Space relation and ethical thought in The Family Moskat

In the novel The Family Moskat,I. B. Singer tells a story about Asa,a Jewish young man,who leaves his remote hometown in an attempt to seek a new life in metropolis. Because of dissatisfying with the isolated place and the Jewish traditional ethics,Asa steps into the urban space where he seeks new ethical order in accordance with Spinoza's Ethics. However,he doesn't integrate into the urban space where his life becomes extremely tough because of ethical chaos. Being unable to rebuild new ethical order for the Jews,he has become indifferent to his family and the Jewish people. In the great turmoil,study room becomes his haven to fulfill his cultivation as a scholar so as to get into the non-Jewish world,but in vain. In a sense,the ethical disorder Asa experienced is not only a disillusion of his own,but the grief and tragedy of the Jewish people in the process of modernization for their relatively independent ethical system.