The great Jewish writer (an emigre to the USA and Manhattan’s Upper West Side), Isaac Baashevis Singer (1902-1991), wrote in Yiddish exclusively. He said: “Yiddish contains vitamins that other languages don’t have.” His work–short stories, serialized novels, novellas–appeared in the Yiddish language Jewish Daily Forward (“Forvertz”) newspaper. “I have never stopped writing for The Forward. It is my laboratory.” Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.” His acceptance speech before the Nobel audience was in Yiddish. This was the first (and probably last) Yiddish speech before that body. Singer was skeptical of institutional religion and dogma but considered himself a religious man. “When I’m in trouble, I pray. Since I’m always in trouble, I pray a lot.” For the last 35 years of his life, Singer was a vegetarian. He felt there could be no peace on earth if humans slaughtered and ate innocent animals. “I am not a vegetarian for my health, it is for the health of the chickens.”
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