The Family as a Mirror of Society – The Crisis of the Family in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Di familye Mushkat (1950)

This paper examines Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Di familye Mushkat” (1950) within the context of the family novel as a literary genre and presents it as a portrayal of the disintegration of familial and societal structures in the Polish‑Jewish milieu of the early 20th century. Drawing on the scholarly model of the genealogically structured family novel—which follows a cyclical trajectory of flourishing, maturity, and decline—it shows how Singer depicts the breakdown of religious, social, and cultural bonds across three generations, thereby also highlighting the tensions between tradition and modernity. At the center of the novel is Oyzer Heshl, whose spiritual and existential crisis—shaped by Spinoza’s philosophy, sexual restlessness, and a departure from faith—serves as a paradigm for the disorientation of an entire generation. The novel presents a polyphonic cultural and ideological panorama ranging from Orthodox Judaism through Zionism to atheism and deliberately avoids offering a singular ideological resolution. While the Zionist characters appear to retain agency, only a return to religious tradition is implicitly suggested as a possible path forward. “Di familye Mushkat” thus functions not only as a chronicle of a family’s internal collapse but also as a literary requiem for the vanished world of Eastern European Jewry.