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2nd year, Dana Mihailescu

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Ilie


Ilie

American Studies Major, 2nd year

Professor :

Ethno-Racial Identities

12/22/2014


Acculturation and problems of the Jewish Immigrants in the 20th century America


The purpose of this essay is to analyze the experiences of the working class-Jewish immingrants that moved westward in chase of the “American Dream” and the conflicts and changes the main protagonist Sara Smolisnky goes through in Anzia Yezierska’s novel “Bread Givers”.In the first part of my paper I focus on discussing the context and situation of the European Jews along the line of the upward mobility, and in the second part of my paper I will analyze Sara Smolinsky’s changes toward Americanization.The critical sources I am using include writers such as Fernando Ortiz, Gay Wilentz, Mary L. Pratt and Douglas Golstein.

In the years between the assassination of Russia’s Alexander II and the start of the First World War, approximately 2 million East European Jews left their homelands in fear for their lives, searching for a new land in which to settle down, mostly because their lives had become intolerable in the shtetls.They went to the New World in order to be free, and they did not think that freedom meant becoming mainstream Americans.The inducements seemed overwhelming, letters from America vibrated with optimism, falsely so:”Life where all men were equal before the law, where manual labor was held in high esteem”, says Gregory Weinstein.This mentality was shared by Reb Smolisnky as well, one of the central figures of the novel, who refused to bring along in the new land any other items but his study books.

Upon arrival, the immigrants are disappointed with America, their struggle for existence “becomes to them more severe than in the native lands”.Within a few years, the Lower East Side became a very populated area, with more than 700 inhabitants by acre (around 1900).In this atmosphere, immigrants had to face tuberculosis, working for 84 hours a week in trades that had barely seen touched by natives, or as peddlers, accepting to work for wages that no respectable American woud do.

The authorities saw the immigrant masses as a threat to democratic survival.There was crime, wife desertion, juvenile delinquency, prostitution.Isaac Max Rubinow wrote that:”the vices affected mostly the Americanized Jews, those who have adopted a luster of Americanization”.In addition to that, Marcus Revage writes:”With every day I passed I became more and more overwhelmed at the degeneration of my fellow countrymen in this new home of theirs.Good manners and conduct, reverence and religion, had all gone by the board.”As seen in Sara Smolinsky’s case, changes appeared.Religious liberty in America meant freedom from religion, as compared to the Old World of Jewish ghetto where such choice had not been possible, represented in the novel by her father, Reb Smolinsky.

Download Works Cited: Anzia Yezierka­’s `Bread Givers”- Accultur­ation and problems of the Jewish Immigran­ts in the 20th century America
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As depincted by Anzia Yezierska in “Bread Givers”, in the American ghetto the majority of the immigrant wives were committed to sanctity of nurture and the ethic of self-sacrifice.Reb Smolisnky was protected by his religion, busy studying the Talmud, while his daughters and wife were working in the streets to offers him the best rapast.

Pushing their way into American society, Jewish children that wished for a education were held back by their family.Abraham Liessen published a lament:”What has the Jewish quarter gained from all these intelligent young Jews?”

This kind of generational clash occurred between Sara and her family, mainly between radical parents and wordly, ambitious children.Yezierska shows how the struggle between old and young continued to be acted on immigrant territory, as Sara’s being forced by circumstances and feelings to remain within the cultural orbit of her father

Sara Smolinsky has an insatiable hunger.Hunger for the promised land, life, love, success.”A fire that cannot be qunched in her soul, a hunger that food cannot sate- a permanent sense of alienation and solitude”( Golub 1983, 51-52).”I hated my stomach.It was like some clawing wild animal that I had to stop to feel always”(Bread Givers, 173).

When Sara decides to leave, she tells her father:”I’ve got to live my own life” thus, emphasizing her powerful individualism- breaking away from her environment and pursuing her own interests.From her father, a master of the art of turning out the world around him she learns to ignore the reality of being poor in America.From her mother, she receives physical support, including much- needed food when she is starving.

Her quest for an apartment was not easy but it marked her start in becoming a person.Once, her mother visits her briefly and she admits that studying for college is more important than visiting her family, which happens after 6 years.

She’s tempted when a man sent by her sister courts her, but rejecs him:“I have to love and die by what’s in me”.Later on, when she retuns home and finds her mother dying, her sister, Fania asks her:”Was that what they taught you in college, to turn your back on your own people?” and indeed, she had to cut family ties in order to achieve her dream of becoming a teacher.

In the second chapter Sara arrives in college but she cannot fit in:”I was nothing and nobody.It was worse than being ignored(…)Even in college I had not escaped from the ghetto”.Ultimately, she finishes college and retuns to the city “changed into a person”, a middle-class educated woman, with manners and status.Chasing the American dream turned out to be a chase of materialism, as opposed to her native values:”the first time in my life when I asked for the best, not for the cheapest”, and at her mother’s funeral she defies custom by refusing to tear her clothes, because she needed them for work.

The novel does not have a happy ending although Sara achieved emancipation.It can be considered a full circle.The ending is, as Gay Wilentz calls it,“a Jewish lament rather than a happy-ever-after”, reflected in Sara’s words:”Now I was the teacher.Why didn’t I feel as I had supposed this superior creature felt?”.

The most recent criticism reads Yezierska’s work in the vein of transculturation, as defined by Mary L.Pratt.She argues that the writing of minorities not only select from the cultural material provided for them, but give back to the hegemonic center (European imperialism) in turn.As a response, Fernando Ortiz attributes the highly varied phenomena of transculturation to the “process of transition from one culture to another”.

Douglas Goldstein, sees Yezierska as a spokesperson for “the unique contribution that Jews can make to the rest of the country”.

Recognizing her divided loyalties between country and family, becomes an embodiment of the ongoing tension between American and immigrant nationalisms.Yezierska captivated people with accounts of her life:”A struggling young immigrant woman writer breaks away from the filth(…), dips her pen into her heart and writes stories about Lower East Side.”


Works Cited:

Anzia Yezierka’s “Bread Givers”

World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews

The Making of an American: Counternarration –Kevin Piper

Unhappy Narratives of Upward Mobility-Renny Christopher

The gift of Bread Givers-Krystyn Moon

The Rebirth of Anzia Yezierska – Wendy Zierler


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