An Analysis Of The Spiritual Crisis Of Yasha In The Magician Of Lublin

Isaac Bashevis Singer, world-renowned Jewish-American writer of the20thcentury,constantly puts his literal concentration on the survival challenges of Jewish nationality andJewish culture in the context of worldwide modernization. The Magician of Lublin isSinger’s finest novel in which Yasha, the protagonist of the novel, is neither a traditionalJew nor a particular member of the Jewish community, but a very singular individual ofuniversal significance who has largely cut himself off from the Jewish community. TheMagician of Lublin depicts Yasha, embodiment of the New Jew, returns to the Jewishvalues after his renouncement of traditional ethnic values. As an outsider of both Jewishand gentile cultures, his spiritual crisis is implied throughout the whole text. By means ofanalyzing the main characters and the relevant circumstances in the novel, this thesisexplores systematically and deeply the origins, manifestations and possible solutions ofYasha’s spiritual crisis on belief, identity and sentiment in terms of society, history, religionand culture.This thesis is composed of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. Themajor contents are displayed as follows:The first part is the introduction which encapsulates the features of Singer’s literarycreation, a brief outline of the novel, present situations of relevant studies at home andabroad, and dominant theme of the thesis as well as its theoretical and practical values.The second part is the main body which is made up of three chapters:The first chapter contains two sections. The first section interprets the universalspiritual crisis brought about by the modernization of Western societies. As the commodityeconomy experienced a huge growth, people were dependent on material life in a morbidmanner and the whole Western world was in spiritual controversy for the lack of spiritualdiscipline and indication. The second section expounds the survival challenges and thecultural crisis of the Jewish nation in modern society. In the new historical era of culturalhybrid, foreign values storm the mind of the wandering Jews by prompting complicatedconflicts with conservative Judaism culture, bringing to the Jews drastic ideological change.The second chapter analyzes three aspects of Yasha’s spiritual crisis, including crisis ofreligious belief, crisis of identity and crisis of sentiment. Viewed from the aspect ofreligious belief, scientific discoveries, technological progress and historical experience have challenged certain statements of Judaism, opening a door to Yasha’s spiritual crisis onJudaism. Submission to either rational science or religious devotion is set to be a see-sawbattle in Yasha’s mind; viewed from the perspective of identity, Yasha’s skeptical attitude toJudaism and the oppression on Jews from the outside world constitute an undeniable yetvital reason that calls forth Yasha’s spiritual crisis on identity. He exerts himself to deny hisJewish identity in order to fulfill his secular dream; as to sentiment, due to Yasha’s specialprofession, he has to wander in different places, each of which corresponds to a femalecharacter representing certain religious belief and cultural belonging. The incident thatEmilia, one of Yasha’s mistresses, asks Yasha to convert to Christianity makes up theimmediate cause of Yasha’s spiritual crisis. His unsettled state of mind illustrates that hecould genuinely recognize none of the Gentile lifestyles as his spiritual belonging.The third chapter explores the possible solutions to Yasha’s spiritual crisis from thefollowing three levels: self-redemption of Yasha, probe of Singer and grope of the author ofthe thesis. Having gone through a series of misfortunes, Yasha imprisons himself in a brickhouse in Lublin for penitence over the crimes he committed; Singer devotes all his life tomeet an impasse in finding an ultimate method of salvation. However, he ideologicallyinclines to return to Judaism and traditional morality; as to the author of the thesis, forsolving Yasha’s spiritual crisis, one has to, on the one hand, return to religious belief, and onthe other hand, draw the historical lessons from Haskalah movement, establishing a newmode of Jewish ghetto based on a proper assimilation with the values of local mainstreamsociety.The last part concludes the above-mentioned statement. For Yasha, epitome of NewJew, to treasure the religious belief and cultural heritage of his own is the only way toeliminate ethnic prejudice from other nationalities to the root and to win their tribute. It is ofreference value for other nations to carry forward the national faith and to resolve spiritualcrisis by means of analyzing Yasha’s spiritual crisis.