SUMMARY: This offering is a Signed Limited Edition of The Golem sigend by author and illustrator.Exceptionally rare in this edition

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Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991 ). Singer was born Icek-Hersz Zynger in Radzymin, near Warsaw in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a Hasidic rabbi and his mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter of a rabbi. Singer later used her name in his pen name "Bashevis" (son of Bathsheba). Singer made his debut with Satan in Goray which was first published in Poland in 1932. It was written in the style imitative of medieval Yiddish chronicle and tells the story of the events surrounding the 17th Century false messiah Shabbatai Zvi.

To flee from anti-Semitism Singer emigrated to New York City, where he started writing as a journalist and columnist for The Forward, a Jewish newspaper. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation began to grow among the many Yiddish-speaking immigrants. After World War II and the near destruction of the Yiddish-speaking peoples, Yiddish seemed a dead language. Though Singer had moved to the United States, he believed in the power of his native language and knew that there was still a large audience that longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in Encounter (Feb 1979) he claimed that although the Jews of Poland had died, "something - call it spirit or whatever - is still somewhere in the universe." This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it." Singer's work is undoubtedly much indebted to the great writers of Yiddish tradition such as Sholom Aleichem, but is much more modern in approach and has been shaped by his experience in America. His themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are established in modern and ironic way. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.

This offering is the earliest English language edition of The Golem published in 1982 by Farrar Strauss Giroux, New York. It is a First Limited Edition, First printing and has a beautiful slip case and the book is signed both by Singer, Isaac B. Singer and the illustrator Uri Shulevitz. The book and slip case are in as new condition.This story was first published in Yiddish in 1969, and was translated into English by the author in 1982 under the title The Golem. A golem is a magical creature out of Jewish mythology. He's made of clay, and imbued with life through Cabbalistic magic and/or divine intervention to assist the Jewish people in a time of need. This version of the golem myth is presented as a children's story, although it is a blood-and-guts versions of the popular fairy tales. The persecution of the Jews is told bluntly, and the absurdity of the false accusations and sham trials is made obvious to all. But persecution is only one of the many themes here. All the best children's literature is the stuff that adults won't tire of easily. The Golem is no exception. Read it for yourself first and decide if it's suitable bed-time reading for the little ones, or if it would just involve too many parenthetical explanations on your part. In any case, you won't be sorry you read it.

The illustrations in this book are magnificient-really works of art.here is an example of one.

Singer published 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles, but he is best known as a writer of short-stories which have appeared in over a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short-stories in English Gimpel, the Fool, was published in 1957. The title story was translated by Saul Bellow and published in 1952 in Partisan Review. Stories published in Daily Forward were later collected among others such as My Father's Court(1966). Later collections include A Crown of Feathers (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as, The Spinoza of Market Street (1961), or, A Friend of Kafka (1970). The world of his stories is the world and life of East European Jewry, such as it was lived in cities and villages, in poverty and persecution, and imbued with sincere piety and rites combined with blind faith and superstition. It appears to include everything - pleasure and suffering, coarseness and subtlety. We find obtrusive carnality, spicy, colorful, fragrant or smelly, lewd or violent. But there is also room for sagacity, worldly wisdom and humor.Throughout the 1960s Singer continued to write on questions of personal morality. One of his most famous novels (due to a popular movie remake) was Enemies, a Love Story in which a Holocaust survivor deals with his own desires, complex family relationships, and the loss of faith.

After being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978, Singer gained a monumental status among writers throughout the world, and his reputation with non-Jewish audiences is now higher than that of any other Yiddish writer.

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