A Study Guide for Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Spinoza of Market Street"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Spinoza of Market Street," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535833950

Book preview

The Spinoza of Market Street

Isaac Bashevis Singer

1961

Introduction

Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story The Spinoza of Market Street was first published in Esquire magazine in 1961, later anthologized in The Spinoza of Market Street, Singer’s second collection of short stories. Irving Malin describes the title story as clearly one of Singer’s best, while Paul Kresh observed that this volume, which inspired Irving Howe to declare Singer a genius, marked another step in Isaac’s acceptance as one of the great short-story writers of our time.

The story is set in the Jewish shtetl(a small community of Eastern European Jews) of Warsaw, Poland, against the backdrop of the events leading to the beginning of World War I in August, 1914. It concerns Dr. Fischelson, a scholar of philosophy who has devoted his life to the study of Benedict de Spinoza’s masterwork, Ethics.Because of his skeptical ideas regarding religion, derived from Spinoza, Dr. Fischelson has been fired from his job at the synagogue library and alienated from the Jewish community due to their perception that he is a heretic. When Dr. Fischelson falls ill, Black Dobbe, his old maid neighbor, nurses him back to health, and the two are soon married in the synagogue. On their wedding night, a miracle occurs, by which the old man and the homely woman engage in a surprisingly passionate consummation of their marriage. Dr. Fischelson awakens in the night to gaze up at the stars and murmur, "Divine Spinoza, forgive me. I have become a