SOURCE: Epstein, Joseph. “Our Debt to I. B. Singer.” Commentary 92, no. 5 (November 1991): 31-37.

In the following essay, Epstein commends the stories of Singer for helping many American Jews to understand better their cultural history.

I met the late Isaac Bashevis Singer only once, briefly but unforgettably, in 1963. It was in Manhattan, at the apartment of one of his early translators. He was then fifty-nine, no kid, but only just coming into his own in a serious way as a writer now frequently published in English. I had read everything of his I could find. I admired him without qualification—thought him the possessor of a powerful artistic talent, a man touched by magic and thus greatly blessed and to be revered. Captivating on the page, he was not disappointing in person.

Twelve or fourteen people were in the apartment that evening—literary intellectuals, academics, editors. Singer did most...