"There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do." ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
A celebration of the great treasure "behind the skull," Yiddish novelist and short-story writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904–1991) was born the son of a Hasidic rabbi in Warsaw, Poland, and emigrated to America in 1935.
"Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions," he once said.
An expert on Jewish culture, Singer kept his heritage alive with stories that were first printed in The Jewish Daily Forward. "If I make a mistake about the Jewish law or a street in Warsaw, I get hundreds of letters upbraiding me," Singer explained.
Presented the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, Singer won acclaim for such fiction as The Family Moskat (1950), Gimpel the Fool: And Other Stories (1957), and The Manor (1967).
"Sometimes love is stronger than man's convictions," he believed. His writings captured spiritual truths, folklore, and magical wisdom. He was a passionate advocate for keeping the Yiddish language alive. By the 1970s, he was considered an international expert on language and culture.
"If you keep saying that things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet," said Singer, who like Hemingway, wrote with short, declarative sentences and looked at life with wisdom and compassion for the human spirit. "When you betray someone else, you also betray yourself."
You possess a great treasure inside.