*New York City

*New York City. Largest city in the United States and the first destination for most of its European immigrants during the early twentieth century. In perhaps no other city, even Israel’s Tel Aviv, could Isaac Bashevis Singer have so keenly observed post-Holocaust Jewish psychology. As his fictional Polish immigrant Herman Broder moves about New York City, making his living ghostwriting books and lectures for a rich rabbi, he mingles with Jews of several economic strata and varying political opinions and religious practices. In this microcosm of world Jewishness, the effects of the Holocaust may be observed everywhere. Some survivors keep the religious law, while others despise it. Broder’s mistress hates God because of her experiences in the German death camps. Others, like her own mother, love God all the more because of what she has suffered. Broder’s own brain is still stocked with the lore of the Jewish Diaspora and Hebraic learning, now useful to him only because of the types of books he writes.

Perhaps it is only in post-Holocaust New York that a man such as Broder could so easily fall into the predicament he soon faces. After he marries the servant who saved his life in Poland, his first wife, Tamar, whom he had believed lost in the camps, reappears. As if two wives, after the secular law, were not enough, his mistress, Masha, then tricks him into marrying her according to Jewish law.

Singer wrote his novels initially in Yiddish, the language in which he felt most artistically comfortable, though his largest readership was always in English. Nevertheless, even in translation, the Yiddish-tinged New York speech of his characters remains essential to the total effect of his books. Alternately sad and awkwardly funny, these people, whose lives were scrambled in another world, question the efficacy of their Jewishness but cannot cast it off in American assimilation.

*Catskill Mountains

*Catskill Mountains. Resort area in New York State that is a popular vacation spot for Jews; a place where the Jewish heritage and American affluence make an uneasy compromise, and where many Jewish entertainers enjoy their first successes. Broder, too, is able to experience here the few moments of respite from anxiety and alienation that are allowed him, before he returns to the city and its entanglements. Singer sets a brief romantic interlude in the Catskill Mountains, suggesting what might have been possible could more New York Jews have freed themselves from city restraints and their own fears and inhibitions and ventured deeper into the American interior.

*Poland

*Poland. Eastern European country from which many New York Jews emigrated—especially after the Holocaust. In Enemies Poland exists only in the memories of his characters. To many of its characters, the Poland of memory and imagination seems more real than either New York City or the Catskills. Nevertheless, these memories direct the lives of all the novel’s characters. Broder, for example, constantly seeks places to hide, in the unlikely event that Nazis should appear on American streets. The hayloft in Poland where he eluded Nazi agents still haunts his dreams, even as he lies beside Yadwiga, the Polish Gentile servant who hid him there at risk to her own life and who is now his wife in the United States. Broder learned well the lesson of hiding in Poland; in New York, he finally evades his three wives by disappearing.

Masha, who always talks of the German death camps, even during lovemaking, commits suicide. Yadwiga embraces the Judaism for which she yearned even as a peasant girl in Poland. Even after Broder deserts her, she looks forward to the birth of his child. Tamar, who has always loved causes more than she loves people, alone has learned from her Holocaust experiences the uses of adversity. She aids Yadwiga and establishes for herself a new life and career in America.

Although they become involved in ridiculous situations, Singer's characters are realistically and vividly portrayed in Enemies. The people described are plain folk, moderately educated, economically poor, with psychological problems that hinder their adjustments to their environment. The language, as in other Singer works, is simple, poetic, descriptive and colorful.

Like the autobiographical character in Elie Wiesel's Night, Herman is constantly haunted by his Holocaust experiences. However, whereas Wiesel's character is determined to remember and speak out on behalf of the six million victims, Herman chooses to forget.

The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud portrays a Jewish family adjusting to American life. Although a loyal family man and not a Holocaust survivor, Malamud's Morris Bober shares much with Herman: the reluctance to accept Judaism; the struggles for success; and the entrapment within an alien culture.

Singer's enchanting short stories, reminiscent of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Sholem Aleichem, are imaginative folk tales, told with simplicity, and reveal his true literary genius. Using ghosts and supernatural ideas and following the "dybuk" (possession by the devil) of Ansky's Yiddish play The Dybuk, Singer weaves stories that will be passed down from generation to generation.

"Gimpel the Fool," Singer's most famous short story, was originally translated from the Yiddish by Saul Bellow in 1953. Gimpel is the archetype of the fall guy, the humorous, yet pathetic, luckless individual who falls prey to mean tricks played on him by his townspeople. He is so gullible, trusting and sincere that he is beloved as the town fool.

Gimpel, however, is a fool who knows what foolishness is, and while he may be ridiculed and may seem ridiculous even to the reader, he is Singer's symbol of the human condition. Those townspeople who would trick him are the foolish ones, for life is full of deceit and pain, and anyone who believes he has conquered life is more ridiculous than Gimpel. As the pranks on Gimpel become more serious, the reader comes to realize that Gimpel speaks for everyone who must face the absurdity of life.

Critics have debated whether or not Singer's view of life is bleak and hopeless. Certainly, misfortune and tribulation plague the characters in much of his work; yet Singer takes delight in life's trickery. According to Singer, one never knows if one is the magician who controls the trick, or the audience who is fooled by the illusion. For Singer, there can be delight in being fooled; unhappiness does not depend so much on who is the magician, the rabbit, or the audience as it does on man's reluctance to be duped. In the end, everyone is a fool, but that is not a bad thing.

"Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" ("Yentl der Yeshive Bocher") is a story which uses another type of trickery to illustrate the elusiveness of life. Yentl decides that she wants to become a rabbi, which is forbidden by the faith, and so she dresses as a boy and enters into religious training under false pretense. When she falls in love with one of her male classmates, the trick which she has played on her society turns against her, and in a fit of defiance she decides to marry the rabbi's daughter. Her whole plight is, of course, doomed, and her end is as foolish as Gimpel's, although Singer is careful not to pass judgment. She perpetrated deceit not from selfish interests but because of the societal circumstances which prevented her from pursuing life freely. She was caught, as everyone in Singer's world will be caught at their tricks. There may not be any redemptive value in the tricks one plays, or that are played on one, but there can be delight in recognizing when a good trick is played.

Enemies: A Love Story was released as a motion picture in 1989. It is directed by Paul Mazursky, who also appears in the picture, and it stars Ron Silver as Herman Broder, a lustful, directionless man. The other cast members Anjelica Huston, Lena Olin, Margaret Sophie Stein, and Alan King give good performances in a fine motion picture that deftly blends comedy and drama.