(Singer Centennial, 2004) Singer's family was quite poor, despite its religiously and socially prominent status. He later said that his early life was a constant education in the rough texture of humanity, as well as the struggle of common Jews. Gimpel, for instance, is "a gullible man who responds to a lifetime of betrayal, heckling, and deception with childlike acceptance and complete faith." "Though aware of his own suffering," Gimpel "is never cynical or resentful. No matter what mishap may befall him, "he retains a steadfast belief in human goodness. He accepts life as it unfolds, with all its paradoxes, "even enduring the constant and flagrant infidelities" of his wife. "Her deathbed confession that none of her children were fathered by him does not alter his love for the children. Gimpel is able to resist the Devil's temptations to take revenge against his deceivers only after Elka's ghost materializes, urging him to continue in the path of righteousness. After his wife dies, Gimpel leaves his family and wanders from village to village as a storyteller. Years later, he waits for death, the one experience by which even he will not be fooled." (Britannica.com, 2004)

The fullness of such the social world of Gimpel is manifest not only in Singer's "Gimpel the Fool," but all of Singer's tales. These tales present their protagonists in "a very Jewish but also a very human world," that appear to include everything from "pleasure" to "suffering" and "coarseness" to "subtlety." A reader may find "obtrusive carnality" and "spicy, colorful, fragrant," refinement, and "smelly, lewd or violent," scenes, are paired with the "sagacity," of the rabbinic tradition and the "worldly wisdom and shrewd speculation," of the upper classes of Jewish society. Thus, magical aspects of Singer's tales does not mean that a sense of realism and the texture of verisimilitude is eschewed by Singer, merely that Singer accepted the fantastic as well as the more obviously realistic as part of Jewish life. (Nobelprize.org, 2004)

Singer's realistic style, if not his realistic topics of choice may be traced to his stylistic beginnings as an author. Singer began his writing...

Singer, in addition to the Talmud, Kabala and the Torah, read many apostate and non-Jewish authors, including the fatalistic and fantastic Spinoza, Gogol and Dostoievsky, He was also influenced by his elder brother, "who was already an author and who contributed to the younger brother's spiritual liberation and contact with the new currents of seething political, social and cultural upheaval." If Singer's works have a "range extends from the saintly to the demoniacal, from quiet contemplation and sublimity, to ruthless obsession and infernal confusion or destruction," it is because his own reading and life as a writer was similarly broad, rather than narrow. (Nobleprize.org, 2004)
Most of Singer's life was spent as an expatriate. This might be why so many of the protagonists of his tales, such as Gimpel, are outsiders. Singer was an outsider from Polish gentile society as a Jew, an outsider from mainstream Jewish society in Poland as a Hasid, and lastly as a foreign-born Jewish man in America. His first stores "appeared in 1935 when the Nazi catastrophe was threatening and just before the author emigrated to the U.S.A., where he has lived and worked ever since." (Nobelprize.org)

Singer has since passed away, into the strange eternity that Gimpel looked forward to, a place where he could not be fooled. But his legacy remains; his unique blend of fantasy, fact, and faith, and his stories exist as proof that no author need chose between religion and realism in rendering scenes of Jewish life, or simply human life in general.

Works Cited

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Biography" Nobel Prize.org. 4 Oct. 2004. http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1978/singer-bio.html

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Life and Works." Singer Centennial. 2000. 4 Oct. 2004. http://www.ibsinger100.org/life/1/

Saltzman, Arthur M. "Singer, Isaac Bashevis." World Book Online Reference Center. 2004. World Book, Inc. 4 Oct. 2004. http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wb/Article?id=ar511638.

Britannica.com, 1997. 4 Oct. 2004. http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/733_44.html