In the following essay, Malin discusses the stories in The Spinoza of Market Street, and analyzes the characters of Dr. Nahum Fischelson and Black Dobbe in the title story.

The Spinoza of Market Street (1961) is another wide-ranging collection of stories.

The title story is clearly one of Singer's best. Dr. Nahum Fischelson is an avid reader of Spinoza— as was the narrator of In My Father's Court—and he knows "every proposition, every proof, every corollary, every note by heart." The Ethics is his holy text. He attempts to live by its ideas, believing that "according to Spinoza morality and happiness were identical, and that the most moral deed a man could perform was to indulge in some pleasure which was not contrary to reason." Dr. Fischelson is, then, a mature Asa Heschel Bannet or Ezriel; he lives according to a strict moral code (which...