Jason Murray

February 1,2013

The Rise of Abraham Cahan

        When one looks at pictures of Abraham Cahan in his role as editor of the Forverts you see not a pious son of a Russian Rabbi but an American businessman.  His orthodoxy he was raised with gone Cahan stood between the worlds of the Eastern European orthodox Jewry of his youth, the socialism he always believed in, and the world of the American businessman. In the opening and closing passages of The Rise of David Lavinsky his main character, Lavinsky bemoans the emptiness that his success brought him.

        The novel begins with his statement of his success in a rise from

penniless immigrant to a businessman and leader in his industry and ends with a

statement of loneliness and loss and a desire to trade with someone of

education and learning.  Was Abraham Cahan bemoaning his own feelings of

emptiness that his success brought him to the deprivation of his youth?

Cahan was not writing an autobiography but rather a portrait of his

contemporaries, many of which, like himself, adapted to life in America but

felt a longing and loneliness at the loss of their Jewish identity.

        Abraham Cahan came to this country suddenly, much like his young protagonist, the difference between them being education and politics.  Levinsky doesn’t care for politics much except when they get in the way of making a profit, where Cahan supported the Unions and fought for them Levinsky in his rise to power fought against them.  Cahan fought for his beliefs while the evolved from supporting communism to his realization that communism wasn’t working in his former country and his coming out against it.  Levinsky forgoes his precious education that he dreamed of as a child to go into business for himself, Cahan had received his education in Russia and continued a mostly intellectual pursuit in his early years here on the staff of the Arbeiter Zeitung making a name for himself as a jounalist and reformer “One wrote to change the world, and changed the world by writing.” (MyJewishLearning.com)

        In David Lavinsky, Cahan wrought a character who much like himself was raised in an orthodox world and taught not a trade but to be a scholar, to study the Talmud, to be an intellectual leader.  Lavinsky begins to dream of a world away from the Talmudic world of his daily life.  He begins to dream of love, of women, of replacements for his mother, taken from him at too young an age.  He transfers his loss of motherly affection to dreams of more carnal affection.  This in turn drives his ambition towards America where he can pursue his dreams of an education and still support a wife and the family that comes with such an attachment.  Matilda becomes the focus of his desires, as do older women in America as his loneliness for his mother is confused with his loneliness for female companionship.  

        Lavinsky’s rise to power leads to his sacrifice of his education and the values of his youth.  This is something he has in common with many of his contemporaries in 20th century Jewish American fiction such as the character of the father of “the Swede” in American Pastoral whose success, and the

later success of “the Swede” leave the characters empty of their character.

(Roth)  Lavinsky, like Roth’s Swede can talk about their success but

the bragging is hollow and the reader comes away with the feeling that these

characters don’t feel much beyond their outward success, that this success does

nothing for them inwardly.

        Cahan on the other hand while successful as an American was also true to his feelings and his racial identity.  The Forverts allowed him to stay

connected to his people through articles, the Yiddish language and through his

Bindel brief letters, many of which had to do with orthodoxy, family matters

and relationships.  His character Lavinsky never had any such outlet or

connection to his youth and Cahan shows it through Lavinsky’s use of

prostitutes and his determination to be a successful businessman to the loss of

everything else.  Cahan obviously worried about this loss of identity in

his compatriots of the time, more the loss of identity than the loss of

religion.  With his stories Yekl: A Story of the Jewish Gheto, The Rise of David Levinsky, and some of the other short stories that he wrote during the time Cahan identifies a loss of identity, whether it’s the character that becomes Jake in the movie Hester Street, the movie version of Yekl, or of David Lavinsky the loss of the ability to pray, to connect with your language and your roots, the Americanization of formerly pious Jews, is a theme that Cahan fought against, all while becoming a successful American businessman taking the Forverts to the height of its economic and political power in the early forties.  

        Cahan kept at it until he was 91, neither apparently lonely nor dissatisfied in his position or accomplishments, unlike his characters he seemed at peace with his transformation to an American.  The continued use of Yiddish, and the help he gave other immigrants in finding their way through the morass of America and the seeming obstacles to remaining Jewish, and orthodox while becoming American seems to have kept him occupied and at peace with his world.

        So why did he write so much about Jews who found it difficult to stay true to their heritage?  The aforementioned daily contact he kept with the mass of recent emigrants and their families, not to mention the contacts he made through his support of unions and workers’ rights kept him informed of the daily problems the modern American Jew faced everyday.  To Cahan this was the Jewish American identity.  A group of people who shared religious, cultural, and genetic heritage that were finding it hard to fit in without divesting themselves of their shared identity.  

        For this reason Cahan found it important to continue to write about this in the paper he edited off and on for almost 50 years.  He read and answered letters to these people who were struggling to find a way to remain Jewish yet become American.  The more successful many of these jewish emigrants and second generation American Jews became the harder it was for them to hold onto their roots, the Yiddish of their parents and still fit into a country becoming increasingly suspicious of foreigners and non-Protestant Christians and adjusting its immigration policies to match.  

        Finally, Cahan shows in Lavinsky a summation of his beliefs in the political system of Capitalism and the American dream of financial gain to the detriment of your inner beliefs.  Cahan structured the Forverts as a successful business in a socialistic model.  He believed strongly in appealing to the masses of everyday emigrants in his case primarily Jews.  As such he saw people like his character Lavinsky as missing something in their success.  He saw a basic hunger, as Rosenfeld mentions in his piece “America the land of the sad Millionaire”, (Rosenfeld)  that the Lavinskys of the world could not satisfy.  Cahan wrote about a hunger that no amount of success and riches, no amount of illicit sex with women of ill repute, no amount of triumph over former teachers could ever fill.  Cahan wrote about the sadness of a man that turns his back on his heritage.

MyJewishLearning.com.  “Abraham Cahan Biography”.  Internet. 2013.

       

Rosenfeld, Isaac.  “America, Land of the Sad Millionaire”.    Breakthrough: a treasury of contemporary American-Jewish literature. New York, McGraw Hill 1964. Print.      

Roth, Phillip.  American Pastoral. Boston, Haughton. 1997. Print.