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Immigrant Themes in Jewish-American Literature" (1984)

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Immigrant Themes in Jewish-American Literature University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Fall 1984 A CRAVING FOR HISTORY: IMMIGRANT THEMES IN JEWISH- AMERICAN LITERATURE JEFFREY SAPERSTEIN University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation SAPERSTEIN, JEFFREY, "A CRAVING FOR HISTORY: IMMIGRANT THEMES IN JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE" (1984). Doctoral Dissertations. 1435. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1435 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this document, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help clarify markings or notations which may appear on this reproduction. 1.The sign or “target” for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is “Missing Page(s)”. If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting through an image and duplicating adjacent pages to assure complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a round black mark, it is an indication of either blurred copy because of movement during exposure, duplicate copy, or copyrighted materials that should not have been filmed. 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University M icrcSilm s International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8428159 Saperstein, Jeffrey A CRAVING FOR HISTORY: IMMIGRANT THEMES IN JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE University of New Hampshire Ph.D. 1984 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1984 by Saperstein, Jeffrey All Rights Reserved A CRAVING FOR HISTORY: IMMIGRANT THEMES IN JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE by JEFFREY SAPERSTEIN B.A., State University of New York at Albany, 1972 M.A., Northeastern University, 1975 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English September, 1984 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (c) 1984 Jeffrey Saperstein This dissertation has been examined and approved. Dissertation director, Ga£3E—Lane.ndberg Professor of English Michael DePorte, Professor of English Philip ^icoloff, Pro of English Harvard Sxtkoff, of History Bud Khleif, Professor of Sociology / 7 . D^te ^ to Pop— my own Galitzianer (now can I buy you that cup of coffee?) to the memory of Gary Rabinoff— teacher, friend, soulmate and to Lisa, whose magical powers delivered me from fear (tu eres muy simpatica) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A number of wise and kindly teachers guided me through the pro­ cess of writing this dissertation. I especially want to thank Gary Lindberg who read through several rough drafts with uncanny discern­ ment, and who made what could have been an arduous task into a great deal of intellectual fun. I also wish to thank: Mike DePorte, for his continual support and for sharing some of his own ancestral memories with me; Phil Nicoloff asked a number of valid questions which helped refine the final draft; from the beginning of the pro­ ject until the end, Bud Khleif was never less than enthusiastic about the possibilities of the topic— he offered many valuable suggestions; Harvard Sitkoff graciously looked over the -lengthy manuscript at a late date. Special thanks also go to Karen Ogden, for her typographical and moral support, as well as her numerous insights; and to Jackie Kraus, for typing the final manuscript under considerable time pressure. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................... v ABSTRACT........................................... vii CHAPTER PAGE I. "SOME VAST SALLOW AQUARIUM": . THE FIRST VOICES OF JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE ..................... 1 II. MAKING IT— OR, THE GOSPEL OF SUCCESS............... 15 III. THE SPELL OF THE PAST: ABRAHAM CAHAN'S THE RISE OF DAVID LEV IN S K Y ........................ 51 IV. GIVING FREEDOM A C H A N C E ........................... 80 V. THE PURSUIT OF ECSTASY: ISAAC ROSENFELD'S PASSAGE FROM H O M E ................................ 119 VI. AFTER PORTNOY: TOWARDS A DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE . 147 VII. 0 MY AMERICA!: THE IMMIGRANT STORY AS CLASSIC AMERICAN NOVEL .................................... 194 CONCLUSION....................................... 226 APPENDIX................................................. 232 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................. 235 ABSTRACT A CRAVING FOR HISTORY: IMMIGRANT THEMES IN JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE by JEFFREY SAPERSTEIN University of New Hampshire, September 1984 This dissertation is a cross-generational study of three immi­ grant themes in Jewish-American literature: transformation, freedom, and connection. It covers a number of twentieth century writers whose central concerns revolve around issues of assimilation. Chapter I gives a brief overview of the topic. Chapter II examines the various means by which the immigrant sought to achieve American status. Writers discussed include Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, Elias Tobenkin, Michael Gold, Norman Pod- horetz, and Saul Bellow. Chapter III is an in-depth study of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), a rags-to-riches story of a poor immigrant's rise up the ladder of success in the garment in­ dustry. The chapter emphasizes the psychological strains of trans­ formation. Chapter IV deals with the secoftd generation's flight from immi­ grant neighborhoods into the larger American sphere, and the neces­ sity to give shape to this new freedom. The writers discussed are Anzia Yezierska, Henry Roth, Daniel Fuchs, and Alfred Kazin. Chap­ ter V is a close reading of Isaac Rosenfeld's Passage from Home (1946), a study of an adolescent's attraction to an aunt who leads a bohemian life far removed from the boy's familiar middle class world. This chapter examines the nature of the boy's alienation. Chapter VI concerns the attempt by modern Jews to recover as­ pects of their tradition. It looks at a number of non-fiction memoirs as well as fictional works by Mark Helprin, Cynthia Ozick, and Hugh Nissenson, works in which both memory and imagination are enlisted in an attempt to recover "the useful past." Chapter VII is a close reading of Johanna Kaplan's 0 My America! (1980). This novel focuses on an immigrant son who has escaped his past by creatively fashioning his alienation into an intellectual style. The chapter looks at how his escape is countered by his daughter's attempt to understand the cost of such transformation. A brief conclusion speculates on other uses of my analysis. CHAPTER I "SOME VAST SALLOW AQUARIUM": THE FIRST VOICES OF JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE What meaning . can continue to attach to such a term as the 'American' character?— what type, as the result of such a prodigious amalgam, such a hotch-potch of racial ingredients, is to be conceived as shaping itself? Henry James, The American Scene I am a Russian revolutionist and a freethinker. Here in America I became acquainted with a girl who is also a freethinker. We decided to marry, but the problem is that she has Orthodox parents, and if we refuse a religious ceremony we will be cut off from them forever. I don't know what to do. Therefore, I ask you to advise me how to act. letter to the editor of The Forward After spending twenty years in Europe, Henry James, the last great voice of America's Protestant literary tradition, returned home in 1904. This period was one of the most accelerated transitions in American history. James left New York in the 1880's when one could still speak literally of Greenwich Village, and just as the first wave of the so called "New Immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe had reached our shore. When he returned, a shirtwaist factory had replaced his former home at Washington Square, and millions of Slavs, Italians, and Russian Jews had, in James' eyes, taken possession. James recorded his impressions of this metamorphosis in The American Scene, perhaps the first book to ponder America's "ethnic question" in a wholly personal, non-scientific fashion. Using the same intricate, highly reflective style that characterizes his fiction masterpieces of this period, James tries to gauge his relation to his 1 native city in the light of its ethnic composition. Detecting a "chill" in this urban hodge-podge, he is forced to conclude: "... there is no claim to brotherhood with aliens in the first grossness of their alienism."'*' James was no ordinary racist and for him to perceive his distance from working class Italians and Jews was hardly unfair. However, conceding James his self-effacing irony, there is still an unmistakable tinge of proto-racism in his inability to distinguish individuals from the foreign crowd.
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