unexpected Attack on Spinoza at Symposium,” Jerusalem Post, January 5, 1989.
17. Yovel used this phrase in Flora Lewis, “Foreign Affairs; Israel and Relevance,” New York Times, December 27, 1989.
18. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1, The Marrano of Reason, x.
19. Ibid., 174, 177.
20. Ibid., 201.
21. Ibid., 199.
22. Ibid., 190–93.
23. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, 200.
24. Ibid., 201.
25. See, for example, H
eidi M. Ravven, “Spinoza’s Rupture with Tradition—His Hints of a Jewish Modernity,” in Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, 187–223; Willi Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity.
26. Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, 2006).
27. The two plays are Yehoshua Sobol, Solo (Tel Aviv, 1991) and David Ives, New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656 (New York, 2009); the Israeli film is Igal Bursztyn, “’Osher le-lo gevul, ’o hayav ve-harpatke’otav shel Baruch Shpinozah ‘al pi divuhe ha-shekhenim [Everlasting Joy: Or the Life and Adventures of Baruch Spinoza as Told by His Vigilant Neighbors] (1997).
28. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics; Benedictus de Spinoza, Etikah, trans. and ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Tel Aviv, 2003).
29. Yovel, “Hakdamah (Introduction),” in Spinoza, Etikah, 9. For a powerful critique of Yovel’s “presentist” agenda in translating Spinoza into an accessible Hebrew—and its connection to his alleged attempt to appropriate the Amsterdam philosopher for secular Zionism more generally—see Oded Schechter, “Ha-kod ha-metafisi-ontologi: ha-muhlat shel Auschwitz ve-Shpinozah: masah filosofit,” in Mi-ta‘am 1 (2005): 97–120.
30. Richard H. Popkin, “Notes from Underground,” The New Republic 202, no. 21 (21 May 1990): 41.
31. Popkin, “Spinoza’s Excommunication,” in Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, 275.
32. Steven Nadler, “Spinoza and the Origins of Jewish Secularism,” in Religion or Ethnicity? Jewish Identities in Evolution, 62.
33. Allan Nadler, “Romancing Spinoza,” Commentary 122, no. 5 (December 2006): 30.
34. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK, 1988), 3.
35. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses, 10.
36. Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, 66.
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