The Family Moskat

Rating:
Summary: An exceptionaly powerfula nd moving book
Review: A powerful tale of a Jewish family over several genrations ending with the German army at the gates of warsaw and the destruction of the vibrant Jewish communities in Warsaw close at hand.An in depths description of the life of the Jews in Poland over the last century writen in a highly realistic unsentimental style but with a certain affection on the part of the author. Better than any history textbook.

Rating:
Summary: 100 Years of Anti-Semitism
Review: As strange as it sounds, there is a parallel between The Family Moskat and Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Both start from a semi-mythic past where the family patriarch is larger than life, and then slowly spiral towards an ending in time where historical and psychological decay in the family and in society devolve into a nasty and brutish finale to the family line.

And in both, the overarching movement of history serves to eventually crush the life out of the family, despite secular individual eruptions of creativity, wealth, or love. For Marquez, history is driven by the crushing oppression of poverty and the unjust Latin American social structure. For Singer, history is driven by the crushing oppression of European anti-Semitism.

Believe me, Singer is not the writer that Marquez is--the narrative arc bogs down in parts, and he does not use magical realism to inflate his characters, as Marquez does. Singer's people remain much flatter and closer to life. They are common people, ones we can imagine meeting on the street, perhaps getting pinned in a corner at a party by one, or maybe brushing by them in a store.

But in some ways this makes The Family Moskat even more harrowing. For we know from the beginning that Polish Jewry in the early 1900's was doomed to be destroyed in the Holocaust--we already know the end with a dread certainty. Yet in this book we watch each character struggle for individual freedom, we cheer for them to succeed and rue their human failures, despite the fact that it all has to end in a pogrom or a gas chamber.

Singer shows us the full range of means Jews used to try to deny the chains of anti-Semitism that constrained their lives. There are Chasidim who fervently believe that the Messiah is coming any minute, and other Chasids who dervishly dance the Messiah home. Mystics lose themselves in the Kabbalah, if religious, or in seances, if agnostic. There are those who try to deny reality by living in the fleshly moment of sex and food, and those who live to accumulate wealth. Some run to America, and others to Palestine, and there are even those who convert to Christianity.

Communists, socialists, capitalists, the devout, converts, agnostics, atheists, scholars, debauchers--all have one thing in common; they are Jewish, and so are hated by all non-Jews around them. No matter how they try, they are defined by their birth and circumscribed and twisted by its mark. And eventually, they all will die in a chamber where the gas does not make discriminations between an agnostic Jew, a converted Jew, and a Chasid.

For American Jews, it is easy to forget that anti-Semitism has been a form of oppression as deep and destructive as that of the poor in Latin America. I am certain that Singer did not mean for this when he wrote The Family Moskat in the near aftermath of the Holocaust--it seems more a reverie for a lost world--yet this book is a potent reminder to never forget the dynamic of oppression and hatred that made the Holocaust not only possible, but desired by so many Europeans. It is a reminder that only a generation ago Jews shared the same oppression that others now face, so that perhaps for once someone can help the oppression end short of genocide.

Rating:
Summary: 100 Years of Anti-Semitism
Review: As strange as it sounds, there is a parallel between The Family Moskat and Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Both start from a semi-mythic past where the family patriarch is larger than life, and then slowly spiral towards an ending in time where historical and psychological decay in the family and in society devolve into a nasty and brutish finale to the family line.

And in both, the overarching movement of history serves to eventually crush the life out of the family, despite secular individual eruptions of creativity, wealth, or love. For Marquez, history is driven by the crushing oppression of poverty and the unjust Latin American social structure. For Singer, history is driven by the crushing oppression of European anti-Semitism.

Believe me, Singer is not the writer that Marquez is--the narrative arc bogs down in parts, and he does not use magical realism to inflate his characters, as Marquez does. Singer's people remain much flatter and closer to life. They are common people, ones we can imagine meeting on the street, perhaps getting pinned in a corner at a party by one, or maybe brushing by them in a store.

But in some ways this makes The Family Moskat even more harrowing. For we know from the beginning that Polish Jewry in the early 1900's was doomed to be destroyed in the Holocaust--we already know the end with a dread certainty. Yet in this book we watch each character struggle for individual freedom, we cheer for them to succeed and rue their human failures, despite the fact that it all has to end in a pogrom or a gas chamber.

Singer shows us the full range of means Jews used to try to deny the chains of anti-Semitism that constrained their lives. There are Chasidim who fervently believe that the Messiah is coming any minute, and other Chasids who dervishly dance the Messiah home. Mystics lose themselves in the Kabbalah, if religious, or in seances, if agnostic. There are those who try to deny reality by living in the fleshly moment of sex and food, and those who live to accumulate wealth. Some run to America, and others to Palestine, and there are even those who convert to Christianity.

Communists, socialists, capitalists, the devout, converts, agnostics, atheists, scholars, debauchers--all have one thing in common; they are Jewish, and so are hated by all non-Jews around them. No matter how they try, they are defined by their birth and circumscribed and twisted by its mark. And eventually, they all will die in a chamber where the gas does not make discriminations between an agnostic Jew, a converted Jew, and a Chasid.

For American Jews, it is easy to forget that anti-Semitism has been a form of oppression as deep and destructive as that of the poor in Latin America. I am certain that Singer did not mean for this when he wrote The Family Moskat in the near aftermath of the Holocaust--it seems more a reverie for a lost world--yet this book is a potent reminder to never forget the dynamic of oppression and hatred that made the Holocaust not only possible, but desired by so many Europeans. It is a reminder that only a generation ago Jews shared the same oppression that others now face, so that perhaps for once someone can help the oppression end short of genocide.

Rating:
Summary: One of his best
Review: Back in the 70s I read whatever was available by Singer. This was one of the first, and my favorite. I love long, involved stories with lots of characters. I don't remember much about any of his stories because it's been over 20 years since I read them, but I remember my impressions. I prefer all his stories that take place in Poland over those that are set in US. The textures are different. I found the North American based tales to be somewhat interesting, but the characters were less appealing. I think his feel for the European context was stronger in him, and was conveyed with more warmth than the American contexts.

Rating:
Summary: One of his best
Review: Back in the 70s I read whatever was available by Singer. This was one of the first, and my favorite. I love long, involved stories with lots of characters. I don't remember much about any of his stories because it's been over 20 years since I read them, but I remember my impressions. I prefer all his stories that take place in Poland over those that are set in US. The textures are different. I found the North American based tales to be somewhat interesting, but the characters were less appealing. I think his feel for the European context was stronger in him, and was conveyed with more warmth than the American contexts.

Rating:
Summary: A dark story of Polish Jews at a bad time in history
Review: The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century, a bad time to be a Polish Jew. We know that the Nazis are right around the corner. This is not a story of Nazis, though. It's about the very active but painfully confused lives of Jews caught in between traditionalism and the modern world. Warsaw is as lively as New York's Lower East Side when it was throbbing with the vitality of Jewish immigrants. The main character of this book, Asa, is a young man whose grandfather was a revered rabbi, but who doesn't really believe in anything himself. His personal life is shattered, not only by traditionalism, but by his own modern faults. It's a good book but it's something of a train wreck, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A dark story of Polish Jews at a bad time in history
Review: The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century, a bad time to be a Polish Jew. We know that the Nazis are right around the corner. This is not a story of Nazis, though. It's about the very active but painfully confused lives of Jews caught in between traditionalism and the modern world. Warsaw is as lively as New York's Lower East Side when it was throbbing with the vitality of Jewish immigrants. The main character of this book, Asa, is a young man whose grandfather was a revered rabbi, but who doesn't really believe in anything himself. His personal life is shattered, not only by traditionalism, but by his own modern faults. It's a good book but it's something of a train wreck, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Singer's Finest Novel
Review: This is a warm, multi-generation story about a large Jewish family in Warsaw and in my view Singer's finest novel. The focus is on the human relationships within the family, magnificently and movingly described; but the novel's edge comes from the constant intrusion of grim outside reality, the tormented history of Poland between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the second-world-war Nazi storming of the Warsaw Ghetto. Counterpoint between inner and outer reality, between public and private life, between flesh and spirit, makes this book not just another family saga but a statement about Jewish (and non-Jewish) humanity at large. In that, "The Family Muskat" is characteristic of Singer's work - it is his universality, not his particularity, which makes him one of the most respected writers in modern times.