Isaac Bashevis Singer on the Importance of Jewish Law

Thanks in part to the bizarre and unwholesome sexual entanglements in which he places his characters, Isaac Bashevis Singer is often perceived as an anti-religious writer. Even his use of kabbalistic motifs seems to bespeak an attachment to heterodoxy. Yet, although he was anything but pious in his adult life, this view of Singer is somewhat narrowminded. The work that makes this clearest is his collection of autobiographical short stories, In My Father’s Courthouse. Mira Balberg examines the essay of the same title that preceded this work, which describes