Another interesting NYT Jewish tale, this time on the great Isaac Bashevis Singer.
In April, novelist Sigrid Nunez, in an essay about unexpected bonds between strangers in the Times’ style magazine, referred to Singer as a “Polish-American author.” Which seems wilfully obtuse, considering he wrote in Yiddish and his fictional world revolves entirely around Jewish themes and characters from European Jewry. And becomes deeply offensive when you consider what became of that world of the Polish Jews - often with the active connivance of the Poles themselves.
The various reactions featured words like “yikes,” “obscene,” “disgusting,” aghast” and “shanda.”
“Shame on @NYTIMES for erasing his identity and heritage,” one Twitter user wrote.
It may be true that the Nobel laureate was born and raised in Poland, but Singer is, in fact, best described as a Jewish author, and any labeling that elevates the former while ignoring the latter will strike many Jews as tone-deaf at best. This sensitivity is understandable given that Singer’s hyphenated identities are the result of his immigration to the United States only a few years before the near annihilation of Polish Jewry.
In this case the fault may lie not so much with the NYT's shameful history with the Jews but with Wikipedia, where Singer at the time was indeed referred to as Polish-American.
Now the Isaac Bashevis Singer Wikipedia entry states that the great man was a "Polish-born Jewish-American". But that only happened after a long struggle between those Jews determined to set the record straight, and a young Polish student who, while claiming to be merely following Wikipedia protocol, seems to have been motivated more by the kind of regressive Polish nationalism which has been on the rise recently, and seeks to downplay or erase any Polish involvement in the Holocaust.
A tale for our times, then. The good guys won in the end, though.
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