Yekl and the Hijab

Abraham Cahan Remains Relevant

Below is an excerpt from The Spirit of the Ghetto by Hutchins Hapgood. This book was originally published in 1902.

While the ethnic Ashkenazi experience was quite different from other immigrant groups in the USA

• because ethnic Ashkenazim generally brought capital to the USA,
• because embedded within the Ashkenazi immigration was a full-fledged intelligentsia, and
• because ethnic Ashkenazim were generally assisted by earlier German and Spanish Jewish communities, which were already established in the American upper middle and upper classes,

the adaptation of immigrant Ashkenazim to American modernity may provide a point of comparison for today's immigrant communities, which often face the same contradictions between their traditional cultures and American society.

Please note that like many other immigrant groups ethnic Ashkenazim have made many positive contributions to American culture as well as some negative ones like practically creating the slip-and-fall fraud industry. Unfortunately, just as the Zionist intelligentsia cannibalized Yiddish ethnic politics to create support for Zionism, Israel advocates have worked hard to transform any lingering attachment to Yiddish culture into a sort of reflexive Pavlovian connection to Israel in an effort to discourage Jewish Americans from criticizing either the American Jewish Zionist intelligentsia (e.g. Neocons) or the Zionist political economic oligarchy for pursuing a racist plutocratic hegemonic imperial program that harms the vast majority of Jews, the USA, and the whole world.

The Spirit of the Ghetto
(pp. 244-25)
by Hutchins Hapgood

The book [by Yiddish Daily Forward Editor Abraham Cahan], however, in which there is a perfect adaptation of "atmosphere" and information to the dramatic story is Yekl [originally published in 1896]. In this strong, fresh work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters and environment form an integral part.

Yekl indeed ought to be well known to the English reading public. It is a book written and conceived in the English language, is essen­tially idiomatic and consequently presents no linguistic difficulties. It gives a great deal of information about what seems to me by far the most interesting section of foreign New York. But what ought to count more than anything else is that it is a genuine piece of literature; picturing characters that live in art, in an environment that is made real, and by means of a story that is vital and significant and that never flags in interest. In its quality of freshness and buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. None of Cahan's later work, tho most of it has vital elements, stands in the same class with this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It takes a worthy place with the best Russian fiction, with that school of writers who make life actual by the sincere handling of detail in which the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled hu­man nature are portrayed. The English classic novel, greatly superior in the rounded and con­templative view of life, has yet nothing since Fielding comparable to Russian fiction in vivid presentation of the details of life. This whole school of literature can, I believe, be compared in quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama than anything which has intervened in English literature; not of course with those maturer dramas in which there is a great philosophical treatment of human life, but in the lyric fresh­ness and imaginative vitality which were com­mon to the whole lot of Elizabeth an writers.

Yekl is alive from beginning to end. The virtuosity in description which in Cahan's work sometimes takes the place of literature, is here quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew in New York who has left a wife and child in Russia in order to make a little home for them and himself in the new world. In the early part of the book he is becoming an "American" Jew, making a little money and taking a great fancy to the smart Jewish girl who wears a "rakish" hat, no wig, talks "United States," and has a profound contempt for the benighted pious "greenhorns" who have just arrived. A sweat­shop girl named Mamie moves his fancy deeply, so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the little boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is evidently trouble at hand. At that place Yekl meets them in a vividly told scene-ill-concealed disquiet on his part and naive alarm at the situ­ation on hers. Gitl's wig and her subdued, old­fashioned demeanor tell terribly on Yekl's nerves, and she is shocked by everything that happens to her in America. Their domestic unhappiness develops through a number of char­acteristic and simple incidents until it results in a divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming "American" and it is obvious that she is to be taken care of by a young man in the quarter more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds himself bound to Mamie, the pert "American" girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to regret the necessity of giving up his newly ac­quired freedom. This simple, strong theme is treated consistently in a vital presentative way. The idea is developed by natural and constant incident, psychological or physical, rather than by talk. Every detail of the book grows nat­urallylout of the situation.

A Sweatshop Girl Moves His Fancy Deeply

"Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to Yekl on account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are nec­essary to induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in subject disagree­able to the big body of American readers, most of whom are women. Without attempting to criticise the "voice of the people," it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book may be "unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters, the re­sult -- things may corne out unhappily, vice tri­umphant, and the section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of unpleasant­ness which publishers particularly object to; and in this sense Yek1 may fairly be called "unpleas­ant." Turgenieff's Torrents of Spring is also in this sense" unpleasant," for it tells how a young man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman of the world. But Turgenieff's novel is nevertheless full of buoyant vitality, full of freshness and charm, of youth and grace, full of life-giving qualities; be­cause of it we all may live more abundantly. The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness, strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed notwith­standing the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not afraid of "subjects."

Gitl

Another way in which a book may be "un­pleasant" is in the quality of deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with much philos­ophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life, which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians; not primarily in the theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope; in a sodden maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the feeling of spring in the blood, to naive readiness for experience. An American who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman. His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels. In the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be applied to Yekl; for Yekl is youthful and vital. There is buoyant spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be.

Apropos of Cahan's love of truth, and that word "unpleasant," a discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of Zangwill's play, The Children of the Ghetto, is illuminative. That poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy and truth; but for that very reason it was severely criticised by some uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their race which touched upon the "holy law." But some of the rich German Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for practical and social purposes to make little of their racial distinction, deprecated literature which portrayed the life of those Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs. Then, too, there is a tendency among the well­-to-do American Jews to look down upon their Ghetto brethen, to regard the old customs as benighted and to treat them with a certain con­tempt; altho they spend a great deal of chari­table money in the quarter. Feeling a little ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they object to a serious literary portrayal of him. They want no attention called to what they deem the less attractive aspects of their race. An uptown Jewish lady, on the appearance in a newspaper of a story about east side Jewish life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She told the writer of the sketch, when he was sent to see her, that she could not see why he didn't write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east side Jews. The scribe replied that he wrote of the Ghetto Jew because he found him interest­ing, while he couldn't see anything attractive or picturesque about the comfortable Israelite up­town.

Abraham Cahan's stories have been subjected to criticism inspired by the same spirit. Feeling the charm of his people he has attempted to picture them as they are, in shadow and light; and has consequently been accused of betraying his race to the Gentiles.

The attitude of the east side Jews towards writers like Zangwill and Cahan is in refreshing contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were enthu­siastic about Children of the Ghetto, in which they felt the Jews were truthfully and therefore sym­pathetically portrayed. In the literary sketches and plays now produced in considerable numbers in the "jargon," a great pride of race is mani­fest. The writers have not lost their self-re­spect, still abound in their own sense and are consequently vitally interesting. They are full of ideals and enthusiasm and do not object to what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as do their uptown brethren.

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