Family Moskat

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Paperback, 1980

Status

Available

Call number

813

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Fawcett (1980), Mass Market Paperback, 608 pages

Description

The vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality. The affairs of the patriarchal Meshulam Moskat and the unworldly Asa Heshel Bannet provide the center of the book, but its real focus is the civilization that was destroyed forever in the gas chambers of the Second World War.

User reviews

LibraryThing member carioca

I grew up with this book, literally. It came to symbolize all my family lost in the Holocaust. Though we're originally not from Eastern Europe (from Germany instead), the Holocaust managed to bring together all of us in mutual tragedy. All families became one, and I imagine this must not be an easy

thing to grasp unless you experience it from within the group. As I did. So Singer captured all this in a masterly way, and this book is just a pleasure to read from start to finish. Characters are extremely well drawn, plot is consistent and broad without losing focus, just perfect rhythm throughout. The world of the Moskat family may not exist anymore, but thanks to Singer we will always know what it was like, what it smelled and looked like, what it felt like.

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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman

I sank with abandon into this big old-fashioned family saga. It's the story of a large Jewish family in Warsaw from the turn of the 20th century until the invasion of Poland by Hitler in 1939. There are dozens of vividly drawn characters (luckily there is a family tree at the beginning of the

book). While it is an essentially a story of day-to-day life, there are lots of things happening--love, abandonment, adultery, embezzlement, religion and the loss thereof, anti-Semitism, Zionism, emigration to America, the Russian revolution, World War I, and the looming threat of Hitler as a way of life begins to vanish.

I read a number of books by I.B. Singer years ago. (My copy of this book is a mass market paperback from the 1980's, so I'm guessing that's when most of my reading of Singer took place). It was so easy every night to pick this book up and dive right back into the lives of the Moskat family members. I haven't had a big old-fashioned read in ages, and I was ready for this. Read this! It's great entertainment, and much more.

Highly recommended.

4 1/2 stars

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LibraryThing member starbox

'this is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the Land of Egypt',, August 14, 2014

This review is from: The Family Moskat: A Novel (FSG Classics) (Paperback)
Compelling family saga set in the Jewish community of Warsaw. The novel opens in the years before WWI : the wealthy patriarch

of the family has just returned from taking the waters, bringing with him a new wife - and a stepdaughter. There's much irritation among his children by his previous two wives; they are also unhappy about their father's trusted bailiff, who seems to have altogether too much power. And into this mix comes Asa Heshel Bannet, a young man from a rabbinical background, who has come to study in Warsaw...
The characters are convincingly drawn - some religious, holding fast to the old ways, others becoming westernized, refusing arranged marriages - even getting caught up in affairs or becoming apostate. As WWII looms, the whole family is living a very different life..
I felt this novel really started as one thing - a typical almost-Victorian family tale, where everyone had their role and life was settled - to the totally disorganized 'free for all', fighting for survival - and to make sense of the world- that depicts the experience of the Jewish people in the late 30s. An excellent read.

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