SOURCE: Morris, Leslie. “1968: The Translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's ‘Gimpel der Narr’ Appears in the Federal Republic of Germany.” In Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096-1996, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes, pp. 742-48. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Morris investigates the reception of the German translations of “Gimpel the Fool” and the work of the Jewish humorist Ephraim Kishon in Germany, asserting that “The reception of their work in the German popular and critical press can give insight into the discourse about Jews, Jewishness, and the Holocaust in Germany since 1968.”

The enormous popularity in Germany of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Ephraim Kishon provides an interesting perspective on the relationship of non-German Jewish writing to the German (Jewish and non-Jewish) reading public. It inevitably points to the way in which Jewish writing in Germany is filtered...