Books
The book that started it all
David Herman on the first great American Jewish novel
January 4, 2018 12:24
David Herman on the first great American Jewish novel
January 4, 2018 12:24The year just passed was once again marked by a rich outcrop of fiction from Jewish American writers and 2018 will doubtless be the same. We have come to expect it. This is a tradition that began a century ago. In fact, 2017 was the centenary of the first great Jewish American novel, The Rise of David Levinsky - Abraham Cahan
Cahan was born in the Russian Pale in 1860. His grandfather was a rabbi. His father taught Hebrew and Talmud. In 1882, he came to America and spent the rest of his life in New York. A prolific journalist, he edited the Arbeiter Zeitung (Workers’ News) and founded the Jewish Daily Forward in 1887, which he ran for more than 50 years. In 1896, he published his first short story, followed a year later by his first novel, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, the basis for the film, Hester Street.
The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) was his masterpiece, the rags-to-riches story of a Jewish immigrant. Malcolm Bradbury called it “a fable of economic success and moral catastrophe”. It tells the story of Levinsky, who leaves his shtetl with four cents in his pocket, and shaves off his beard and sidelocks, reinventing himself as an American.
He starts out in the garment district, working 16-hour days, and ends up as a rich businessman. Despite his wealth, he remains unsatisfied spiritually
