Editing Isaac Bashevis Singer (section)

===''The Family Moskat''===
Singer became a literary contributor to ''[[The Jewish Daily Forward]]'' only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer published ''[[The Family Moskat]]'' in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of [[Yom Kippur]] (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, [[Abraham Cahan]], but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue.{{Citation needed|date=April 2020}} After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in the ''Forward'' as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.

Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in ''[[Encounter (magazine)|Encounter]]'' (February 1979), he said that although the [[History of the Jews in Poland|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."

Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality ("Zeitl and Rickel",{{Sfn | Singer | 1968}} "Tseytl un Rikl"), published in ''The Seance and Other Stories'',{{Sfn | Singer | 1968a}} [[transvestism]] ("Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" in ''Short Friday''), and of rabbis corrupted by demons ("Zeidlus the Pope" in ''Short Friday''). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.