Abraham Cahan (Magill’s Choice: American Ethnic Writers)

Author Profile

As a young man in Russia, Abraham Cahan experienced many different identities: pious Jew, Russian intellectual, Nihilist. By his early twenties, in response to prevalent anti-Semitism and recent pogroms, Cahan had become a full-fledged revolutionary socialist, dedicated to the overthrow of the czar and hunted by the Russian government. Hoping to create in America a prototype communist colony in which Jew and gentile were equal, Cahan immigrated to New York in 1882.

Upon his arrival, Cahan modulated his outspoken socialism and embarked on a distinguished career as a Yiddish-language journalist, English teacher, and novelist. As editor for the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward, Cahan transformed the paper from a dry mouthpiece for socialist propaganda into a vital community voice, still socialist in its leanings but dedicated to improving the lives of its audience.

One of the early realists, Cahan is appreciated for his frank portrayals of immigrant life. Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, Cahan’s first novel in English, follows the rocky road toward Americanization of Yekl Podkovnik, a Russian Jewish immigrant desperately trying to assimilate. Faced with two choices for a wife, Yekl chooses the more assimilated Mamie over his Old World spouse, Gitl, but for all his efforts to become “a Yankee,” Yekl’s tale ends on a melancholy note, demonstrating that he is unable to break out of his immigrant identity simply by changing his clothes, his language, and his wife.

Cahan’s sense of the loss and confusion faced by immigrants to America is also evident in The Rise of David Levinsky. This masterful novel tells the rags-to-riches story of a clothier who, despite his wealth and success, is lonely and forlorn, distant from his Russian Jewish beginnings, and alienated from American culture. Following the publication of Yekl, Cahan was ushered into the national spotlight by William Dean Howells, who had encouraged many other regional and ethnic writers. Cahan’s career in mainstream English-language publishing, however, was short-lived. After The Rise of David Levinsky Cahan wrote no more fiction in English, choosing instead to act as a mentor for other writers and to pour his energies into the Jewish Daily Forward.

Bibliography

Chametzky, Jules. From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham Cahan. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. A critical study of Cahan’s English and Yiddish fiction, stressing his depiction of Jewish acculturation in the United States.

Marovitz, Sanford E. Abraham Cahan. New York: Twayne, 1996. A biography of Cahan, concentrating on his English-language fiction.

Sanders, Ronald. The Downtown Jews: Portraits of an Immigrant Generation. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Organizes a biography of Cahan around detailed descriptions of the social, cultural, and political life of lower East Side Jews.