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Essay on Themes of the rise of David Levinsky and Malcolm X Autobiography
The Rise of David Levinsky, written by the legendary founder and editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, is an early Jewish-American classic. According to the scholar Sam B. Girgus, "The novel is more than an important literary work and cultural document. It forms part of the traditional ritual of renewal of the American Way."
First published in 1917, Abraham Cahan's realistic novel tells the story of a young talmudic scholar who emigrates from a small town in Russia to the melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York City. As the Jewish "greenhorn" rises from the depths of poverty to become a millionaire garment merchant, he discovers the unbearably high price of assimilation. It is one of the best fictional studies of Jewish character available in English, and at the same time an intimate and sophisticated account of American business culture.
At the risk of being facetious it may be said here that the best Yiddish novel is one written in English. Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky is a better reflection of Jewish life in American surroundings than all American-Yiddish fiction put together. The book is especially interesting to Americans since the author sets out with the manifest purpose of taking the American reader by the hand and showing him through all the nooks of the Ghetto. This motive, with the author’s genuine literary talent, a most felicitous style, a realistic treatment that is both engaging and convincing, makes The Rise of David Levinsky a monumental work, and surely the most remarkable contribution by an immigrant to the American novel. Cahan’s work as editor of The Jewish Daily Forward and as literary critic, his novel, and his subsequent attack upon American fiction constitute a bold challenge to American novelists.
Certainly before the turn of the last century, and undoubtedly since, we are proud to proclaim our nation a country of immigrants....
