The Brothers Ashkenazi

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The story of the two brothers helps only to outline the historical time: when the first Germans started to arrive in Poland bringing work, the huge Jewish community that was at first very orthodox but slowly started to change while changing the period. So, from one side we have the orthodox Jews, bound to customs and tradition, and the younger Jews that started to be more openminded.

Israel Joshua Singer has been the subject of numerous English scholarly articles. In 2006, Delphine Bechtel offered a comparative view of Singer’s representation of the Jews of Łódź in The Brothers Ashkenazi. Ho visto, raccontato tramite la storia, i pogrom e i semi dell’odio razziale contro il popolo ebreo, l’odio, l’arroganza e la violenza dei potenti a scapito dei più deboli. The dilemmas faced by I.B. Singer's characters - who are often torn between faith and secularism, superstition and progress, Europe and the US - are all too clear but, in a way, bred in their bones not influenced by the times and the society they live in.I suoi calcoli erano stati abbastanza logici, ma a che cosa serve la logica in un mondo che ha perduto la testa? In mezzo ai mentecatti il sano di mente è uno scemo." The elder Singer dealt less with religion and traditions and more with a modern and sophisticated Jewish society caught at the zenith of its social, political and economical power before a resurgence in Russian pogroms and the Nazis persecution wiped it out from Europe. The brothers Ashkenazi" is the story of two twin brothers and of the Jewish community where they were born, in the Polish city of Lodz at the end of 19th century. The plot follows a huge cast of characters, but mainly the fiercely intelligent Simca Meier (later called Max), who in his greed and ruthlessness could very well have been painted as "the bad guy" in a lesser novel, while in the hands of Israel Singer he becomes a fully-fleshed and extremely real human being, with darkness and light, who tries to live his life as best as he can despite his weaknesses and addictions. At the contrary, Israel Joshua Singer (formerly a journalist) was very aware of the importance of politics and economics - intertwined with history and religion - in shaping the mentality of his characters. mi sento di consigliare, a questo punto, un film di Andzej Wajda, La terra della grande promessa, basato sul romanzo Ziemia obiecana di Władysław Reymont, che racconta di tre personaggi (un ebreo, un polacco e un tedesco, appunto) che cercano di mettere su una fabbrica nella Łódź ottocentesca

Jewish philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein used the occasion of the novel’s reissue to offer a more extensive meditation on the different political, religious, and cultural sensibilities embedded in the brothers’ fictions. She presents I.J. Singer as a “harshly unsentimental realis[t]” in contrast to Isaac Bashevis Singer, the nostalgic idealist, even suggesting that I.J.’s pessimism was the driving force behind his choice to immigrate to America (although she frames I.J.’s youthful political choices as naïve and idealistic). She also argues that The Brothers Ashkenazi’s thematic treatment of fraternal rivalry makes it ironic for scholars to compare the two brothers’ work. Questo sarebbe il titolo che darei alla fine a quest’opera che non avrei mai immaginato mi riuscisse a prendere e a far riflettere tanto. But still, there's something missing in what Isaac Bashevis left us: insight. Which stands for the capacity to pinpoint and - to some extent - foresee some of the causes leading to the effects he wrote about. I didn't know anything about the eldest Singer before reading the following line at the opening of 'The Family Moskat', my favourite novel by I.B. Singer:

Thanks to his skills (and the grit coming from being born with clear physical disadvantages, especially when compared to his tall, strong and handsome twin brother) , Max manages to go very far as he lives through industrialization, socialism, and all the turmoil of the turn of the century. Altra similitudine: Simcha Meyer Ashkenazi è la fotocopia di Beppino Scacerni detto Coniglio Mannaro. Anzi, è possibile che Bacchelli, per creare il suo personaggio, si sia almeno in parte ispirato da qui. In 1983, Joseph Mlotek gave the lecture, “ Fun di brider zinger biz itzik manger” (“From the Brothers Singer to Itzik Manger”) at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal. I temi affrontati dal romanzo sono veramente molteplici: ho imparato cose della cultura ebraica chassidica che mi erano assolutamente sconosciute, ad esempio mi ha colpito un sacco il fatto che le donne appena maritate dovessero radersi il capo e portare una parrucca. In quell'immenso calderone di popoli, razze, esaltazioni, sofferenze, grandi storie che è stata l'Europa Orientale; in quella lunghissima striscia di territorio pianeggiante che corre per migliaia di chilometri tra il mar Baltico, il mar Nero ed i Carpazi, la Polonia del sud ha giocato suo malgrado sicuramente un ruolo decisivo: al punto che non è esagerato dire che in Galizia ed in Podelia, in Volinia e nel Voivodato di Lodz sia stata scritta la storia dell' Europa industriale quasi come in Inghilterra od in Francia.