Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Theology, as Disclosed in His Author’s Notes

At the end of the 1983 English translation of his novel The Penitent, Isaac Bashevis Singer appended an author’s note not found in the earlier Yiddish original. The book tells the story of Joseph Shapiro, a Holocaust survivor who eventually becomes disillusioned with his life of unbelief and dissolution, returns to Orthodoxy, and takes up residence in the ḥaredi enclave of Meah Shearim. Examining the book itself in light of this note—unusually detailed in comparison with others in Singer’s oeuvre—and in light of Singer’s other works, David Stromberg teases out a picture of the author’s own theology: