First published in a collection of short stories in 1896, The Imported Bridegroom by Abraham Cahan illustrates life for Jewish immigrants living in New York City during the late nineteenth century. The main character, Asriel Stroon, is the narrator of the story. As an retired businessman and widower, Stroon has shifted focus in life from his business to his family and faith. He begins his new start in life by reinvigorating his faith, and to do this he takes a pilgrimage to his homeland of Pravly. Through this experience one can see the not only how Stroon as has changed but how the trip changes him. Asriel Stroon pilgrimage to his homeland of Pravly changed his identity as a New York Jew and how he views life as a Jewish immigrant. …show more content…
During the time that this story was written and published, Jewish life in New York City was centered around the city’s Lower East Side, the same location that the story takes place.
However, it was not there were not only Jewish people living in this part of New York City, but also the Irish, African Americans, and Germans. Originally a rural area of the city dominated by the upper class, it soon became an area of industry and thus attracting many immigrant workers. “Originally the home of the middle and upper classes (as is still shown by an often refined architecture, especially in the blocks nearer to the core of Old New York), the neighbourhood thus became the immigrant quarter par excellence, characterized by a strange, even fanciful urban geography” (Maffi). Stroons current living situations, that of a nice house which was probably previously owned by a middle class New Yorker at one point, along with the bustling of the Lower East Side and rich diversity already would have set him apart as a New York Jew when compared to how he grew up in Pravly. The story even opens with Stroon’s daughter, Flora, reading novels by Dickens and other gentile writers of the time (Cahan, pg. …show more content…
748). As previously mentioned, Asriel Stroon is a New York Jew.
He immigrated to New York from Pravly thirty five years before the current setting of the story (Cahan, pg. 750). As a former businessman, Stroon made his mark on the world by making his money through the production of flour and bakeries, before retiring. It is during this time before his pilgrimage back to Pravly that Stroon begins to see how “making it” in the big city has not only affected his daughter, but also himself. “Cahan has constructed a father and daughter who inhabit two separate cultural and religious spheres, and for whom languages and texts signify their different daily negotiations with their ghetto world” (Foote). The biggest difference between the two of them is the way they speak and how they view Flora’s future. Though Stroon has been in America for a long time, he is not as Americanized as his daughter. Flora very much wants to marry a doctor, and she has a very detailed image of what that life will be like for her (Cahan, pg.
749). However, the turning point in Stroon’s choice for to visit his homeland was when he was reciting Kaddish, a prayer that sons say for their fathers after they have died. During this time Stroon realizes that he is homesick (Cahan, pg. 752). During this time, Stroon also realized how much he wished to reconcile with the people from his hometown. He even says “his notion of genuine Judaism was something inseparably associated with Pravly” (Cahan, pg 752). . These reactions show that Asriel is trying to make a change, but it also reveals he has some doubt about what being a good Jewish man living in New York City. When Stroon arrives in Pravly he realizes nothing has changed beyond a few of his friends being dead. He seems to be the one who has changed the most. There are times when Stroon is seized with his own doubt, questioning his identity (Cahan, pg. 753). However, he soon stops questioning himself and begins to enjoy being back in his homeland. He quickly realizes that since immigrating to America he has gained wealth beyond that of his old friends. He flashes his money around the synagogue, something that does not gain him any really ground on the Sabbath. Stroon realizes then that he is the outsider. In fact it is during this low point during the service that makes him realize what he must do. He must take the prodigy, Shaya, home to marry his daughter. According to one interpretation of Stroon’s urgent need for his daughter to marry a rabbi is because nothing can “satisfy the pangs of spiritual hunger suffered by most of these people except maintaining the faith of tradition” (Marvovitz, pg. 202). This idea of having a very pious son-in-law comforts Stroon, seeing as someone will be able to pray Kaddish for him and can insure he will have good Jewish grandchildren as well. When Stroon realizes just how different he is from his native country, he goes through a change. His thoughts about what a good Jewish New Yorker evolve in such away that he realizes he is not as good or as pious as he thought he was. Stroon has been concerned for he own afterlife since the story began, but it is in this pilgrimage to Pravly, that he is not as prepared to die and move on as he thought. He sees the faults in his secular, Americanized daughter and wants to change her. This change in Stroon affects his identity as a Jewish person, when at first he was only truly concerned about his own piety, he is now concerned about the piety of his daughter and future grandchildren. It is upon his return from the his homeland that Stroon finally comes to terms with what being a New York Jew is like. He watches his very pious prodigy become “an appikoros” or one who throws out rabbinic traditions (Cahan, pg 782). His originally plans to marry off his daughter to Shaya seem to be lost, but it was Flora who changed Shaya to fit her perfect idea of a good husband. This greatly affects the way that Stroon feels about his own faith. After his daughter and Shaya eloped, negating to have a traditionally Jewish marriage ceremony Stroon becomes nearly unhinged by their blatant secularism. He becomes harsher in his Jewish ways and sees only one way out-to marry his very pious, orthodox housekeeper, Tamara, and be reborn a new in the Jewish faith. The two marriages that happen in the last part of the book seem to symbolize both how difficult it is for Stroon to find to religious piety and how easy it is to lose one’s faith when immigrating to a new country. Flora and Shaya’s marriage cause a great rupture in the Stroon family structure. Stroon breaks off ties with his daughter and son-in-law. Their lack of piety hurts him on a physical and spiritual level, “I am all alone in the world-alone as a stone” (Cahan, pg. 786). He realizes in these moments that he has lost his expensive prodigy and his daughter. His problems with the young secular generation are never resolved, if only put off by his new marriage (Kress, pg. 27). Stroon has lost all hope for a son to pray Kaddish to him by the end of the story. He no longer believes that his imported bridegroom will give him the insurance he needs for the hereafter. He sees the only option is to export himself out of New York City with Tamara. Stroons finally change in his identity is to completely denounce his life as a New York Jew. He realizes through much spiritual suffering that he doesn’t fit into the young, secular generation. Though at one point in time, before his retirement, Stroon was also quite secular in this beliefs. This process of change, brought on first by his retirement, but more purposefully by his own pilgrimage to his homeland, greatly changed his own cultural identity. Stroon need to be reborn only reinforces the idea that being a New York Jew in the late nineteenth century is not good enough for him.
The novel Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska examines the roles and experiences of Jewish immigrants in America roughly after the years of WWI in New York City. The novel follows the journey of Sara, a young Jewish immigrant, and her family who comes to the country from Poland with different beliefs than those in the Smolinsky household and by much of the Jewish community that lived within the housing neighborhoods in the early 1900s. Through Sara’s passion for education, desire for freedom and appreciation for her culture, she embodies a personal meaning of it means to be an “American”.
According to Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, between 1880 and about World War I, the vast majority of Eastern European Jews and Southern Italians came to the United States populating neighborhoods in New York and the Lower East Side is the best example. One thing, which was common to the immigrant experience is that, all immigrants come to the United States as the “land of opportunity”. They come to America with different types of expectations that are conditioned by their origins and families. But every immigrant comes to America wanting to make himself/herself into a person, to be an individual and to become somebody. In this case, the author showed in Bread Givers, Sarah’s desire to make herself into something and bring something unique to America, which only she can bring. It is an effort to understand the immigrants, particularly Jewish immigrants, from a woman’s point of view. The book shows that it was a challenge for Jewish immigrant children, particularly females, on the account of the intensity of their family’s connections and obligations that was so critical for the immigrant communities. This was true for the immigrants who came to settle in the neighborhoods like the one Sarah and her family settled in.
Anzia Yezierska’s 1925 novel Bread Givers ends with Sara Smolinsky’s realization that her father’s tyrannical behavior is the product of generations of tradition from which he is unable to escape. Despite her desire to embrace the New World she has just won her place in, she attempts to reconcile with her father and her Jewish heritage. The novel is about the tension inherent in trying to fit Old and New worlds together: Reb tries to make his Old World fit into the new, while Sara tries to make her New World fit into the Old. Sara does not want to end up bitter and miserable like her sisters, but she does not want to throw her family away all together. Her struggle is one of trying to convince her patriarchal family to accept her as an independent woman, while assimilating into America without not losing too much of her past.
In “Part One: The Negro and the City,” Osofsky describes the early Black neighborhoods of New York City, in the lower parts of Manhattan: from Five Points, San Juan Hill, and the Tenderloin. He describes the state of Black community of New York in the antebellum and postbellum, and uses the greater United States, including the Deep South, as his backdrop for his microanalysis of the Blacks in New York. He paints a grim picture of little hope for Black Americans living in New York City, and reminds the reader that despite emancipation in the north long before the Civil War, racism and prejudices were still widespread in a city where blacks made up a small portion of the population.
South Bronx has got influence from the Caribbean culture in the beginning of twentieth century. (Gordon 2005) says immigrants greatly
For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a powerful example of the turmoil that is created in the family as a result of the conflict between the Old World and the New World.
A well-discussed debate in today’s economy is the issues concerning immigrants and their yearning desire to become American citizens. As displayed in The Jungle, a rather perturbing novel about the trials and ruthless temptations early America presents to a Lithuanian family, adjusting to a new surroundings and a new way of life is quite difficult. To make matters worse, language barriers and lack of domestic knowledge only seem to entice starvation and poverty among newly acquired citizens, who simply wish to change their social and economic lives to better themselves and their families. Such is the case of Jurgis Rudkus and his extended family, consisting of cousins, in-laws, and their multitude of children. Natives to the country of Lithuania, Jurgis and his family decide that, after Jurgis and his love, Ona, marry, they will move to Chicago to find work in order to support their family.
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
Boroff, David. "A Little Milk, a Little Honey: Jewish Immigrants in America." 1966. Oates. 87-97.
The overlook of society creates this division between men and women, suppressing the latter. For generations women have been oppressed and against their counterparts. This barrier deems women less superior and unequal to men, making them appear weak. Since men are seen more strong, society thinks that they should be the more dominant ones and over shadow females. Kate Atkinson and Thomas Raddall use similar elements to display this idea. In the short stories The War on Women and The Wedding Gift, Thomas Raddall and Kate Atkinson show the oppression of the women and their attempts to achieve freedom. The authors both use similar elements of location and characters.
The Chosen “deals with the problems Jews have faced in trying to preserve their heritage – in particular, the problem of how to deal with the danger of assimilation” (Young). The Jews have always been professionals occupying jobs in medicine, law, education, and other fields requiring a college degree. American Jews, however, face a dilemma: “Ideas from this secular world inevitably impinge upon an individual born in a church community or a synagogue community, especially when that individual embarks on a college experience” (Potok 2). American Jews must either take on nonprofessional jobs, assuming an identity completely different from that of European Jews, or expose themselves to secular America. Isolation is thoroughly impractical for the American Jew.
Mary went from not even attending school in Russia, to star pupil in America, illustrating the promise that America had to offer immigrants. American afforded Mary with opportunities that were impossible in her home country of Russia. Even though Frieda also lived in America, her circumstances represent the realities of the Old World. For instance, Frieda’s only way of learning about American history was through Mary, as she was not afforded time to read while working. By not attending school, Frieda did not only became stuck in the Old World mentality in terms of education but also in terms of marriage. Her father “had put Frieda to work out of necessity. The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of marriage, but my father would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare” (Antin, 218). Frieda was not given the opportunity to marry for love, as was the American way, but was married out of necessity for her welfare, reminiscent of the Old World mentality. Public education provided Mary with the opportunity to marry not because she had to in order to survive, but because she wanted to. The stark contrast between the lives of Frieda, representing life in the
“The Clemency of the Court” written by Willa Cather for the Hesperian magazine, and “Clothes” from Arranged Marriage written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, both discuss immigration to the United States. Although both authors write about the same subject, the author's’ point of view on the subject differ from one another. In “The Clemency of the Court” Cather is showing that the United States is failing in protecting its immigrants, while in “Clothes” it is showing the impact that the “American Dream” has on immigrants, and how it has the power to changes lives. In both stories, the main character struggle with the idea of the “American Dream”
Sister Lucille. 1951. “The Causes of Polish Immigration to the United States.” Polish American Studies 8:85-91.
The story “All Summer in a Day” and the excerpt from “Immigrants” are similar in many ways. Immigration takes place in both texts. In “All Summer in a Day”, Margot and her