by Seth Lipsky
NOTES
Preface
1 “had come to despise”: William and Sarah Schack, “From the American Scene: The Schooling of Abraham Cahan,” Commentary, November 1954.
Chapter 1
1 “Sometimes, when I think of my past”: Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (New York: Modern Library, 2001).
2 “Had I been a painter”: Abraham Cahan, The Education of Abraham Cahan, trans. Leon Stein, Abraham P. Conan, and Lynn Davison (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969), p. 3.
3 “an old sofa, torn and with its stuffing coming out.”: Ibid.
4 “I remember … a boot falling”: Ibid., p. 4.
5 “Somewhere, in one of the other houses”: Ibid.
6 Russia’s conscription laws: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Russia.”
7 “kindliest prince who has ever ruled Russia”: Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 7.
8 “The most intense of my first memories”: Ernest Poole, “Abraham Cahan: Socialist-Journalist-Friend of the Ghetto,” Outlook, October 28, 1911, cited in Theodore Marvin Pollock, “The Solitary Clarinetist: A Critical Biography of Abraham Cahan, 1860–1917,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1959, p. 9.
9 “entered the service of God.”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 10.
10 “The Jerusalem of Lithuania”: Ibid., p. 3.
11 “The stench in the courtyards”: Cahan, Education, pp. 12ff.
12 “a lower order of human being”: Ibid., p. 13.
13 a culture war was brewing: William and Sarah Schack, “From the American Scene: The Schooling of Abraham Cahan,” Commentary, November 1954.
14 “two Jews stop in the street”: Cahan, Education, p. 30.
15 “Vilna, the city of the Gaon”: Ibid.
16 situated in a lively part of town: Ibid., p. 12ff.
17 “Russian Hebraist, poet, and grammarian”: Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Lebensohn, Abraham.”
18 “treasured the singing”: Cahan, Education, p. 15.
19 “irresistibly drawn to secular books”: Ibid., p. 33.
20 “the time of my greatest religious fervor.”: Ibid., pp. 62ff.
21 uncle’s business spiraled downward: Ibid., p. 66.
22 “If I had studied at a gymnasium: Ibid., pp. 72ff.
23 “I was no longer pious.” The quotes in this paragraph, Ibid., p. 76.
Chapter 2
1 “I felt as if I had suddenly grown”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 36.
2 “The Vilna Public Library”: Cahan, Education, pp. 95ff.
3 “Clearly, there were no mysteries!”: Ibid., p. 89.
4 “on rare occasions, however”: Ibid., p. 100.
5 “A Jewish man told me”: Ibid., p. 101.
6 less a university than what today we might call: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 45.
7 “to insure that future Jewish teachers of Jews”: Cahan, Education, p. 107.
8 “Each new terrorist deed”: Ibid., p. 140.
9 relaxation of the laws regarding military service: Howe, World, p. 7.
10 “hunchbacked son of a cantor”: Ibid., pp. 140–41.
11 “Even though they dressed and chatted”: Ibid., p. 141.
12 “I walked in a daze as one newly in love.”: Cahan, Education, pp. 146ff.
13 “You will bring misfortune on your own head”: Ibid., p. 151.
14 On Sunday morning, March 1, 1881: On Alexander II’s assassination, see Ronald Sanders, The Downtown Jews: Portraits of an Immigrant Generation (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 11–13.
15 “Our czar is dead”: Cahan, Education, p. 152.
16 “Every day the press blazoned a new sensation,”: Ibid., p. 154.
17 “Even though the pogrom”: Ibid., p. 158.
18 thrilled to be in the big city: On Cahan’s St. Petersburg trip, see ibid, pp. 160–62.
19 “We kissed and embraced”: Ibid., p. 163.
Chapter 3
1 the tension between Cahan’s universalist, radical self: Ronald Sanders makes this point in The Downtown Jews, p. 38.
2 “the principle of the revolutionaries”: Cahan, Education, p. 165.
3 “I began to burn with blushing”: Ibid, p. 166.
4 a Russian translation of volume one of Marx’s Das Kapital: Ibid., p. 168.
5 “Your darkly charming friend”: Ibid., p. 171.
6 “If I loved my mother”: Ibid., p. 146.
7 “an uneasy sleep.”: Ibid., p. 171.
8 “When the interrogation was ended”: Ibid., p. 174.
9 When complications arose: The details about Cahan’s escape are drawn from ibid., pp. 176ff.
10 “We are your brothers. We are Jews”: Ibid., p. 182.
11 “the beginning of the nationalist movement”: Ibid.
12 “stopped talking in Russian”: Ibid., p. 182ff.
13 “were an instinctive outpouring”: Ibid., p. 183.
14 “the Ukrainian pogrom makers”: Ibid.
15 “Two groups emerged”: Ibid., p. 185.
16 “a pioneer of this pro-Palestine movement.”: Ibid. On Belkind’s life, see Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Belkind, Israel.”
17 “first of all a socialist”: Ibid.
18 “And what would he be giving his life for?”: Ibid.
19 “imagined a wonderful communist life”: Ibid., p. 186.
20 “I paced my room in a fever.”: Ibid.
21 “On that Saturday night there began”: Ibid., p. 196.
22 “We made a strange group”: Ibid., p. 199.
23 thousands of Jewish refugees: The estimates of arrivals are from Howe, World, pp. 29–30.
24 “with their feminine black feathered hats”: Cahan, Education, p. 202.
25 “The sad tones touched the sorrowing ears”: Ibid., p. 203.
26 “I was not just running away”: Ibid., p. 205.
27 “a long coat that was a cross”: Dr. Charles Rayevsky, “My First Meeting with Ab. Cahan,” in Jubilee Writings on the Occasion of Ab. Cahan’s 50th Birthday, quoted in Cahan, Education, p. 206.
28 “bitterly disappointed”: Cahan, Education, p. 204.
29 “Who needs you?”: Ibid., p. 207.
30 “Long live freedom in the American republic!”: Ibid., p. 209.
31 “for the first time I could see”: Ibid., p. 210.
32 “bicycles, bootblacks, and hansom cabs”: Ibid., p. 212.
33 “that all Americans were tall and slender”: Ibid., p. 216.
34 “the water and the sky were blue”: Ibid., pp. 215–16.
35 “literally overcome with the beauty”: Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (New York: Modern Library, 2001), p. 86.
Chapter 4
1 no Statue of Liberty stood guard: The description of New York in 1882 is drawn from Sanders, Downtown, pp. 40–41.
2 a “heartless bourgeois.”: Cahan, Education, p. 218.
3 “the first Russian-Jewish intellectuals”: Ibid., p. 225.
4 “considered us to be atheists”: Ibid.
5 “was not really my dream”: Ibid., p. 226.
6 at the beginning of an enormous transformation: Howe, World, pp. 69–70.
7 “two dozen Christian churches, a dozen synagogues”: Ibid.
8 “I learned more English from him”: Cahan, Education, p. 233.
9 “Every hour of work seemed like a year,”: Ibid., p. 230.
10 “contained a large class of proletarian intellectuals: Sanders, Downtown, p. 53.
11 “The worker was being reduced”: Cahan, Education, p. 231.
12 among the longshoremen: For the longshoremen’s strike, see Sanders, Downtown, pp. 56–59.
13 “we were scabs who”: I. Kopeloff, Amol in Amerika (Warsaw, 1928), cited in Howe, World, pp. 102–3.
14 Eisler’s Golden Rule Hall: Howe, World, p. 103.
15 “thumping heart.”: Cahan, Education, p. 236.
16 “starte
d for the door”; “hero of the day”: Ibid.
17 “If it is for Jewish immigrants”: Ibid., p. 237.
18 a hall in the back of a German saloon: Sanders, Downtown, p. 64.
19 “the first socialist speech in Yiddish”: Cahan, Education, p. 237
20 “kindled a wave of excitement”: Bernard Weinstein quoted in Howe, World, p. 103.
21 “with elaborate Vilna curses”: Cahan, Education, p. 238.
22 “typical of the moment”: Howe, World, p. 104.
23 “It is a joke,”: Cahan quoted in Melech Epstein, Profiles of Eleven (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), p. 63.
24 “The anarchists and even the socialists”: Cahan, Education, p. 282.
25 “careful but tortured English”: Ibid., pp. 239ff.
26 “religion of humanity”: Howe, World, p. 104.
27 “for me the sermons”: Cahan, Education, p. 249.
28 “filled with a crushing longing.”: Ibid., p. 241ff.
29 “determined”; “only a few years earlier”: Ibid., p. 273.
30 “I call them socialist meetings,”: Ibid., p. 297.
31 “How would it look for a socialist”: Ibid., p. 283.
32 “For Russian socialists”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 84.
33 “almost my entire first presidential”: Cahan, Education, p. 289.
34 “first lesson in American politics”: Ibid., p. 292.
35 “rum, Romanism, and rebellion”: Ibid.
36 “criticized the two capitalist parties”: Ibid., p. 289.
37 “read and reread”: Ibid., p. 292.
38 “What is a ghetto?”: Ibid., p. 355.
39 “a woman with a mournfully pious face”: The facts about this meeting come from ibid., pp. 298–99.
Chapter 5
1 February 1885: Sanders, Downtown, p. 75.
2 “much admired for her discriminating intelligence”: Cahan, Education, p. 306.
3 “proofreader, manager, bookkeeper”: Ibid., p. 308.
4 Chicago’s Haymarket Square: This account of the Haymarket affair is drawn from Sanders, Downtown, pp. 80ff, and from Howe, World, p. 51.
5 “bloody fruit,” “Anarchy’s Red Hand”: New York Times, May 6, 1886.
6 “For us, the thirteenth of March”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 84.
7 skeptical of anarchism as a viable movement: Ibid., pp. 84–86.
8 “When I got my membership card”: Ibid., p. 86.
9 “both more necessary and more possible”: Ibid.
10 “There had been, we knew, unions”: Ibid., pp. 91ff.
11 “Me, I’m from the town of Proletarishok”: Ibid., p. 110. On the founding of the Arbeiter Zeitung, see ibid., pp. 97–110.
12 “Today our biblical portion”: Cahan quoted in ibid., p. 97.
13 “caused a revolution in my brain”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 194.
14 “Reform is chloroform,”: Gus Tyler, A Vital Voice: 100 Years of the Jewish Forward (New York: Forward Association, 1997), p. 9.
15 “that the place of the socialists”: Ibid.
16 “how to put an end to the endless persecution”: Ibid., p. 19.
17 “widely recognized as the most articulate”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 148.
18 “He’s a clown, a comedian”: Quoted in Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 146.
19 “We Jews have a special obligation”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 152.
20 “emancipation of society from Judaism”: Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), p. 52; also see Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 112.
21 “He was always telling jokes”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 153.
22 “a lively and happy girl”: Ibid.
23 “I had never had such a strong feeling of life”: Ibid., p. 154.
24 “Eloquently you spoke of the freedom”: George Leonard quoted in Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 144.
25 “What shall be the stand of the organized workers”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 149; The account of the showdown in Brussels has been widely written about and has been drawn here from, among others, Tyler, Vital Voice, and Sanders, Downtown.
26 “were in no way prepared to assume”: Sanders, Downtown, 151.
27 “did not permit a heroic and pure-hearted”: Ibid., pp. 151–52.
28 “That was my father’s chair: Abraham Cahan, “Ab. Cahan Meets Friedrich Engels,” an excerpt from Bleter fun mayn lebn, trans. Yankl Stillman, Jewish Currents (November 2008), at http://jewishcurrents.org/2008_nov_cahan.htm.
29 “the Jews are not drinkers”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 165.
30 “I wanted to have the pleasure”: Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn, quoted in Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 197.
31 “I will close with a name”: Howells quoted in Sanders, Downtown, p. 191.
32 “I feel so not only as the socialist editor”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 197.
33 “I have read your story”: On Cahan’s meeting with Howells, see Pollock, “Clarinetist,” pp. 198ff, citing Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn.
34 “Imagine then what an effect”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 199.
35 “He found work for her and for himself”: Excerpt from “A Sweat-Shop Romance,” in Abraham Cahan, Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto. (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), pp. 201–2.
36 “I rang the bell and heard sounds inside”: This account of Cahan’s meeting his parents is drawn from Yankl Stillman’s translation of Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn, published in the November 2008 issue of Jewish Currents.
37 “an entrapped swindler”: J. C. Rich, Sixty Years of the Jewish Daily Forward (New York: Forward Association, 1957), p. 13.
38 “a Bolshevik before there were Bolsheviks”: Ibid. 61 “labor fakers”: Ibid.
39 “dual unionism”: Howe, World, p. 523. The account of the fight was drawn from several sources, principally Sanders, Downtown, and Tyler, Vital Voice.
40 “Though led by men who regarded themselves”: Howe, World, p. 523.
41 “was startled to hear the lecturer”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 167.
42 “nervous and extremely temperamental.”: Ibid., p. 177.
43 “House of Lords”: “House of Commons” Ibid.
44 “my hat became so heavy”: The facts in this paragraph are from Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 186, citing Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn.
45 “hold high the flag of international class conflict”: Ibid.
Chapter 6
1 “At Basel, I founded the Jewish State”: The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, ed. Raphael Patai, vol. 2 (New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), p. 581. Diary entry of September 3, 1897, written in Vienna.
2 “Zionists with seasickness.”: Georgi Plekhavov quoted in Howe, World, p. 293.
3 Some fifty-eight dailies in New York alone: Joseph W. Campbell, 1897: The Year That Defined American Journalism (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 74.
4 the Forward jumped into this mix: The first edition’s headlines are noted in Tyler, A Vital Voice, inside front cover.
5 the smell of fresh wood filled: Rich, Sixty Years, p. 18. Also see Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 187.
6 The Forward’s first Sunday edition: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 187.
7 “the only good novelist in England”: Ibid., p. 188.
8 Cahan opposed using the Forward: Sanford E. Marovitz, Abraham Cahan (New York: Twayne, 1996), pp. 39ff.
9 “People love a fight,”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 189.
10 succeeded in ousting hundreds of them: Tyler, Vital Voice, p. 13.
11 “the more voracious and penetrating reader”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 194.
12 “painfully reluctant to part with his”: Abraham Cahan, Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto. (New Yo
rk: Dover Publications, 1970), p. 89.
13 “grew shy and could not say a word”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 205.
14 “Not Yekl the Yankee … Yekl.”: Ibid. 68 “Our editors have their own”: Ibid.
15 from the Russian master Ivan Turgenev: Sanders, Downtown, pp. 201ff. This lively account of Cahan’s encounter with Howells draws on Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn.
16 Jewish life on the Lower East Side: Sanders, Downtown, pp. 201–2.
17 “You know, dear Mr. Howells,”: Ibid., p. 202.
18 “You describe only Jews”: Ibid.
19 The Arbeiter Zeitung’s readers loved it: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” pp. 206ff.
20 Couldn’t the novelist have painted: Sanders, Downtown, p. 203.
21 “You can betch you’ bootsh!”: Cahan, Yekl, pp. 2, 19.
22 “the most hideous jargon”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 220, citing review of August 1, 1896 in the Commercial Advertiser. On the critical reaction to Yekl, see Pollock, “Clarinetist,” pp. 220–25.
23 “from beginning to end throughout”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 221, citing review from October 1896 issue of Bookman. 70 Yekl “and his fellow-personages”: Pollock, “Clarinetist,” p. 221, citing review in New York Times, July 12, 1896.
24 “new star of realism”: Sanders, Downtown, p. 204.
25 “Novels dealing with the Irish”: Moses Rischin, “Abraham Cahan and the New York Commercial Advertiser: A Study in Acculturation,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 43, no. 1 (September 1953), pp. 10–11. Rischin quotes from Cahan’s memoir.