SOURCE: Bate, Nancy Berkowitz. “Judaism, Genius, and Gender: Women in the Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer.” In Critical Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Grace Farrell, pp. 209-19. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1996.

In the following essay, Bate considers the representation of women in Singer's stories.

In 1955 when she was 15 years old, Letty Cottin Pogrebin lost her mother to ovarian cancer. She describes sitting shiva:

One night, about twenty people are milling about the house but by Jewish computation there are only nine Jews in our living room. This is because only nine men have shown up for the memorial service. A minyan, the quorum required for Jewish communal prayer, calls for ten men.

“I know Hebrew.” I say, “You can count me, Daddy.”

I meant, I want to count. I meant, don't count me out just because I am a girl.

“You know it's...