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Title: Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer ISBN: 0-374-52479-3 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Literature as Anthropology
Comment: When times are desperate as they have been in many eras and many places, people tend to resort to desperate measures. They cast their lot with prophets, dreamers, and seers who foretell a bright future--the coming of the millenium, it is often called----when all problems shall be solved, the rough made plain, the poor made rich, and sick shall be healed. Movements develop. They may die away in time or they may thrive and create great civilizations. Western civilization, after all, is based on one such movement. We generally refer to these movements as "cults", unless of course they are successful. In many, but not all, millenial movements, people anticipate the immanent arrival of the New Age so strongly that they throw away their possessions and engage in dissolute behavior: singing, dancing, drinking, engaging in previously-forbidden sex, and so on. Sometimes the "pure" remove themselves to isolated spots to await the end of the world or the Great Change, in extreme cases, they may even commit suicide. Anthropologists have studied many such groups or religions; others are found in history books or newspapers. Our times are not devoid of such groups: remember Jonestown, remember the Branch Davidians, remember that group that committed suicide in California. China (the Taiping), Brazil (Antonio Conselheiro),, Papua New Guinea (the cargo cults), Africa (many studies), Burma, Europe---the list is nearly endless. The Jews have not been immune either. In the 1660s the famous "false Messiah" arose in Turkey, claiming to be ready to lead the Jews to Judgement Day and a new era. Throughout eastern Europe hope sprang up, especially in the Polish-Ukrainian regions devasted by the murderous Bogdan Chmielnitski not long before.
Written as a novel, with lively, colorful characters, Singer describes perfectly the course of such a millenial movement in Goray, an isolated Polish village. Whether you are interested in literature or anthropology, this is a description you cannot afford to miss. We follow the rise and fall of a local cult leader, a prophetess, and the feverish hopes of the Jews, longing for deliverance from "singing King Alpha's song in a strange land". Amidst strange marriages, the breaking of all the strict laws of kashrut, and the wild visions of prophecy, Goray's hopes soar and crash. If you think that the rise of post-Holocaust, post-pogrom Israel is just politics and has nothing to do with any sort of millenarianism, then you should read this wonderful book and reconsider. Powerful language, dark, dreadful images full of demons and damnation only possible from a master like Singer show the strength of the ancient dream of Israel. The tragedy is, of course, that in modern times the dream was realized at somebody else's expense. Reading Abdelrahman Munif's "Cities of Salt", in conjunction with Singer's book would not be a bad idea. It illustrates the world on which such dreams impacted. SATAN IN GORAY is a wonderful book of literature, anthropology, and history from which great understanding may flow. The world needs this understanding.
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing First Novel - Prophetic and Fabulistic
Comment: Consider that I.B. Singer wrote Satan in Goray at the age of 26 or so, and the impressiveness of this work becomes all the more clear. Few people of that age, or any age could evoke an historical era with such force or create a fractured narrative of such power. The world of religious conflict, superstition, and messianiac hysteria is Singer's main interest, subjects he would pursue for the rest of his life. Satan in Goray is a strong beginning, a prophetic book (written in the early 1930's) of a trapped people on the edge of a disaster.
The book takes place as the Jews of Gory attempt to recover from the Chelmelnicki massacres of the 1640's (the worst disaster for the Jews between the Crusades and the Holocaust). The Jews of Poland believe that, as Christian would say, the End Times are here, and expect the messiah to arrive. Shabbati Shevi appears on the scene, claiming to be the messiah. Many Jews fall under his sway, but the Rabbi of Goray resists and this further wracks the town. As these political and social disasters are played out, a young orphan, Rechele, who is insane, becomes the center of interest of the town, as she is unmarried. When a holy man, Itche Mates, arrives in Goray, he marries the unfortuate Rechele, who proceeds to be posessed by Satan and do things that make Linda Blair in the Excorsist look amateur.
The novel itself has some problems; it's birth as a serial leaves it episodic. One has the sense of threads stopping and starting without reason, and there really is not what could be called a plot. However, Singer's rich language, his pinpoint descriptions of people, places, and religious factions are stunning. Reading his work is an education.
Satan in Goray is a look into the hearts of Polish Jews right before World War II. The sense of helpless claustrophobia is appalling, the whiff of death overwhelming here. Satan was not just in Goray, and Singer knew it.
Rating: 2
Summary: FANTASY
Comment: This novel is based on the historical occurrence of the appearance of the false messiah Sabbath Zevi and the mass following he generated .While the bare facts of the delusion may be true , I believe that the fleshing out of the characters, their thoughts and behaviour are a misrepresentation .
'Satan in Goray' is set in the mid Seventeenth Century , and yet strongly reflects the Twentieth , especially drawing on I.B. Singer's life and milieu .
It would be useful to read his autobiographical 'Love in Exile' together with the novel
to see that Isaac Bashevis Singer had an axe to grind .
Singer's parents were pious , learned Jews , and young Isaac defected from the
essence of his forbears' religion , as did many of his peers , while retaining
the peripheral cultural artifacts and images which preoccupied his writings.
This loss of faith prejudiced him and thus in 'Satan in Goray' he depicts his
ancestors as superstitious , foolish to the degree of lunacy , cruel and violent , filthy and uncouth, as well as emotionally and sexually out of control . The wisdom , kindness and beauty of his heritage are not shown in the novel which is a caricature of the worst character traits in man .I refuse to believe the people of the shtetl were anything like that ! The few wise scholars in the book are just mentioned as such but do not flourish nor triumph .They appear as absolutely impotent and irrelevant .
In the battle between good and evil , the evil is not defeated , it just collapses .The sect self destructs when Shabbatai converts to Islam .
Singer plugs his vegetarianism in a bloody depiction of ritual slaughter as a filthy orgy of violence . He depicts Jewish parenting as ruthlessly cruel beyond plain child abuse . Rechele's upbringing is just unbelievably nightmarishly cruel ! Jewish parenting is not like that !
Some may take pride in the award of a Nobel prize to Singer , but perhaps the Nobel
committee was being ideological, by rewarding and promoting the denigration of Jewry as well as the rejection of core Jewish values .
The novel is definitely not realistic fiction but grotesque fantasy and I suppose that , if
it is written as a work of art in that genre of horror fiction then as a work of art , whatever art is , it might be acceptable to some. The Shabbetai Tzvi phenomenon in the novel may also be read as metaphor for modern "messianic" movements e.g. Bolshevism or Stalinism which were part of Singer's milieu as described in his autobiography , and these certainly did take hold in a violent excessive fashion .
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Title: Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories by Sholem Aleichem, Hillel Halkin ISBN: 0805210695 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer by Isaac Bashevis Singer ISBN: 0374517886 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 September, 1983 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity by Primo Levi, Stuart Woolf ISBN: 0684826801 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cecil Hemly, Cecil Hemley ISBN: 0374506809 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 October, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Enemies: A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Aliza Shevrin, Elizabeth Shub ISBN: 0374515220 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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