In My Father's Court

In My Father's Court is Isaac Bashevis Singer's memoir of growing up as a Hasidic rabbi's son in pre-World War I Warsaw. As a rabbi, his father functions as both a spiritual and religious adviser (determining, for example, whether a particular food is kosher), but also a legal arbiter (determining monetary damages and performing marriages and divorces). His household, then, is at the center of their particular community. In My Father's Court initially reads as a series of short stories. Although the author is clearly gaining a year here and there, the stories do not feel connected for most of the book. In the later chapters, war breaks out and then, his family's lives, like virtually every other European family, is first shaped and then dominated by the war around them. As with other central European countries, access to various Polish cities was possible - or not - depending on which army controlled a particular territory at any given time. When conditions for obtaining a visa and traveling to his mother's hometown at last permit, he, his younger brother, and mother leave their father/husband in Warsaw and spent the last year of the war in Bilgoray, one of the many shtetls dotting the Central European countryside.

In My Father's Court is a window back to a world that no longer exists. It is in turns deeply amusing (as when a visitor bemoans the hustle and bustle of life in 1910-era Warsaw, with everyone rushing to and fro) and also forebodingly sad (for example, the numerous times that, as a character's anecdote finishes, the readers learns that this particular man/woman/boy/girl will not survive the Holocaust). In the closing pages, speaking of the larger Jewish community, Isaac's older brother asks their mother, "How long do you think Europe will stand for this clump of Asia in its midst?" The answer, of course, was not even a decade.