An Ethical Approach To Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Novels In 1960s

Isaac Bashevis Singer who is a famous contemporary American Jewish writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. As a Jewish writer, Singer always followed the Jewish traditional culture and related creative purpose that is devoting to explore the Jewish individuals find a hole to creep out of serious sufferings, and fight for "endure hardships for the purity of soul". Singer created a lot of typical figures like that in his works. In Enemies, a love story, Mamor, and the Magician of Lublin which Singer wrote in 1960s, we can find this kind of characters actually contain rich ethical and moral factors. So these three novels with strongly ethical color deliver moral enlightenment to us. This essay, through ethical literary criticism, cultural studies and closed reading, will discusses the suffered Jews how to determine their ethical identities and then to make ethical choices in foreign cultural context, thus to get the ethical approach to national road, which Singer desired to express through these three texts. That is, if the Jews want to survive in new environment which different from the Jewish traditional culture, they should obey the Jewish ethics and norms. Only by this can they obtain the God’s blessing, pure their own souls and realize self-salvation.