Israel Joshua Singer (Yiddish: ישראל יהושע זינגער; November 30, 1893, Biłgoraj, Poland - February 10, 1944 New York) was a Yiddish novelist. He was born Yisroel Yehoyshue Zinger, the son of Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman. He was the brother of Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer and novelist Esther Kreitman.
Singer contributed to the European Yiddish press from 1916; and in 1921, after Abe Cahan noticed his story "Pearls", Singer became a correspondent for the leading American Yiddish newspaper The Forward. His short story, Liuk, appeared in 1924, illuminating the ideological confusion of the Bolshevik Revolution. He wrote his first novel, Steel and Iron, in 1927. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States. He died in New York City in 1944.
His memoir Of a World That is No More appeared posthumously in 1946. His other works include:
In the introduction to A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg note that Singer's books are organized "in a way that satisfies the usual Western expectations as to literary structure. His novels resemble the kind of family chronicle popular in Europe several decades ago [that is, the turn of the century]".[1]
YIVO: Israel Joshua Singer
Joseph Sherman, "Israel Joshua Singer"