Abraham Cahan (1860–1951)
Autor(a) de The Rise of David Levinsky
About the Author
Born in Russia in 1860 and trained as a teacher, Abraham Cahan emigrated to New York City in 1882. He documented the immigrant experience in Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) and examined the immigrant's struggle for the American dream of success in The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). His mostrar mais work was recognized and praised for its realism by William Dean Howells. In addition to producing a number of short story collections, he worked as a journalist and founded and edited the Yiddish newspaper Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward). His influence in the Jewish American cultural community has been extensive. Cahan was a committed socialist who fought strongly against communism. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: World Telegram & Sun photo, 1937 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-119095)
Obras de Abraham Cahan
“A Sweat-Shop Romance 1 exemplar(es)
Historie fun di fereynigte shtaaten 1 exemplar(es)
Associated Works
Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from the Forward (2016) — Contribuinte — 31 cópias
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome padrão
- Cahan, Abraham
- Nome de batismo
- אברהם כהאן
- Data de nascimento
- 1860-07-07
- Data de falecimento
- 1951-08-31
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- Lithuania (birth)
USA (naturalized) - Local de nascimento
- Vilna, Lithuania
- Local de falecimento
- New York, New York, USA
- Locais de residência
- Podberezhye, Lithuania
Vilna, Lithuania (birth)
Vitebsk, Lithuania
New York, New York, USA (death) - Educação
- Teachers Institute of Wilna (1881)
- Ocupação
- journalist
novelist - Organizações
- Socialist Labor Party of America
Socialist Party of America
Membros
Resenhas
A lovely, true collection of stories from Eastern European Jews settling in the Lower East Side. The primary story is the basis for the wonderful movie Hester Street. Cahan captures the strivings of the upwardly, craving Americanization greenhorns, but the two volumes of A Bintel Brief, the collections of letters to Cahan's Jewish Daily Foward (the Forvets) is even better.
Yekl è un sarto ebreo da poco arrivato negli Stati Uniti. E il fervore della vita a stelle e strisce lo porta ad una vita nuova, diversa da quella delle sue tradizioni, quelle di un ebreo askenazita cresciuto nell’Europa dell’Est. E le luci del ghetto di New York portano Yekl a dimenticarsi della moglie e del figlio lasciati in Europa e a dedicarsi, come un americano, alla ricerca delle donne e del piacere. Ma quando decide di far arrivare anche la moglie, Gitl, e il figlio, Joey, la situazione si complica. Ormai è troppo tardi, Yekl si fa chiamare Jake ed ha una relazione con Mamie; e la stessa Gitl non può accettare, non negli Stati Uniti, non nella nuova condizione, un adulterio. E così questo breve romanzo si chiude con un divorzio che simboleggia la rottura con la tradizione. Uno spaccato di un’epoca ben tratteggiato da un autore noto all’epoca, anche perché per anni direttore di un giornale, the Forward, che difesa le posizioni degli ebrei americani.… (mais)
Flora è una ragazza ebrea nata e cresciuta a New York. Colta, soave ed elegante, è un’accanita lettrice di Dickens che spera di trovare un marito dottore e di buona famiglia, possibilmente non immigrato. (fonte: Google Books)
Listas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 9
- Also by
- 6
- Membros
- 787
- Popularidade
- #32,341
- Avaliação
- 3.6
- Resenhas
- 12
- ISBNs
- 68
- Idiomas
- 3
- Favorito
- 2
The story follows David Levinsky’s childhood and young adulthood as a Jew in the Russian Empire, living with his mother in poverty and studying the Talmud full time. Here Cahan takes time to explain such concepts as Talmud and the yeshiva, in line with his mission to explain Jewish life to an American readership. This didacticism fades away into a more naturalistic mode after this early start, however.
After his mother is killed in anti-Semitic violence, money is raised for David to emigrate from Russia to America, where he lives among the mass of Jewish immigrants in New York City. Speaking only Yiddish, knowing only Talmud study, and having no money, he embarks on a gradual transformation to become “American”. He learns English, abandons his practice of Judaism, learns a skill in the trades (it was the time when cloak-making was a huge business!), and in a few decades has become a wealthy factory owner.
Another irony, perhaps: Cahan, a socialist who believed in a universal working class, presents a sympathetic portrait of the cost of casting off one’s particularist ethnic identity (which maybe anticipates his sympathy for Zionism by the time of his death in 1951). When David tells an older man in his community in Russia of his plans to emigrate, his friend replies, “To America! Lord of the World! But one becomes a Gentile there.” “Not at all, there are lots of good Jews there, and they don’t neglect their Talmud, either,” David replies. But of course he does, becoming as much of a Gentile as America of the turn of the twentieth century will allow.
In one fantastic section of the novel Cahan portrays the beginnings of the Jewish summer colonies in the Catskills, where middle class Jews could vacation together from the city. David is with a crowd in the ballroom of one such hotel, where the noise is mostly drowning the band out. But this abruptly changes when the conductor picks a certain tune:
That’s the promise of America, it seems to me. Of course the flip side of this general acceptance is often assimilation, which is not an unalloyed positive (as many a second-generation immigrant with identity confusion can attest). In the end despite all his wealth David is unhappy and alone, cut off from community and a feeling of home. It may not be surprising that a socialist would portray his titan of capitalism thusly, as something of the Ebenezer Scrooge type despite David’s frequent philanthropic activities, but resting alongside his overemphasis on money is his loss of cultural identity.
Identity can be a challenging thing!… (mais)