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sionistic than
I.
].'s, with a slyer avenue of black humor. He also
appeared to be more mystical about an imagined stir of invisible crea–
tures in the air of the medieval countryside. Yes, he was reponing, but
he sometimes did so better than a believer.
If
he repeated any theme, it
was to build on the natural rural shrewdness of the country folk, which
could pierce the veil of eschatology and see the mischievous workings of
the supernatural clearer than organized religion could. Where the clergy
warned, "Look out for Satan,"
shtetl
folk saw imps, goblins, omens,
portents. They retained a child's fear of the dark, while being subject to
disturbing if not exploding passions, whether they were smart or dumb,
big banana or little onion.
Young Bashevis Singer's
shtetl
characters functioned in an habitual
Judaic context. But their Judaism was more like a permutation writ into
the skin, like a clan tattoo, than a fully comprehended faith. They were
connected by DNA to the giants of the Old Testament and even the
New. They mouthed Mount Sinai. But they really hearkened to
medieval superstitions and incomprehensible inner drives-as in Chris–
tianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and the beliefs of Australian abo–
rigines. Indeed, medieval Christianity and medieval Judaism seemed to
play Ping-Pong with like-minded superstitions.
I once interviewed a leading American psychiatrist who lived in Bal–
timore, Dr. Frank Ayd. He was also a general physician to the Vatican,
making annual visits to Rome to check the physical health of the clergy,
who disrobed for him. He told me how a cleric came before him loaded
with a host of necklaced crosses, plus a Neapolitan symbol to ward off
the evil eye. "You don't take any chances, do you?" Ayd ribbed him. For
what did all these charms mean but a lack of intrinsic faith? Singer's
shtetl
Jews were like that. They were cousins to Ignazio Silone's peas–
ants of the Italian Abruzzi, who saved counterfeit coins to give to the
visiting priest when he came on muleback to collect for charity. This was
an important religious ritual for them. They had a deeper faith in the
dodges of their simple folk wisdom than in the fine print of city-slicker
theology as found in compendium footnotes to the Oxford Bible.
Flannery O'Connor wrote of the American South in a similar vein.
When one of her characters tells another, "Jesus died for you," the
second gives a shirking country-rut answer, "I never asked him." The
young Singer and Flannery O'Connor saw religion among backwater
folk in clear black-humor terms, as too often epidermal. Singer'S
shtetl
characters live their lives with religion everywhere around them but in
their souls. It was ever on the tips of their tongues, in their social gath–
erings, part of their mass hysteria masquerading as awe. But when
