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Abraham Cahan, Socialist, Journalist, Friend of the Ghetto

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Abraham Cahan, Socialist, Journalist, Friend of the Ghetto 4/^ ABRAHAM CAHAN: Socialist - Journalist - Friend of the Gfhetto by Ernest Poole [Excerpt from the Outlook, October 28,1911] Phi ' Fonuard" in Yiddish Abraham Cahan Socialist—Journalist—Friend of the Ghetto By Ernest Poole With Photographs by Paul Anderson is the editor of a daily Socialist had come from remote little Old World HEpaper, " Die Vorwaerts," printed in hamlets. Night drew on. Lights shone from Yiddish, in the heart of the New the tall grimy tenements, arc lamps sputtered York Ghetto. Within eight }-ears he has out over the square. And the push-cart forced its circulation to over 113,000. And peddlers lighted their torches, long lines of the story of his struggle to adapt himself and flaring torches. For from stores, sweat- his Socialism to New World conditions has shops, and factories through the muddy, significance for the future America, in which narrow streets poured dense, dark human the inpouring millions of foreigners are to masses—Americans to be. play so large a part. Cahan has been in this country some " I was born in 1860, in Podberezie, a twenty-eight years. One afternoon, in his little village of huts and cottages in a coun- office, I found him writing in Yiddish. As try of forests, the province of Wilna, in I came in the telephone rang, and he turned Lithuania, under Russian rule. In our four- and spoke in Russian. He talked to me in room cottage lived four families. Our family English. And while he told his story I had one room, low-ceilinged, with a huge watched the life on the big open square brick oven. And in this room my father, a below, crowded with men, women, and chil- Talmudic student, had his little Hebrew dren, many of whom but a few weeks before school. While he taught his twelve small 5 407 " 468 THE OUTLOOK scholars he used to hold me on his knee, and the first day the boy ran home, sobbing, and by the time I was three years old I had threatened that he would kill himself if they learned to spell out the Hebrew words. made him go back. In the end his mother " The most intense of my first memories is gave in, and he was allowed to go on with of Friday, the eve of the Sabbath, when, as his studies. For the next two years he spent the twilight deepened, my father took me on his time in Wilna's public librarj'. his lap, telling me old legends and crooning " Here I lost my religious faith, and here ancient Hebrew songs. ' And now,' he would I became acquainted with the great Russian whisper, ' the week with all its evil is gone, writers. Turgenev and Tolstoy were my all evil thoughts and passions departing, and favorites. With a few other youngsters I from heaven the second soul comes fluttering read all day in the library, and at night we down, to dwell within you on the Sabbath.' discussed the books we had read. I was Scared and solemn, I would clutch my small fond of talking, and I was forever haranguing breast to feel my second soul come in. the group. We did not read like American " My father was a dreamer, soulful, deeply boys. Although only about fifteen years old, emotional. He would sit for hours con- we read mature novels ; not only the novel tented, listening to stories of life in distant itself, but books of cridcism upon it. And lands; he would go without eating to save the life it depicted grew intensely real to us. the few kopecks required for entrance into Although these novels dealt with ' Great the synagogue on days when there was Russia,' a country hundreds of miles to the music. When I was four years old, he north, sdll we felt ourselves drawn to the wrapped me in his praying-shawl, as is the Russians. And this made doubly bitter the Jewish custom, and took me to the chedar persecutions and insults to which we were (Hebrew school) to start my education. subjected as Jews, especially since it was on Here a spoonful of honey was given me as the very days of Russian rejoicing, like a symbol of spiritual sweetness. And as the Easter and Christmas, that my father kept holy book was opened and I read the first me within the house from fear of Christian letter, ' Aleph,' from above me ' the angel's violence." kopeck ' was dropped on my head as a sym- At seventeen he entered a Government bol of reward for righteousness. And then Jewish teachers' college, where tuition, board, suddenly my father broke into sobs. I had and lodging were supplied free, and in return entered into the service of God." he signed a contract providing that for eight The hours were long in this chedar. years after graduation he would teach in Small as he was, he studied there each morn- Jewish schools. His teachers there were ing from nine o'clock until two, then went Gentiles and Jew-haters, and his sufferings home to dinner, came back at three, and were keen. " For the deeper and more worked on until eight o'clock each night. intense grew my love of Russia's literature In his sixth year his mother, the practical and music, the more of an outlaw I was one in the family, decided to move to the made to feel. I remember one Russian holi- city of Wilna. And there he went to a day when, as I walked home, my comrade yeshiva, a Hebrew school more advanced and I were attacked. I remember his face than the chedar, where, with fifty other boys, all covered with blood." he studied under the rabbi. But at thirteen But in his nineteenth year, one day on he was hungry to learn more of the world the street, a young man (who is now a pub- than the rabbi could teach, and so began lic school principal in New York) silently going in secret each afternoon to a Govern- shoved into his hand an " underground ment school. When his parents learned of pamphlet. Intensely excited, Cahan went to this, there was trouble. his room and there read the pamphlet many "Look at your father!" his mother ex- times. It was a revolutionist poem by Necra- " claimed. He is a mirror in which you can soff ; no great masterpiece, but the fact that see what you will be if this goes on ! Will it was something forbidden gave it a power you spend your whole life in idle dreams and over him such as not even Tolstoy had had. studies and keep your family always poor .-' " That night was a turning-point in my Or will you earn your living like a man .'"' life. Undl then I had been an outrageous She apprenticed him to a wood-carver in young egotist. But now I began to broaden. Wilna. But the wood-carver, it seems, was I joined a small revolutionist circle made up a brute, coarse and foul-mouthed ; and on of students and army officers. Our secret SELLING " VORWAERTS IN THE HEART OF THE GHETTO ; 470 THE OUTLOOK meetings were held in the house of a Gen- whom had an estate near by ; and when at tile, and here for the first time I found Christmas his peasants came in for their Jews and Gentiles together as brothers. Christmas-tree gifts, Cahan read to them of Never until now had a Gentile called me by the movement for a free Russia. my first name. Here were comradeship, After the assassination of Alexander II deep, fresh enthusiasm, and a spirit of mutual wholesale arrests were made. Cahan's friends help and of strict self-denial." in VVilna were arrested, and a letter from him Since the early '40's the idea had been was found in their rooms. His mother learned spread b}- the Russian writers that men of of this ; she sent him warning, and when the means and education owed their advantages Velish gendarmes came to search they found to the peasant, the long-suffering serf on nothing. But a week later they learned that whose bent back rested the whole social this " teacher devil " had formed a revolu- structure ; and that therefore, since they were tionist group in Velish. Cahan was again supported by his privation and toil, they warned ; he escaped that night, taking a row- must repay the debt by using all their talents boat down the river ; and for some days and and powers to better his condition. It was nights he went on in disguise, avoiding rail- this idea that sent hundreds of educated men way stations, traveling by boat and by stage. and women as teachers to the peasant to show Finally, in a town to the south, a friendly Jew him how to better his life. And when these took him into hiding. attempts at education were met by harsh Governmental measures, hundreds being sent Here he first learned of the great emigra- to Siberia, then this same persisting idea led tion of Jews to America. Since the killing to the organization of two revolutionist parties of the Czar the police had instigated whole- which had for their purpose the complete sale Jewish massacres ; and now the Jews overthrow of the autocracy. It was of this were leaving by thousands, selling their house- latter movement that Cahan's small circle hold goods in the streets. There was intense was a part, a lonely outpost in the south.
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