Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905-1914 (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C)

Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914

Mikhail Krutikov

Stanford University Press

Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914

Stanford Series in Jewish History and Culture Edited by Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein

Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914 Mikhail Krutikov

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 2001

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2001 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krutikov, Mikhail. Yiddish fiction and the crisis of modernity, 1905–1914 / Mikhail Krutikov. p. cm.—(Stanford series in Jewish history and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-3546-8 (alk. paper) 1. Yiddish fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Yiddish fiction—20th century—History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Title. II. Series. pj5124.k78 2001 839´.13309—dc21 2001020689 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free, archival quality paper. Original printing 2001 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Typeset by Robert C. Ehle in 10/12 ITC Galliard

Contents

1. 2. 3. 4.

Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Introduction: Conceptual Framework and Methodology The Economic Crisis The Crisis of Revolution The Crisis of Immigration Love and Destiny: The Crisis of Youth Conclusion: Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity

vii ix 1 12 67 118 160 210

Notes

217

Bibliography

233

Index

243

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Acknowledgments

The Charles H. Revson Fellowship and Max Weinreich Fellowship, as well as scholarships from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Rich Foundation, enabled me to go to New York and to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America during the years 1991–95. The whole project, which involved moving my family to New York for almost five years, would have been impossible without the enthusiastic help of David Fishman and David Roskies of the Seminary and the support of its chancellor, Ismar Schorsch. During my years in New York I enjoyed the wonderful and inspiring atmosphere of the Seminary. I am thankful to all my teachers, and especially to Avraham Holtz, whose classes were always stimulating. Through all these years, I was privileged to work closely with David Roskies and to enjoy his friendship, help, and support. Other sources of inspiration were the classes and conversations I had with Dan Miron and Rakhmiel Peltz at Columbia University. During the final stages of work on my book I received much help and encouragement from my colleagues and friends at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies, Gennady Estraikh and Marie Wright. I am also glad to acknowledge the financial support I received in Oxford from the Ian Karten Trust. I had the advantage of having leading experts in Jewish literature and history on my defense committee: Professors Zvia Ginor, Avraham Holtz, Dan Miron, David Roskies, and Michael Stanislawski. Their meticulous reading of my thesis enabled me to correct some errors and to reformulate certain ideas. Dafna Clifford was very kind to offer her valuable help in the

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Acknowledgments proofreading and editing of the final draft of my thesis, which became the foundation of this book. Needless to say, I am completely responsible for all flaws that have remained uncorrected. My wife, Yulia, and my children were patient and supportive during the years of our student life. I am indebted to my daughter, Anya, for her advice and careful editing of my English.

Note on Transliteration

The transliteration of Yiddish generally follows the YIVO system. The transliteration of Russian follows the system of the Library of Congress. However, for the personal names of some Yiddish and Russian writers, I have preferred to use the established English forms.

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Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914

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Introduction: Conceptual Framework and Methodology

The theme of this book is the encounter of Yiddish literature with modernity in the beginning of the twentieth century. The precise chronological borders of 1905–14 have been chosen for a number of historical and literary reasons. First, these years frame the period between the two major historical events, the abortive revolution of 1905 in Russia and the beginning of World War I, that determined the direction of Russia’s development and seriously affected the course of world history in the twentieth century. Second, the sequence of events between 1903 and 1905 in Russia—the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, and the revolution of 1905, which culminated in the October Manifesto and the pogroms—had a tremendous impact on the internal and external situation of Russian, Polish, and American Jewry, three major communities in which Yiddish literature was produced and read. The third reason stems from the development of Yiddish literature. As the period of transition from one literary generation to another, the decade between 1905 and 1914 was one of the most productive and creative epochs in the entire history of Yiddish literature. The three authors known as the “classics”—Mendele Moykher Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, 1836?–1917), Sholem Aleichem (Sholem Rabinovitsh, 1859–1916), and Yitskhok Leybush Peretz (1852– 1915)—were completing their literary careers, while the new generation, represented by David Bergelson in Russia, Isaac Meyer Weissenberg and Sholem Asch in Poland, and Joseph Opatoshu and David Ignatov in America, was entering the literary stage and publishing its first works. Through

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Introduction the collective effort of these authors Yiddish literature acquired an unprecedented scope artistically, in terms of variety of styles, forms, genres, and themes, as well as institutionally, in terms of publications, readership, and organization. Before we go into a discussion of Yiddish literature, we need to clarify some theoretical concepts used in this work. The methodology of this study is deliberately eclectic and draws upon a variety of methods of literary analysis, which include Bakhtin’s theory of the novel as polyphonic ideological discourse, Marxist sociological analysis, as well as structuralist ideas about composition, plot, and character. Some of these methods have been more popular with students of Yiddish literature, others less so. This study is an attempt to combine the different methodologies in order to elucidate the multilayered nature of the Yiddish literary system in one of its most productive and interesting periods. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony as the main characteristic of the novel is one of the basic premises of this study. This idea can be applied to the analysis of various aspects of literary works. Following the insights of the early Bakhtin and his school (P. N. Medvedev, V. N. Voloshinov), I shall pay close attention to the ideological polyphony, the stylistic representations of various voices expressing positions on political, cultural, religious, and other issues.1 According to Bakhtin’s school, expressions of ideology in the novel cannot be reduced to direct statements by the author or his characters, which are incorporated in the text, but should be found first and foremost in “the artistic structure of the novel as a whole and the artistic functions of each of its elements.”2 George Lukács, another influential theorist of the novel, stresses the quintessentially open character of the novel as “bourgeois epic.”3 In the 1962 preface to the second edition of his seminal work The Theory of the Novel (1914–15), Lukács formulated its main idea as follows: “The central problem of the novel is the fact that a¥rt has to write off the closed and total forms which stem from a rounded totality of being—that art has nothing more to do with any world of forms that is immanently complete in itself.”4 According to Lukács, the novel is the only literary form that can adequately reflect the state of modern bourgeois society. Lukács’s definition of the novel as an open form has its parallel in the modern semiotic concept of Umberto Eco, who considers the dialectics between the “closed” and “open” forms from a functional point of view: “A work of art . . . is a complete and closed form in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an open product on account of its susceptibility to countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity.”5 Further, Eco speaks about the “structural vitality” of the open work, its openness to “a virtually unlimited

Introduction range of possible readings, each of which causes the work to acquire new vitality in terms of one particular taste, or perspective, or personal performance.”6 He also establishes a link between the prevalence of the open form in art and the revolutionary feelings in the society.7 The inner structural dialectic between “openness” and “closeness” in the narrative text has been more recently explored by Russian literary historian and theorist Yurii Lotman. Lotman distinguishes between two principles of organization, which can be discovered in any narrative text. The first principle is that of the cycle and has its origins in the mythological background of the text: “The text is perceived as a certain endlessly recurring device which is synchronized with the cyclical processes of nature.”8 Plot and action as development of events or characters have little significance in this form of organization, since the characters in the story represent not individual personalities, but rather different personae of the same mythological archetype. A text organized in this way aims at producing a unifying classification of reality, which enables the reader to “build a picture of the world through establishing a unity between its disparate spheres,” and thus restore stability and order in an apparently disarranged world (p. 225). The clearest examples of such organization are myths and folk tales, although its elements can be discovered in modern literature, especially in its popular forms, as well. In Bakhtin’s terms this textual organization corresponds to the monological discourse, which, in turn, is characteristic for Eco’s “closed form.” The alternative to this cyclical principle of textual organization is the principle of linear development. This text-generating mechanism puts forward not conformity to a principle of order, but the deviations therefrom. Lotman calls this device the principle of “transformation.” Transformation is the underlying principle of organization of the anecdote, the core unit of a historical narrative whose purpose is to report about change. The very names of such genres as novella and novel reflect this focus on the new. Transformation is the dominant principle of the modern psychological novel with its attention to the inner development of the individual character. The picture of the world produced by such a narrative can be fluid, unstable, and confusing. The principle of transformation is characteristic of the “polyphonic” and “open” text. It is important to keep in mind, however, that, according to Lotman, any plot always contains two aspects: classification and transformation. Any modern narrative can be perceived as “a product of interaction and interference of these basic types of texts” (p. 226). The concepts of monological and polyphonic discourse, open and closed form, cyclical and linear plot structure will be used quite extensively in the present study. A number of Yiddish novels and novellas will be analyzed

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Introduction within the historical, social, and ideological context of the time in order to demonstrate how the various forms of artistic representation of reality relate to each other within the common literary discourse. These texts have been chosen for their artistic quality and richness of detail, characterization, and plot construction. A much greater number of short stories have been left out primarily because their representations of characters and events are too thin. The result of the interpretation will emerge as a system of paradigms that describe the development of the novel genre in Yiddish literature from 1905 to 1914. A limited number of excursuses into the history of the Yiddish novel beyond this brief period will provide additional examples to underscore the universality of these paradigms. The word crisis seems to be most appropriate if one is looking for a brief definition of the condition of Yiddish-speaking Jews during the post-1905 decade. The Yiddish-speaking community was confronted with many challenges, the most important one being the dissolution of the traditional way of life and communal organization of the shtetl under the combined impact of forces of economic modernization, political radicalism, and demographic migration. Yiddish writers responded to this process in a variety of ways, ranging from the enthusiastic embrace of the new to its dramatic rejection. The analysis of the various forms and ways in which different aspects of the crisis of the Jewish condition were represented in the Yiddish novel and novella constitutes the thematic core of this work. The acute sense of crisis was, of course, not the prerogative of Yiddish literature alone. The English critic Frank Kermode described the crisis in the modern novel as “the conflict between the deterministic pattern any plot suggests, and the freedom of persons within that plot to choose and so to alter the structure, the relations of beginning, middle, and end.”9 Kermode’s analysis of the English novel of the same period in some ways served as an inspiration for the present study.10 Many phenomena, which Kermode observes in the English novel of the first decade of this century, have their correspondences in Yiddish literature. The preference for the open ending over the closed one, the emergence of a “new woman,” the rejection of the idea of the novel as a moral guide, and the increasing demand for collaboration on the readers’ part—all these as well as other features characterize not only the English, but also the Yiddish novel of the decade preceding the First World War. What is so suggestive in Kermode’s essay is his overall approach, not the similarities between the English and the Yiddish novel, which ought not be exaggerated. Yiddish literary scholarship has been dominated by works on individual writers and topical studies. Thus, it is rather innovative to take a relatively short and cohesive historical period and to look at the major works of the main narrative genres written contemporaneously all over the Yiddish literary universe, but pri-

Introduction marily in the Russian Empire and the United States, with the purpose of understanding them within the totality of the literary development and as different responses to the challenges of the time. The structure of this study is determined by the topical content of the analyzed works. The first chapter deals with some general aspects of representations of economy in Yiddish fiction, as well as with literary portraits of the economic crisis in Russia caused by the Russo-Japanese War and of the profound economic changes following the revolution of 1905. Repercussions of these economic changes can be discovered in all works of Yiddish literature written during the post-1905 period, although the forms of their representation and their assessments vary from one author to another. The second chapter focuses on the works of fiction depicting the impact of the 1905 revolution on Jewish life in the Russian Empire. The sudden exposure of large masses of Jews to politics led to the radical reevaluation of traditional relationships between social groups, generations, and genders within and outside the Jewish community that had lasting effects on Yiddish literature. Emigration, the theme of the third chapter, was for many Jews a logical response to the challenge of the economic and political crises. The process of immigration and adaptation of large Jewish masses to the conditions of the new country called forth the emergence of the American Yiddish novel, which originated in the decade of 1905–14. In the last chapter the focus shifts from representations of social groups and historical phenomena to the portraits of individual characters. This chapter presents a detailed analysis of the central image of the new epoch, the “new woman” as she appears in early major novels of the leading writers of the new generation: When All Is Said and Done (Nokh alemen) by David Bergelson, Alone (Aleyn) by Joseph Opatoshu, and Meri by Sholem Asch. These novels were among the first achievements of the postclassical generation, and as such they prove the continuity of Yiddish literary tradition on the one hand and its ability to adapt the new, more cosmopolitan, idiom on the other. In order to underscore the artistic originality and conceptual inventiveness of these novels, they are contrasted with three major texts produced at that time by the generation of the “classics,” that is, Sholem Aleichem’s cycle of stories Tevye the Dairyman (Gants Tevye der milkhiker), his autobiographic novel From the Fair (Funem yarid), and Y. L. Peretz’s My Memoirs (Mayne zikhroynes). As I intend to demonstrate, the variety of literary responses to the multifold crises of reality can follow certain structural patterns. Thus, a traditionalist or neoromantic rejection of modernity has its aesthetic equivalent in the celebration of a “natural,” cyclical organization of life based on the succession of seasons, religious holidays, and ages of human life, which often leads to ignoring the disruption wrought by outside events. Conven-

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Introduction tional social realism, on the contrary, emphasizes the signs of the new and stresses the value of change in the life of the individual and the community. As we shall see, these patterns can form more complex relationships in which, for example, the clearly modern motif of revolution can eventually be incorporated into a newly restored cyclical order. The conflict between the generations among Yiddish writers, the “anxiety of influence” of the first postclassical generation regarding the domination of the shtetlcentered tradition, also found its expression in structural patterns. The classic authors resented the modernists’ quest for openness, the insufficient authenticity of their Yiddish style, and their imitation of foreign literary models. The classic authors continued their search for the folk idiom, for authentic Jewish forms and heroes. This search resulted in the creation of new secular mythologies whose mission was to replace traditional Yiddishkayt (Jewish way of life according to religious laws and customs), which was unanimously rendered obsolete by both parties. Despite their radical secularism, these mythologies were based on the old traditional religious principle of cyclical organization of life. Yiddish literary scholarship has usually preferred the diachronic, or “vertical,” approach to the subject, that is, the chronological study of a particular writer or theme. The prevalence of this tendency has the potential danger of neglecting the dialogical nature of the literary process at any given moment of literary history. There are very few synchronic, “horizontal” studies that attempt not merely to describe, but also to analyze and interpret the state of the entire Yiddish literary system or its part in a relatively short period of time, from the point of view of modern literary theory. Ruth Wisse’s essay about Yiddish literature in 1935–36 presents one example of this approach.11 Wisse attempts to build a synchronic picture of Yiddish literature with regard to the political and ideological context of the epoch. She focuses on the contrast between the European cultural orientation of the majority of Yiddish writers and the political reality of the time, “the moral collapse of Europe,” which led to the isolation of Yiddish literature (p. 101). Characteristically, Wisse leaves Soviet Yiddish literature outside the scope of her survey. She claims that “just as the Soviet branch of Yiddish culture was then cut off from the rest, so it would demand from us a separate investigation” (p. 103). This remark demonstrates how difficult it is to find a comprehensive approach that would include simultaneously all branches of Yiddish literature, regardless of their ideological or aesthetic orientation. Without such an approach, however, our picture of Yiddish literature will inevitably remain incomplete and fragmented. Other examples of descriptive studies that combine chronological organization with cross-sectional overviews of particular periods and trends are

Introduction the histories of Yiddish literature by Sol Liptzin and Charles Madison.12 These works remain helpful introductions to the scope and diversity of Yiddish literary creativity, but they do not offer any coherent structural vision of the development of Yiddish literature, and their methodology is outdated. Most of the studies that seek to discover an inner structure in Yiddish literature rely on a nationalist ideology of some kind to provide a conceptual framework. Yiddish literature is often regarded as a manifestation of the “folk spirit,” defined according to the ethnic concept of the Jewish people. The most comprehensive work of this kind is Shmuel Niger’s study of the Yiddish fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.13 Niger considers the development of Yiddish narrative fiction as a process of increasing diversification. He believes that Yiddish writing in the nineteenth century was more uniform in terms of its form and content than in the twentieth century. Diversification was a product of the modernization of Yiddish-speaking people and their gradual liberation from the vestiges of premodern culture (pp. 16–17). Niger singles out four main ideological links in the “golden chain” of Yiddish literature in the nineteenth century: Hasidism, Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), the movement for national awakening, and the struggle for social justice. These main thematic and generic trends and their combinations determined the logic of Yiddish literary development up to the beginning of the twentieth century (p. 182). Niger’s conceptual scheme does not, however, include later developments. Concluding the first part of his study, which deals with the nineteenthcentury and touches upon some early-twentieth-century writers, Niger changes his approach: “In the following chapters we shall no longer concern ourselves with the general trends in Yiddish narrative art and its development; we shall look at its individual representatives” (p. 189). In fact, Niger tacitly acknowledges that his comprehensive ideological scheme is not applicable to the complex situation of modernity. A less ambitious but perhaps more sustainable conception of Yiddish literary development in the early twentieth century is offered by Nachman Mayzel in his essays on Yiddish literature in America and Europe and on the American group Di Yunge.14 Mayzel’s concept is built on the opposition between the old European Yiddish tradition and a group of Yiddish writers in America who define their position through negation and revision of the concerns and sensibilities of their predecessors. In contrast to Niger, Mayzel stresses the local character of different branches of Yiddish literature. He is especially good when he combines the advantages of the insider’s knowledge with fine critical sensitivity to artistic innovations and balanced objective generalization. Mayzel’s literary criticism is indispens-

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Introduction able for understanding local Yiddish literary scenes in Europe and America during the first decades of twentieth century. Both Niger and Mayzel, the two leading Yiddish critics of their generation, wrote extensively on individual writers who were active in the period under discussion. Among their works are monographs on Y. L. Peretz, Sholem Asch, and Joseph Opatoshu, as well as numerous essays on those and other authors.15 Today many of these essays retain their relevance as historical documents, even though their critical methodology is out of date. Especially valuable are those written either during or immediately after the period under study, since they present contemporary critical responses.16 It would require a special study to evaluate the works of Niger, Mayzel, and other critics who touched upon novels and novellas written between 1905 and 1914; therefore, I shall limit myself to necessary comments in relevant places. Academic Yiddish scholarship has dealt extensively with three major Yiddish writers of this period: Sholem Aleichem, Y. L. Peretz, and David Bergelson.17 Nevertheless, even the works of these writers are not studied in their entirety (with the possible exception of Bergelson); thus, Sholem Aleichem’s novels are nearly always overshadowed by his collections of stories. Still missing are comprehensive studies of Sholem Asch, I. M. Weissenberg, Joseph Opatoshu, and other American Yunge novelists such as David Ignatov, Isaac Raboy, and Morris Haimowitz, as well as the oncepopular but now forgotten Yankev Dinezon, Mordkhe Spektor, and Leon Kobrin.18 As follows from what has been said thus far, the present study has its own methodological agenda: to try to preserve the polyphonic picture of a variety of different interpretations and methodological positions. One of the implications of this agenda is a special interest in the Marxist school, whose development was violently interrupted in the Soviet Union in 1948. My analysis of works of Asch and Bergelson will rely on the books of the Soviet scholars Max Erik and Yekhezkl Dobrushin more than is usually the case in today’s scholarship; the insights of Meir Wiener and Nokhum Oyslender will inform the reading of Sholem Aleichem. I shall also attempt to revitalize some ideas of sociologist Jacob Lestschinsky, who belonged to the Socialist Zionist orientation. Despite the radical differences between Marxist scholars and Shmuel Niger in their appreciation of traditional elements in nineteenth-century Yiddish literature, the Marxists also experienced the problem of extending their concepts into the twentieth century. They succeeded in building a comprehensive conception of nineteenth-century Yiddish literature around the radical Ukrainian Haskalah and its struggle against Hasidism, but they were unable to develop it into the twentieth century. This failure was partly due to the simplistic conception of the relationships between the literary

Introduction text and reality perceived in the required terms of class struggle, and partly to the reluctance on the part of Soviet Yiddish scholars to touch upon politically sensitive issues of the immediate past. To some extent this work can be considered an attempt to continue this line of reasoning, but of course with moderation of the strict ideological presumptions of the Soviet Marxist school of the 1930s. In its extreme, this position, later dubbed as “vulgar sociologism,” was formulated by the influential Soviet Yiddish and Russian literary theorist Isaac Nusinov: “The writer of genius reflects in his work with great profundity and thoroughness those sides of reality that his class recognizes. But only those sides.”19 Nusinov’s chief opponents in the Soviet Union during the 1930s were Georg Lukács and his circle, who believed that a really great writer was capable of transcending his class limitations and objectively representing reality in its totality. An original attempt to combine Marxist insights into the sociological background of literature with the Jungian concept of archetype was undertaken by the Polish Yiddish critic Y. Y. Trunk in his works on Sholem Aleichem. Trunk maintained that the psychology of Sholem Aleichem’s characters was completely determined by their petit bourgeois social status, and that the greatness of Sholem Aleichem lay in his ability to identify himself with the social milieu of his characters.20 Trunk, however, did not follow the Soviet school of “vulgar sociologism,” but turned to psychoanalysis. David Roskies summarizes Trunk’s methodology in the following words: “Enlisting Freud and Jung . . . , Trunk saw Sholem Aleichem’s literary creativity—his autobiography in particular—as a form of compensation for his shattered dreams. Projecting outward from his own felt contradictions between dream and reality, Sholem Aleichem captured the historical farce of a nation full of dreamers, thus unlocking, according to Trunk, the collective unconscious of the Jews.”21 Trunk’s ideas about characters as archetypes were later developed by Dan Miron in his studies of Sholem Aleichem and the image of the shtetl in Yiddish literature.22 Miron applies Freudian and Jungian concepts to his analysis of Sholem Aleichem’s characters in order to discover their mythological nature; he reconstructs a “unified metaphorical gestalt,” which underlies most of the representations of the shtetl in Yiddish literature.23 This approach helps explain the principle of classification and its function in the formation of the static images of Jewish characters and society. Interest in the mythological aspects of Yiddish literature is central to the works of David Roskies. Roskies takes up the rise-and-fall paradigm introduced by Trunk and developed by Miron, and transforms it into a concept of “negotiated return,” according to which Yiddish writers come back to tradition after undergoing a stage of rebellion. The polemical message of Roskies’s methodology is contained in his belief that not only Yiddish lit-

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Introduction erature, but also Yiddish scholarship should go in this direction: “What the scholars and translators of Yiddish have been slow to perceive is that out of the anger came a negotiated return to the discarded past, a passionate desire to rebuild the culture out of its shards.”24 The concepts and insights of Miron and Roskies are used extensively in this study. One of its motivations is to apply these ideas to a different corpus of literary texts, particularly those that emphasize rebellion over return and the principle of transformation over that of classification. Such a study, a natural and necessary extension of the conceptualization that has proved to be so convincing in other cases, comes out of the premise that it is impossible to appreciate return unless one fully understands rebellion, that a tradition can be maintained only if it is capable of incorporating a wide range of deviations from the dominant mainstream. Western Marxist literary scholarship provides useful methodology for interpretation of conflict, crisis, and rebellion in literature. Following in the steps of Lukács and his school, contemporary Marxist literary theorists tend to replace the deterministic concept of subordination of the superstructure to the economic basis with a more flexible system of interactive relationships among different levels of the social structure, the economic ones as well as the political, ideological, and cultural.25 This approach opens up the Marxist conceptual framework for ideas and methods from other intellectual traditions, including structuralism and psychoanalysis. In terms of literary analysis, the system of social relationships can be perceived as a dialogical class discourse. Echoing Bakhtin, Fredric Jameson sees the task of critical analysis in recognizing the individual “voice” of a particular literary text in the larger system of “class discourse”: “to rewrite the individual text, the individual cultural artifact, in terms of the antagonistic dialogue of class voices. . . . Now the individual text will be refocused as a parole, or individual utterance, of that vaster system, or langue, of class discourse. The individual text retains its formal structure as a symbolic act; yet the value and character of such symbolic action are now significantly modified and enlarged” (p. 85). The “antagonistic dialogue of class voices” in Yiddish literature before World War I found its expression in the conflict between tradition and modernity. To be sure, this conflict is not unique for Yiddish culture, but rather typical of most Western cultures. The English scholar Raymond Williams describes the conflict’s important characteristic feature, the resilience of the forces of “tradition” as opposed to those of “change”: what seems an old order, a “traditional” society, keeps appearing, reappearing, at bewilderingly various dates: in practice as an idea, to some extent based in experience, against which contemporary change can be measured. The structure of feel-

Introduction ing within which this backward reference is to be understood is then not primarily a matter of historical explanation and analysis. What is really significant is this particular kind of reaction to the fact of change.26

The conflict between the old and the new is central for all literary texts discussed in the present study. The ideological position of the author in relation to change can be detected in the language, plot, and structure of his work; therefore, it is important to analyze different types of reactions and their mutual relationships.

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The Economic Crisis

Introduction: Economic Structure and the Narrative The economic conditions of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century affected Jewish life in many ways. The capitalist development of the western provinces of the country was one of the causes of the migration of young and active Jews from the shtetl to the city, especially to the new main industrial centers of the Russian Empire.1 There the young people were exposed to various challenges of the modern world combined with the specific problems caused by the legal position of Jews in Russia. Most of the Jewish newcomers to industrial cities joined the ranks of the proletariat or petite bourgeoisie, but a few individuals worked their way up into the middle class. This social transformation was accompanied by multiple ideological, psychological, and moral crises. Many readers of Yiddish literature knew from their own experience the hardships of economic adaptation and social change and were attentive to the minute details of their literary representations. The first years of the twentieth century were a period of general economic crisis in Europe that also affected the Russian economy, especially its more industrially developed western provinces. As historian Teodor Shanin describes the situation, “Rapid industrialization was the bright hope in the 1890s, but since 1899 Russia had experienced a sharp downturn in industrial production, employment and wages, as well as the tightening of credits related to a recession in Western Europe. With a slight improvement in

The Economic Crisis 1903 (which lasted for one year only), this crisis continued until 1909.”2 The Russo-Japanese War, which began in 1904, only aggravated that difficult situation. The economic crisis led to the political radicalization of the Jewish masses and the growth of revolutionary parties in the Pale of Settlement, as well as to the disappointment of the Jewish bourgeoisie about their prospects for economic stability in Russia.3 This was the social and economic background against which Yiddish fiction developed. Before going into a discussion of the representations of economic reality in Yiddish literature, it would be useful to make a few general remarks about the relationship between economy and fiction. The economy as a complex of conditions and relationships is rarely treated as the main subject by authors of fiction. It is more often perceived as a given and forms the background against which there unfolds the main social, political, psychological, or religious conflicts. The economy is difficult to fictionalize completely; unlike character or plot, it cannot be a pure product of the author’s creative imagination. The economic elements and their relationships in a literary text can be put in the category defined by Michael Riffaterre as “truth-creating devices,” that is, category of truth devices based on symbolism, or rather on sign systems that are embedded in the fictional text, yet clearly differentiated from it. Such sign systems provide a metalinguistic commentary that points to the truth of the context surrounding them. These systems possess a self-contained verisimilitude. . . . But each of them remains a separate unit of significance and, as such, an outside commentary on the truth of fiction, symbolizing it in a different discourse.4

The double role that economic elements and relationships play in literature is the main theme of the present chapter. On the one hand, they refer directly to the extraliterary reality, knowledge of which is usually shared by the writer and his contemporary audience, thus creating a strong mimetic effect of verisimilitude in fiction, a necessary element of literary realism. On the other hand, the economic elements have a structural function. They build a referential framework for other aspects of the fictional world, provide motivation for the behavior of characters, influence their mentality, sensitivity, and psychology, and, in the hands of a skillful writer, can become a powerful instrument for setting up a fictional scene without attracting too much of the reader’s attention. In a traditional society, the economy is usually perceived as a stable structure inherited from the past or even as part of the natural order of life. A society in a state of transition is characterized by the simultaneous presence of different economic modes competing for hegemony. The form in which the economic side of reality is presented has broad implications for the artistic and ideological aspects of the work and, therefore, is important for an interpretation of the text.

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The Economic Crisis Obviously, economy figures most prominently in realistic fiction. But it has a significant role in other styles as well, even though the connections between the economic mode and the fictional world in modernist or neoromantic fiction can be less evident. The analysis of representations of economic and social reality in Yiddish literature was an important theme in the left-wing literary scholarship and criticism of the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the comprehensive studies, however, concentrated on the transition from feudal to the early capitalist society and did not venture into the developed industrial economy. The pioneering work on the reflection of Jewish economic life in Yiddish literature belonged not to a literary scholar but to a sociologist and economist, Jacob Lestschinsky. Unfortunately, Lestschinsky published only the first part of his study, which dealt with the works of the prominent Russian maskilim (promoter of the Haskalah), Isaac Ber Levinzon (1788–1860) (The Lawless World [Hefker-velt], late 1820s) and Israel Aksenfeld (1787–1866) (Play about a Poor and a Rich [Kaptsn-oysher-shpil], published in 1870, and The First Jewish Recruit [Der ershter yidisher rekrut], published in 1861). As an economic historian, Lestschinsky saw in literature a mere illustration of the processes of economic and social development. In the introduction to his study he suggested a three-stage scheme of historical and economic development of Russian Jewry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which he divided the history of modern Yiddish literature into three periods (pp. 18–19). According to this scheme, the progress of economy led to the increasing social diversification of Jewish society, which found its expression in the more developed and sophisticated Yiddish literature. The first stage was characterized by the broker economy, which was without clear class or professional differentiation, “the fair and the tumult as the usual order of Jewish life and the style of the Jewish psyche.” The Jewish society of that period consisted of two main groups, the brokers (meklers) and the artisans, which had not yet assumed the form of clearly delineated antagonistic classes. This economic system was characteristic of the world presented in the works of the first generation of Russian Yiddish writers: Israel Aksenfeld, Isaac Ber Levinzon, Isaac Meir Dik, Isaac Yoel Linetski, and the early Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh. The second period, “the birth pangs of the modern Jewish nation,” was the transition from the old, relatively uniform “holy community of brokers” to a socially stratified nation that consisted of a proletariat, a professional intelligentsia, and an industrial bourgeoisie. The process of formation of the new capitalist order was reflected both by older writers such as Y. L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem, as well as by the younger generation—Abraham Reisen, HirshDavid Nomberg, Sholem Asch, David Pinski, and David Bergelson. The final period was that of the modern differentiated society, with group inter-

The Economic Crisis ests and clear social boundaries. Out of the amorphous “community of Israel” there developed a new national organism whose portrayal could be found in works by Bergelson, Weissenberg, Asch, Reisen, Morris Rosenfeld, and other modern Yiddish writers. Lestschinsky believed that the third period represented the historical process of reorganizing the Jews from a religious community into a modern nation.5 Lestschinsky noted that it was impossible to draw clear borders between different periods, so that no writer could be perceived as a representative of only one period. Usually the corpus of a writer’s works contained elements reflecting all three periods (p. 20). The mirror of Yiddish literature reflected the socioeconomic development of Jewish society toward a structured social organism. The old order was gradually giving place to the new one in the course of dialectic development, or, using Lestschinsky’s idiosyncratic imagery, “the national broker’s psyche has been transformed into its own antithesis” (p. 24). He described two models of the transformation of Jewish society. For the majority of the poor, social progress meant a radical break with the tradition, abandonment of the “brokers’ legacy” with its chasing after illusory profits, and a turn to productive labor. The historical task of the better-off minority, on the contrary, consisted in developing and expanding its economic functions, which had served as the foundation of the precapitalist order. The Jewish bourgeoisie had to continue the medieval traditions of economic mediation between different social classes. A joint function of these two mechanisms would create the necessary polarization of society and thus lead to the stabilization of its elements (p. 11). For the Jewish bourgeoisie, sustaining the tradition provided necessary support in its struggle for success in the marketplace. For the working masses, the old tradition, which prevented them from forming a new social identity suitable for the new conditions, was an obstacle and a burden in their struggle for survival. Like many social theorists of his period, Lestschinsky sought to establish a dialectical scheme of development that would lead to a desired result, which for him was the formation of a real Jewish nation. This desired goal corresponded to the third period in his scheme, the one which was yet to be achieved, whereas the first two periods already had been part of reality. This scheme had the same weakness as many other Marxist conceptions of history: its first two stages, which formed the thesis and antithesis of the triad, looked more realistic (although, perhaps, not too much) than the utopian future synthesis. Despite this weakness, Lestschinsky’s conception contains an interesting insight into the mechanics of social diversification in Jewish society and elucidates different functions that the Jewish tradition foresees for different social groups. Applying Lestschinsky’s idea of two attitudes toward the Jewish tradi-

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The Economic Crisis tional order to the corpus of long narrative texts written in Yiddish between 1905 and 1914, one can distinguish between two types of literary representation of economic reality. One group of authors sought to create an accurate, sometimes perhaps exaggerated, portrait of the economic hardships of the real life. In this case, the situation of the economic crisis provided the necessary background against which there unfolded other, more conspicuous conflicts in the spheres of ideology, religion, morality, and psychology, all of which played major roles in the plot of the narrative. The alternative approach consisted of creating a “crisis-proof ” representation of reality that would cushion the pressure of real economic hardship. The central theme of those works was the celebration of the harmony and inner peace of traditional Jewish life, which was represented as robust and capable of withstanding the destructive effects of modern reality.

Money and Values in Yiddish Fiction Economic events and relationships seldom determine the development of the narrative. Their usual function in the text is to refer the reader to the familiar material reality in which the story unfolds. Normally, an author would not dwell on the explanation and elaboration of the economic aspects unless it is necessary for the underscoring of other, more complex levels of understanding such as psychological motivation, political conviction, or religious belief. Despite their apparent simplicity, economic elements often possess a double nature, being not mere technical details but signs of psychological relationships or philosophical ideas. They may seem technical at the level of the sum total of the story, but being incorporated into a complex fabric of modern narrative they acquire significance for many other levels of the text and become indispensable for its interpretation. Due to their realistic nature, economic elements can function as efficient “truth-creating devices” that influence the reader’s perception of a text by bringing in familiar extraliterary connotations and transforming them into complex signs. One of the most important economic elements that can function as a “truth-creating device” in fiction is money. The circulation of money and financial aspects of trade and business occupy an important place in European realistic literature. Money itself has a nearly miraculous capacity to generate fiction; as Karl Marx noticed, it is “the external, common medium and faculty for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image.”6 With the help of the money motif, writers are able to create various representations of reality that suit their artistic and ideological goals. It can be one of the functions of money to generate a plot. In his study of the role of

The Economic Crisis money in literature John Vernon observed: “Money has to do with the unfolding of narrative, with the time sense in the novels and with the reciprocal play of chance and necessity otherwise known as plot.”7 The presence of money creates the necessary tension between conflicting elements of the novel, which propels the intrigue. Money figured prominently in the first Yiddish novel, The Headband (Dos shterntikhl) (1820s–1840s?), by Israel Aksenfeld. It told the story of an ambitious young teacher (melamed) from a Podolian shtetl who seized the opportunity created by the war between Russia and Napoleon’s France and established himself as a minor army purveyor. As a result of his experience among his more prominent Jewish colleagues he realized that one of the main causes of the Jews’ backwardness was their stubborn adherence to medieval customs and superstitions, which was skillfully manipulated by unscrupulous Hasidic leaders. After some time in the Russian army’s headquarters in the Prussian city of Breslau, he went back to Podolia and exposed a Hasidic rebbe as an ignorant swindler. Afterward the young man completed his victory over the old society by marrying his fiancée despite the intrigues of his conservative enemies. The headband, a piece of the traditional formal costume lavishly decorated with precious stones and gold, served as an important sign of the social status of a married Jewish woman in the shtetl. In the beginning of the novel it represents the very essence of marriage for the naïve fiancée, but soon becomes the cause of many troubles for her. After much travail, the lovers are reunited in the end and the hero finally presents his bride with a gorgeous headband, which, as the reader—but not the bride herself—learns, is a fake. Instead of putting his entire fortune in a silly piece of costume, the hero decides to invest his money in trade and thus make it work. Structurally, the headband functions as a leitmotif, running through the whole novel and connecting its parts, as well as the force that drives the intrigue forward. In his study of this first Yiddish novel, Dan Miron pointed out three functional aspects of the headband’s image: as an ethnographic artifact, as an expression of the maskilic protest against the traditional Jewish dress, and, most importantly, as “the representation of the ambivalent relationship between the frozen assets in the form of jewels and liquid money.”8 As a visual device, the headband demonstrates the struggle between the old and new mentalities in a geographic area that had only recently been taken over by Russia as a result of the series of the partitions of Poland. The old mentality is characteristic of a social order based on the largely feudal decentralized economic and social structure of the old Poland, whereas the new one is connected with the new emerging centralized organization of economy and society in the absolutist Russian Empire. The next stage in the development of the Yiddish novel is associated

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The Economic Crisis with the name of Sholem-Yankev Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim). His first novel, The Little Man (Dos kleyne mentshele, 1864), reveals the dehumanizing power of money through the vivid depiction of the hero’s moral degradation as the result of his accumulation of wealth. Here, money represents a negative value as opposed to the positive values of enlightenment and morality. According to the rules of the didactic novel, the moral message is summarized in the hero’s last words addressed to the community. As Miron points out, “The protagonist, after amassing a huge amount of money during a lifetime of swindling, dies repentant, proclaiming in his will, that ‘riches cannot buy happiness. Happiness is reached only through a good heart and good deeds.’ ” 9 Another kind of money representation, which appears in Yiddish literature during the last third of nineteenth century, has to do with what John Vernon calls the “fictional, chimerical, romantic” aspect of money.10 This aspect often finds its expression in the motif of the pursuit of a treasure, which, if found, can change the miserable life of the Jewish people. This motif undergoes a transformation from representing a futile and dangerous illusion in Aksenfeld’s The Headband and Mendele Moykher Sforim’s The Magic Ring (Dos vintshfingerl, 1865) to symbolizing positive artistic creativity in Sholem Aleichem’s memoirs From the Fair (Funem yarid, 1916). Abramovitsh, following the positivist tradition, seeks to demonstrate that the only “magic ring” capable of solving the problem of Jewish misery is education and productive work, whereas Sholem Aleichem presents the dream of a hidden treasure as a positive power that enables his autobiographic hero to overcome the troubles of real life. Thus, the ambivalent nature of money—its ability to be simultaneously an element of material reality and to belong to the realm of imagination—makes it, to use John Vernon’s concept, a perfect mediator “between the individual and history, between the aesthetic and the economic, between the social and the material.”11 The following examples demonstrate the importance of this mediator for early-twentieth-century Yiddish fiction.

Money and Chance: Yankev Dinezon’s Novella The Crisis Yankev Dinezon (1853–1919), the closest friend and literary agent of Y. L. Peretz, belonged to the generation of Yiddish classic writers by virtue of both his age and literary orientation. He was the author of the first bestseller in modern Yiddish literature, the sentimental sensationalist novel The Black Young Man (Der shvartser yungermantshik, first ed. 1877), which not only made his name very popular but also expanded the readership of the Yiddish novel. Under the influence of Sholem Aleichem’s virulent attack

The Economic Crisis against Shomer, the author of many sensationalist novels, Dinezon came to believe that the success of his first novel opened the door for a flood of cheap mass literature. He felt his guilt so keenly that he even stopped publishing his works for a while, as he later confessed to the literary critic Shmuel Niger: All kinds of petty writers, who came into literature on the wave of my work’s success and started to put together novels and stories, based on the model of The Black Young Man, and especially Shomer with his convicts and wealthy beggars—all this depressed me so much, that I started feeling that I myself was guilty of producing that flood of empty and bad novels. . . . I could not stop writing, but it did not cost me much spiritual effort not to publish what I wrote.12

Furthermore, Dinezon noted that he resumed the publication of his works (at his own expense) only with the encouragement from Y. L. Peretz. Despite his self-criticism, Dinezon deliberately continued to write for a mass audience. He did not approve of the sophistication and intellectualism of Abramovitsh’s Yiddish works, which, in Dinezon’s view, were appropriate for Hebrew but not for Yiddish literature. Dinezon believed that the task of a Yiddish writer was to create a good story that could be both educating and entertaining without being either too primitive in its didacticism or too clever in its sophistication. Above all, he valued in Yiddish literature the possibility of mimetic realism, which allowed the author and characters to speak their vernacular: “Here nobody speaks for me, be it Isaiah or Ezekiel. Here I speak for myself, and not only I speak, but my characters also speak in their own language. Everybody speaks as he feels and as he is used to speaking.”13 Contemporary Yiddish critics appreciated Dinezon for his gentle and natural language, which was relatively free of Germanisms, as well as his warm and compassionate tone. According to Nachman Mayzel, Dinezon brought into Yiddish literature sentimental softness and tenderness, unlike the rationalist rigidity and severity of the Haskalah in an earlier time.14 Bal-Makhshoves placed him among the “feminine,” sentimental writers, whom he contrasted with the intellectual “masculine” authors.15 None of these critics would claim, however, that Dinezon was a first-class writer in a league with Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz. It was only Shmuel Niger who believed that the simplistic surface concealed a deeper meaning: “Dinezon was not at all as simple as many people believed. He only seemed that way.”16 For Niger, Dinezon was the chief perpetuator of I. M. Dik’s tradition of popular writing in the folk manner. Dinezon’s works, which can indeed look naive and primitive to a modern reader bred on European literature, offer good examples of basic schemes and conventions of turn-of-the-century Yiddish literature. He

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The Economic Crisis operates within a “structure of feeling” (Raymond Williams) shared by the broad audience of readers, which itself was to a large extent created by Dinezon’s books such as the thriller The Black Young Man and the tearjerking novella Yosele (1890). At the beginning of this century, Dinezon altered his style from romantic sentimentalism to a more sober realism and produced a number of novellas that portray the life of the Jewish middle class: Falik and His House (Falik un zayn hoyz, 1904), The Crisis (Der krizis, 1905), and Gitele’s Holiday (Giteles yontef, 1909). Dinezon could draw material from his vast personal experience as a clerk, a salesman, and a literary agent, using his wide knowledge of Jewish life, fine sense of the language, and attentiveness to detail. Among Dinezon’s finest works is the novella The Crisis (first published in the St. Petersburg newspaper Der fraynd in 1905), which captures the atmosphere of economic instability during the pre-1905 period.17 The novella has a simple linear composition of an eyewitness report. Its action takes place during the unusually hot summer of 1904 in a big city somewhere in the southwestern provinces of the Russian Empire. The protagonist is a well-to-do wholesale dealer in textiles, Hillel Abelman, from whose point the story is told. His mind works as the “center of consciousness” of the narration; it is the practical mind of an experienced businessman who is painstakingly trying to make sense of the changing situation around him and to find a way out of it. To understand the importance of Abelman’s social position, we need to remember that, as the economic historian Arcadius Kahan tells us, “the wholesale merchant was among the traditional leaders going back to the time when a much higher percentage of employment was generated by him and his resources provided a support to the community.”18 This traditional role corresponds to Abelman’s position in the focal point of the Jewish economy. He is a middleman between the producers, the big textile factories in Lodz and Moscow, and the consumers in small towns and villages around his city. Although the actual space in which the action unfolds is limited to the protagonist’s store and house, the text incorporates fragments of letters and conversations that make the reader aware of the broad scope of Abelman’s enterprise. The rhythm of the narrative is determined by the events of business life, such as meetings with clients and partners, the arrival of commercial correspondence, and planning for new operations. Every day brings news, which directly affects Abelman’s financial situation and forces him to react in order to protect his business and, indeed, his personal existence. The major historic event, which determines the situation but remains beyond the scope of the novella, is the Russo-Japanese War and the economic crisis caused by it. On the surface, The Crisis is a typical realistic depiction of the battle the traditional Jewish merchant loses against unfa-

The Economic Crisis vorable economic circumstances. At first Abelman seems to be securely placed at the intersection of Jewish tradition and the modern world of commerce. As a modern man, he reads the Zionist Hebrew newspaper Hatsefirah and follows international politics. At the same time, he strictly obeys the rules of traditional Jewish religious and communal behavior. By the end of the book, Abelman goes bankrupt despite all his desperate attempts to save himself. This bankruptcy spells the end not only for Abelman as an individual, but also for the whole group of old-fashioned wholesale merchants like him. A new type of businessman emerges victorious from the crisis, someone whose moral and professional principles are different from Abelman’s. The central conflict of the novel is based on the opposition between the two worldviews represented by Hillel Abelman and a young insurance agent, Naftal Terentievich Tabakhov. The Crisis is written primarily for a male middle-class audience well versed in the Jewish tradition while also familiar with the world of money and business. Unlike Dinezon’s previous works with equally sad endings, such as Yosele, the sentimental story of a poor orphan, The Crisis appeals not to a servant maid’s sentiment of compassion, but to the common sense of a merchant. Economic terms and concepts inform the discourse of the novella. Dinezon uses a rich and elaborate money language not only for depicting the economic reality, but also as a symbolic device. Some elements of the money language vocabulary are borrowed from German business terminology: gelt (money), veksl (promissory note), kredit (credit), farzikherung (insurance), rizike (risk), nokhname (cash on delivery), diskont (discount), leyzn (to realize by sale), oysgebn (to spend). These elements reflect the modern European aspect of the Jewish businessman’s mentality, which secures his “horizontal legitimization” in the contemporary society. Other elements of professional language are borrowed from the traditional Hebrew-Aramaic (in Max Weinreich’s terminology, loshnkoydeshdiker) component of Yiddish that goes back to the Talmud: mezumen (cash), pidyen (money realized by sale), miskher (trade), revekh (profit), gmiles-khesed (interest-free loan), heyzek (loss), hakhnose (income). These elements emphasize the traditional Jewish connotations of business activity. Commercial concepts are applicable to religion as well. Abelman imagines his relationship with God as a sort of financial transaction: “maybe in the future world they will credit the merchant’s account for his generous contribution for the right to be called up to the Torah reading in the synagogue” (p. 210). Words that originate in the world of religion acquire different meanings in the business jargon: thus, worthless promissory notes are called sheymes (from Hebrew shem—name), the original meaning of this word being old useless fragments of religious books that potentially contain God’s name and therefore cannot be discarded in an ordinary way. The

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The Economic Crisis close connection of commerce with religion goes back to the Talmud, as seen in the following words of Abelman’s father-in-law: “My son, you are only a young man, and you don’t know what our holy Torah really is! . . . [It contains] all seven kinds of wisdom, and all seventy languages, and even commerce, too. Did the merchants of Lud in the Gemara understand business? If you could understand as much as they did, you would probably be the greatest merchant in the world” (p. 221). This money language creates at least two levels of meaning in Dinezon’s novella. It meticulously depicts the functions of mechanisms of trade and credit and their effects on the life of the individual. The verbs that express the unfolding of the action also belong to the language of money: life is associated with movement and circulation, expressed by such words as dreyen (to move around), loyfn (to run), geyen (to go), as opposed to stagnation and death—shteyen (to stand), onzetsn (to become bankrupt). Abelman realizes that one’s vision of reality is formed by one’s occupation: “Everyone uses as an example something which is close to him: if you talk to a wagon driver, he will give you an example from his horse-and-wagon trade; if you talk to a blacksmith, he’ll compare everything to his hammer and anvil” (p. 201). According to this rule, the political reality of the RussoJapanese conflict becomes translated in Abelman’s mind into business language: Russia is “a merchant with a firm foundation, strongly built, and certainly no lack of credit” (ibid.). As for Japan, it is not able endure a long war: “It will lose its strength, when the time comes to pay for its obligations, it won’t have any credit in the bank or with its ‘buddies’ ” (ibid.). For a merchant, money language is a universal code, which can describe not only economics and politics, but also family life. Abelman perceives his uneasy relationships with his children as his major expenditure: “ ‘My own blows’—that is what he calls the past and ongoing costs of his children” (p. 167). Everything in Abelman’s life has its exact measure in rubles. His son, who has just married and is now studying in Switzerland, will cost him more than two thousand rubles a year. Abelman’s high status in the Jewish community leadership has its equivalent in fifty rubles per month, which he has to spend on charity. These exact figures not only determine the social hierarchy, but also form the foundation of the stable social order, in which “the poorer head of the household looks up at the richer one” (p. 175). Abelman perceives this order as a mechanism with many gearwheels. He himself is just one little wheel, which is connected to many other gears in the machine. Everyone’s vital function is “to turn and not to stop.” In this scheme God plays the role of the motor: “In general, God turns Abelman’s wheel, and if only He won’t withdraw His mercy in the future, Abelman will find a way to manage and remain solvent, as befits a good merchant” (p. 215). This mechanistic belief is one cornerstone of Abelman’s faith.

The Economic Crisis Another one is the concept of providence (hashgokhe protis). He declares: “I believe in providence. Here I’ve got a pile of bills to pay in a month’s time, and I have no idea where I’ll get the money from! But when the day of payment comes, the Lord of the world sends me what I need” (p. 207). The problem arises when this smooth relationship with God suddenly seems to stop working for Abelman: “But a few days have passed, and Abelman has started thinking that the Lord of the world has become tired of turning his wheel” (p. 215). This is a critical moment for Abelman, and he tries to renegotiate his contract with God. Abelman realizes that he can no longer control money, and asks only to retain his reputation as a sound merchant: “Well, show what you can! I’m not asking for myself, only for my good name. My money—let it go, I won’t touch any serious money” (p. 218). In Abelman’s world, a good name can be earned only by years of impeccable business and communal behavior and is worth more than money. The antihero is Naftal Tabakhov, a new young insurance agent, who comes to renew the yearly contract for the insurance of the store after his predecessor has run away with several thousand rubles. In a long conversation Abelman and Tabakhov exchange their views on the present difficult situation and clarify their positions. Abelman complains about the loss of trust and decline of business ethics in the merchant community: people in commerce no longer want to honor their word, and this destroys the established structure of relationships. Tabakhov’s response reflects his individualistic approach: “Deal only in cash and don’t lend anybody money!” (p. 184). Tabakhov’s personal appearance betrays his chameleon nature. He speaks Russian, goes around without a hat, and sports the conspicuously non-Jewish patronymic Terentievitsh. Abelman reflects on the origin of his name: “Well, Naftal—one can say, his name is Naftole. . . . Tabakhov is also not hard to guess: his father or grandfather probably was a tabekh, butcher. But ‘Terentievitsh’—what can be a Jewish equivalent of that?” (p. 188). The composition of Tabakhov’s name signifies the lack of pedigree and, therefore, of a respectable past on which his reputation could rest. His last name betrays his low origin, and the conspicuously non-Jewish patronymic shows that he wants to distance himself from traditional Judaism. The product he sells, insurance policies, has no substance when compared with Abelman’s “real goods” (rayele skhoyre). Unlike the investment in cloth wares, which are, according to Abelman, “always a sound merchandise” (p. 193), the insurance premium has no lasting value and needs to be paid year after year. Abelman’s textiles signify the solid fabric of the traditional society, whereas Tabakhov’s insurance policies represent the new unstable order ruled by the play of chance. Tabakhov’s ethos corresponds to the nature of his merchandise. He does not value the stability sanctified by the past; instead, he prefers to bet on the uncertainty of the future.

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The Economic Crisis The transparently allegoric meaning of Tabakhov’s last name prefigures the outcome of the story: the butcher ruins his victim Abelman. As a result of the chain reaction of the economic crisis, Abelman is not able to pay the debt on his promissory notes because his clients refuse to pay theirs. He falls victim to the crisis of the old system of business relationships, in which one member depends on another. His first name, Hillel, suggests his connection with the old ethics of mutual aid based on compassion with the other. At a critical moment Abelman recalls the famous maxim of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Hillel about the importance of mutual understanding and compassion within the community: “Do not judge your fellow man until you have come into his situation.”19 In accordance with his understanding of realism, Dinezon tries to avoid direct generalization and moralization in his works. He also disapproves of the popular literature’s convention of the happy ending. Many of Dinezon’s tales (for example, The Black Young Man, Yosele) end with a disaster ruining the expectations of the main hero. The writer believed that such an ending would make a story more true to life. He called the chance ending a “silliness” (narishkayt) and ascribed to it a great importance in real life: “Sometimes there are things in people’s behavior that are impossible to explain. No reason can help understand something which happens against any reason; and then, suddenly, without any effort, I would recall one of those childish silly things, which will elucidate the problem with such clearness no wise man with all his wisdom could do.”20 Chance represented as a narishkayt appears as a driving force already in The Black Young Man. In The Crisis chance becomes represented through the motif of fire, which runs through the whole text. In his study of the shtetl mythology in Yiddish literature Miron demonstrates that the motif of fire is part of the comprehensive metaphor of the shtetl: “almost all of these fires are presented as reflections and duplications of the one great historical fire which lay at root of the Jewish concept and myth of galut (exile): the fire which had destroyed . . . both the First and the Second Temples of Jerusalem.”21 Fire appears already in the opening phrase of The Crisis: “It is a hot summer day. The sun burns and dries, as if the air is permeated with opium” (p. 160). Later, the verb “to burn” acquires an additional metaphoric meaning of being ruined financially. The first signs of the upcoming crisis deprive Abelman of his habitual afternoon nap. In his agitated mind he visualizes the economic situation as a fire: ‘When there’s a fire, one doesn’t sleep!’—he replied. And the meaning of it was: not that there is, God forbid, a house or a store burning in town,—but the whole world of business is aflame, and one should be always alert, ready to rescue oneself before the fire reaches him. Sparks are already flying around in the form of bounced IOUs. One has to have water ready to put down the fire . . . by ‘water’ he means cash to

The Economic Crisis pay for the bounced IOUs in the bank, and not to let one’s own IOUs go unpaid, God forbid. (p. 169)

The interplay between necessity and chance is expressed here through the contrast of the money and fire motifs. The fire represents the uncontrollable element that bursts into the ordered life and destroys it. This motif is also connected with the unconscious and dreams. Abelman’s life is disturbed by the nightmarish vision of the vicious loan sharks who have already forced one merchant to suicide. For Abelman, dealing with them is an even more terrifying prospect than committing suicide. These loan sharks together with Tabakhov represent the infernal side of the new financial capital, which has come to destroy the sacred order of the old trade capitalism. The tragic ending of the story has an ironic undertone. Desperate Abelman tries to learn some tricks from the new repertoire, but it does not help him. Independent of his efforts, salvation seems close when a fire breaks out near his store. Abelman hopes that his store will burn down and he will receive insurance for the merchandise he had no money to pay for. Unfortunately for him, Tabakhov arrives with the fire brigade at the last moment, and together they put out the fire. Abelman’s goods are saved, but he is financially ruined because without the insurance money he is unable to pay for them. The lesson of the story is ambiguous and reflects the shaken state not only of Abelman’s mind, but also of the entire traditional world: “And if indeed a miracle that could save him from all difficulties, does occur once in a while, then the merits of his ancestors intervene and destroy everything” (p. 248). In this new carnival world, a silly accident and not the merit of ancestors is the main factor that determines one’s fate. Money, which in the beginning of the story was likened to water as a life-giving liquid substance, betrays its original nature and turns into the destructive fire that ruins people’s lives and possessions. The story of Abelman’s bankruptcy is a case study of the instability of the contemporary world. From the symbolic representation of stability and order, money has become a wild and disruptive force that turns everything upside down. The truth is that the ambivalent nature of money unites necessity and chance, order and anarchy: to use John Vernon’s metaphor, money “sits on the crest of a wave whose one slope is supernatural destiny and the other mathematical necessity.”22 Thus, money comes to represent the other, dark and supernatural side of being. This aspect reveals itself in Abelman’s nightmares and gloomy fantasies. He does not understand how the new financial mechanisms work, and his experience as a merchant has not prepared him for this change. The world of banks and insurance companies appears to him an irrational nightmare. He fulfills the old Jewish economic function of the mediator between the country and the city. As a wholesale mer-

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The Economic Crisis chant, he is placed in the center of the system of the commodity exchange between the city and the country. Tabakhov is already outside this system. He belongs to the new dynamic structure of finance capitalism, which comes to replace the old trade capitalism. The new economic structure imposes on him a new system of values that are much more relativistic and flexible than those represented by Abelman. The Crisis goes beyond the limits of the economic reality and elucidates the growing conflict between the traditional Jewish system of values and the moral instability caused by capitalist development. Dinezon does not undertake a broad analysis of the political and social aspects of the problem. The crisis comes to the Jewish community from the outside world of big politics that has no correlatives in the text of the novel. The author confines his portrait to the limited sphere of the business relationships of a middle-class merchant and shows how the traditional business ethics of Judaism are crushed under the pressure of the contemporary world. He is not concerned with the real economic and political causes of this crisis, and does not propose any solutions. The narrative voice of the novella does not aspire to exceed the limitations of the immediate perception of life as a given objective reality. In Dinezon’s system of mimetic realism, money is the only image capable of transcending material reality and representing symbolically the force that controls the lives of the people. This force can be called fate, chance, or, in Dinezon’s parlance, “silliness.” The language of money creates a symbolic system that establishes the verisimilitude of the story. This system belongs to two worlds simultaneously: to the world of fiction and imagination, and to the world of the material reality outside fiction. With help from the language of money, the author connects the two worlds and achieves the effect of objectivity in his fiction, introducing into Yiddish literature the mimetic device of chance familiar to the reader from his own experience.

The Economy of the Shtetl Paradise: Sholem Asch’s prose poems A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged Dinezon diagnosed the crisis of the economic foundations of traditional Jewish life in Eastern Europe, but he did not offer a prescription for its treatment. One of the possible reactions to this unsettling diagnosis was to reinvent the past, which could become a comforting alternative to the unpleasant present. This strategy was not new for many European literatures, but was never before used by Yiddish authors, most of whom were highly critical of the traditional Jewish way of life. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that Yiddish literature reinvented the shtetl as a lost paradise and transformed it into a full-scale fantasy of organic

The Economic Crisis social harmony. In his comprehensive study of the shtetl imagery in Yiddish literature, Dan Miron singles out two types of shtetl fiction, which he calls the “moral” and the “technical” ones: “We can distinguish between the concept of shtetl as an essence of the moral order, and the shtetl image that reflects the decline of the moral order as it is being wiped out by the technical one.”23 Furthermore, he remarks that the representation of the shtetl as the core of moral order tends to be closed and self-sufficient. Such a shtetl is shown as an organism, which exists in almost complete cultural and spiritual isolation from the surrounding Gentile world. This isolation is the necessary prerequisite for maintaining the moral authority in the shtetl. As soon as the isolation is broken, the moral order starts to deteriorate and the “moral” shtetl degenerates into a “technical” structure of conflicting personal, social, and economic relationships. The only kind of contacts with the outside world that Jews were never able to avoid were the economic ones. According to the eminent social historian Jacob Katz, Jewish communities in premodern Europe managed to keep their economic relationships with the Christians separate from other spheres of life and to maintain the moral autonomy of the Jewish community: “Jews lived out their lives in the Jewish community. Non-Jewish society, in fact, served them only for the acquisition of means. Family life, educational endeavor, the adult pursuit of study, and religious services and ceremonies were, of course, conducted in exclusively Jewish institutions and environment.”24 Taken out of its historical context, this summary would describe what Miron calls the “moral” image of the shtetl. Based on the presumption that in the traditional Jewish community economy did not interfere with the moral order, this representation of the shtetl can go in one of two directions: it can either ignore the economy altogether, or incorporate it into the prevalent organizational structure of the fiction. In the first case, the literary creation loses the effect of verisimilitude and cannot meet the criteria of literary realism. The second option imposes the strict rules of the organic model on the representation of the shtetl economy. This model is based on the precapitalist mode of production. The shtetl economy is linked with the village, agriculture, and natural resources; the circulation of money is slow and follows the cycles of nature, whereas the economic relationships and roles are perceived as part of the “natural” social order. On the other hand, a “technical” model of the shtetl would represent the intrusion of the alien and unnatural forces of industrial development, political oppression, and urban capitalism, and emphasize the rapid change and inevitable degradation of the old established order. Nature as the main source of livelihood upholds the “moral” image of the shtetl. Jews in this kind of shtetl are incorporated into an economic system based on natural production and trade. Grain, cattle, dairy products, fish, and timber are the main articles of economic exchange. The social

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The Economic Crisis structure is represented as part of the eternal natural order, where each element has its fixed place and function. Jews stand in the center of this structure and make it work. The system is not perfect, and sometimes conflicts and even tragedies may occur and disrupt the natural way of life. But such conflicts and tragedies as hunger, the violence of peasants, and the destructive behavior of the Polish gentry are of an essentially natural character. These problems can be dangerous to individuals and communities but are manageable in principle; they cannot cause the destruction of the whole system because they are also part of it. Some elements of this idealizing trend of the shtetl representation can be found even in the works of Abramovitsh, who was generally ironical, unsentimental, and critical in his attitude to the shtetl. They figured more prominently in the works of Peretz and Sholem Aleichem, but none of those writers went so far as to include economy in their idealized shtetl images. The sentimental and neoromantic tradition was taken up by the beginning author Sholem Asch, who recognized its myth-creating potential. David Roskies explains the success of Asch’s literary experiment: The fictional town of Kasrilevke emerged, in the first years of this century, as a place of hidden treasures, a Jewish mini-empire that would weather the winds of change through group solidarity and stubborn faith. Sholem Asch followed suit with a fullblown shtetl romance, an exercise in pure entertainment which enjoyed enormous popularity among young urbanized readers hungry for a sentimental myth of origins: in the beginning was the shtetl, home and haven for all.25

Whereas the short stories and sketches of Sholem Asch’s predecessors dealt mostly with the spiritual aspects of the idealized shtetl, his new artistic project of creating the “full-blown shtetl romance” required also a plausible representation of the economic side of the “Jewish mini-empire.” Even though the prose poem A Shtetl was published on the eve of the 1905 revolution, one can hardly find in it any indication of the upcoming disaster. The dominant mood is that of harmony, unity, and peace. The poem opens with the description of the comfortable house of the wealthiest shtetl merchant, Reb Yekhezkl Gombiner. His house is open to everybody, serving as a focus of business activity in the shtetl, the “town bourse.”26 People do their business transactions as naturally as they breathe, eat, and pray. They come in, greet one another, “and without wasting a word they are in the midst of business” (p. 7). Doing business is part of their nature and Jewish identity. Asch emphasizes this connection with the comparison: “this is the study house (beys-medresh) of commerce” (p. 8). This opening scene resembles the third chapter of Abramovitsh’s memoirs, Shloyme reb Khayims, in which he describes a typical Saturday night social event in his father’s house back in the 1840s.27 Nature, which surrounds the shtetl, is the main source of its sustenance. Reb Yekhezkl’s timber business

The Economic Crisis is connected with the Vistula, the main transport route connecting the shtetl with the Baltic port of Danzig. The reader first meets him in the early spring, when Reb Yekhezkl tries to rescue his rafts—which have been frozen in the river since the last autumn—from the spring floods. This successful struggle of the merchant for his wares against the perils of nature is presented as part of the divine miracle of nature’s awakening from the winter: And God was kind to Reb Yekhezkl. As though on order from Heaven, the ice avoided the rafts. Like matches, like slivers of wood, the logs floated in the turbulent water, tossing and trembling, but without moving from their anchorage. Reb Yekhezkl stood by the shore and beheld the wonder that God had performed for him and saw that God had not ignored his prayer. For two days the peasants labored, dragging the logs to the shore. And Reb Yekhezkl, with his own eyes, beheld the effect of the Lord’s intervention. (p. 29)

Yet even the most natural economy cannot exist without money, and Asch pays close attention to the financial aspects of his shtetl idyll. It is impossible to understand Reb Yekhezkl’s character without understanding his intimate relationships with money. He is a pious Jew and a shrewd businessman. His manner of conducting business is seemingly relaxed but in truth swift and aggressive. This is an example of a business transaction performed between bits of a casual conversation with another Jew, Reb Mordkhe, and his son about various worldly matters. At first Reb Yekhezkl talks for a while to the boy about his studies, and then he suddenly turns to his father: “Well, I would like to buy the corn. Not that I really need it, but simply since I am already here. You think I can make anything out of lumber? Eh, what? If there is a chance to buy something, a man has to buy it.” “Well, naturally.” “The five per cent—let it go as commission.” “But if I can’t . . . ” Reb Yekhezkl took a large wallet out of his rear pocket, opened it, took out a few one-hundred-ruble notes, and passed them on to Reb Mordkhe. “What can a man do if he can’t?” Reb Mordkhe groaned as he accepted the money. (p. 29)

One can almost hear the money talk in this dialogue. As befits a solid merchant, Reb Yekhezkl always has big denomination notes on him. The “large wallet” is of course the sign of his authority and influence. But the hundred-ruble notes, which the poorer Reb Mordkhe cannot resist, in turn acquire the aura of holiness, as Reb Yekhezkl “passes them on” (stressed by the author’s choice of the Hebrew word moyser) as the decisive argument in the discussion. The narrator himself seems to be enchanted by the mystery beyond this casual transaction, as he concludes: “Who knows whose grain from whose fields had changed hands!” (ibid.). The power over nat-

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The Economic Crisis ural products that money gives to Reb Yekhezkl is a reflection of God’s power over nature. A whole chapter of the poem, “The Counting” (Der [sic!] rekhenung), is devoted to the important ceremony of counting money. The difference between the fathers and the sons becomes clear in the way they conduct this procedure: Accounts were held by the younger generation, Motele and Oyzer. They did their bookkeeping in the modern manner with paper and ink. They kept their accounts separately, but every few minutes one ran to the other for a consultation. One’s accounts never balanced with the other’s, and the only way to straighten them out was for the elders to take a piece of chalk and do the accounts over in the old style, by straight and crooked marks, until the business was finished. (p. 32)

The new generation destroys the aura of money by attempting to count it in the modern materialistic way with ink and paper. The old people count money using the arcane system of signs, which they inscribe on the wooden table with chalk. This way of counting money leaves no permanent traces and pays respect to its mysterious nature. For them, the money is a gift from heaven and thus belongs to the world of religion: “To tell the truth, the elders could never understand what use there was in all this bookkeeping. No profit was ever made out of it, nor did they ever have to pay out money as a result of it. What use was it to know the sum total? Whether you knew or did not know the total, your blessings were neither greater nor smaller” (pp. 32–33). Accounting cannot produce more money because wealth is a blessing, and not a product of calculated effort. Counting money is not only useless, but also actually dangerous because it can cause a conflict between partners or relatives and weaken the holy community of Israel. The knowledge of the modern accounting technique is a sign of complexity, which also means diminished integrity: “Oyzerl was a ‘chief accountant’. He was a Jew who lived in two worlds at one and the same time. He was a hasid and a ‘German’, a Jew filled with pious Hebrew lore and a worldly fellow” (p. 37). The difference in attitude to money separates the young generation of Oyzerl from the old generation of Reb Yekhezkl. The children in A Shtetl are not as strong and wholesome as their parents; they are weaklings incapable of real achievement. They might be smarter and more educated, but they lack the robustness and integrity of their parents. The children are so inferior to the parents that they do not even try to challenge their authority, which makes the fathers-and-sons conflict a peripheral issue to the poem. If there is any conflict in the poem, it is rather the conflict between Hasidim and their traditionalist opponents Misnagdim. The shtetl has always resisted attempts of local Hasidim to establish a resident Hasidic

The Economic Crisis rebbe out of fear that this will split the community. Now the Hasidim have undertaken a new attack and openly rejected the authority of the new young rabbi, Reb Dovidl, on the grounds of his low origin. They bring into town a Hasidic rebbe, who would usurp the religious authority from Reb Dovidl. Reb Dovidl, a humble and somewhat submissive man (a type that later will be developed into a full-blown character of a Jewish saint in Asch’s popular novel Salvation [Der tilim-yid, 1933]), is ready to step down in order to avoid conflict and preserve the peace in the community. This essentially religious conflict has a socioeconomic background without which it cannot be understood. The decisive role in these events is played not by the Hasidim, their new rebbe, or Reb Dovidl, but by the independent homeowners (balebatim), the backbone of the shtetl middle class. It is they who have made Dovidl, the son of a simple tailor, a rabbi out of the vain desire to let “one of their own sons rise to glory” (p. 54). Now, when a strong Hasidic rebbe is about to settle down in the shtetl, they realize how profitable this minirevolution can be for them: “Townsfolk . . . forgot their animosity toward the Chassidim. For they told themselves, a wonder rabbi is coming to live in our town. Then his followers, the Chassidim, will come from far and near to pass the Sabbath with him, and the town will blossom” (p. 59). Mercantile considerations turn out to be the decisive argument in this religious struggle: the rebbe will attract Hasidim from other places and bring prosperity to the shtetl middle class. Despite this and other social conflicts and natural calamities, such as fire or flood, the shtetl organism remains essentially whole and united. Using Benedict Anderson’s term, we can say that Asch creates an “imaginary community” capable of withstanding the pressure from the outside world by virtue of its harmonic and organic nature. The symbolic representation of this nature in the novella is the nign, a melody that unites all individual voices of the community in an imaginary concert: “gently, as though they came from a hidden world, the melodies wandered here, and flowed together, mingling into one song. Each instrument contributed its tune, the Hasidic violin, the people’s trumpet, the wagoners’ drum. And it became the shtetl’s single melody” (pp. 142–43; translation slightly altered). The polyphony of this ensemble reflects the social structure of the shtetl, in which money has also its distinct voice: “The big [accounting] book was like an instrument, a violin, for Volf the scribe” (p. 40). Asch’s artistic goal is to depict a situation (real or imagined) from the time when the unity between these groups was still stronger than the difference, when the shtetl was still one family (Niger), or formed a “united community of Israel” (Lestschinsky).28 Carefully preserving the prevalent mood of harmony and unity, Asch presents a complex picture of social differentiation in his shtetl, and describes in detail the economic activities and attitudes of each group.

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The Economic Crisis The dominant role is played by the shtetl trading class, whose representative is the main character, Reb Yekhezkl Gombiner. The price of this harmony is the rejection of any development and future. The young generation in A Shtetl is degenerating both morally and in terms of their business ability, because they are doomed to repeat the same cycle time and again. The economic system of the shtetl is based on the closed circulation of nature’s products, and has no opening toward modern industry and commerce; such is also its world of emotions and ideas. The life in A Shtetl is subordinated to the cyclical pattern of nature and religious observance, which effectively eliminates all conflicts. Most Yiddish critics who wrote about Asch’s image of the shtetl accepted it as an idealized and romantic vision and paid little attention to its material aspects. Asch’s contemporaries tended to praise him for the integrity and romantic beauty of his fantasy. Shmuel Niger emphasized the organic nature of the social order of the shtetl: The shtetl which looks so peaceful, so Sabbath-like, is not just an idyll; it is a familyidyll. All inhabitants of the shtetl, the poor and the rich, the old and the young, are relatives, they are one community and one family. They have one heaven over their heads and one Father in the heaven. Even the Gentiles who live there belong to the shtetl; they do not disturb the peace of the idyllic home.29

Nachman Mayzel, who later accorded Sholem Asch the honorable but slightly ambiguous title of “fourth classic” (after Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz), echoed Niger’s acclaim. The shtetl was the natural habitat of the Yiddish writer and the eternal source of inspiration for his artistic soul: “[T]his is not an observation from above, but rather a perception from within, a song, a poem born from the depths of one’s heart. The shtetl is Asch’s elemental core, his soul lives there, and from the shtetl comes always his inspiration.”30 Bal-Makhshoves was the first to try to place Asch’s creation in the context of contemporary Yiddish literature. He recognized the immaturity of Asch’s shtetl fantasy and the distance between its inhabitants and the contemporary reader: “Asch’s shtetl is a shtetl of children with beards and sidelocks. And when we, the adults, read the novella, we have an impression of someone telling us a story about our little nephews who are still in their cradles or playing in building toy synagogues and palaces.”31 According to Bal-Makhshoves’s perceptive remark, the appearance of such work as A Shtetl was symptomatic of the changes that occurred in Jewish society at the beginning of this century: “This kind of a dream could only appear in a poet’s mind, when the shtetl as a true and active force ceased to be a real thing.”32 In the early 1930s the leading Soviet critic Max Erik continued this line of social analysis and subjected Asch’s fiction to sharp criticism from a

The Economic Crisis Marxist point of view. To him, the entire poem is a statement against the sociopolitical reality of 1904. Trade is dead, big industry is in a fix, middle-sized and small businesses are desperately struggling with need and a hard crisis—and Asch opens wide the doors of Yekhezkl Gombiner’s house, and there comes out the steam of the red beet borscht, which is offered to everybody who comes in. Banks collapse, credit runs out, people die for want of a penny—and Yekhezkl Gombiner generously divides his money among the children, takes out a big pack of hundreds from his back pocket, and every Passover eve they sum up the big profits.33

Using the sharp language of the Soviet Marxist criticism, Erik exposed the capitalist essence of the ideology of unity and stability based on the natural economy: “Unity reigns between God’s nature and the Gombiners, and its expression is faith. Faith . . . can be bought and sold. And Yekhezkl Gombiner buys faith for himself, gives a small offering to his God, makes Him his third partner.”34 This line of analysis rejected the idea that Asch’s shtetl was a romantic fantasy wonderfully suspended outside the real time and place of Poland on the eve of the revolution of 1905. Erik was the first to notice that the idealized shtetl has its economy and class structure and to analyze their literary representation. He pointed out that the entire economic picture of A Shtetl was, in fact, in complete opposition to the contemporary economic situation of 1904, the year of the crisis in the Russian economy that was realistically represented in Dinezon’s The Crisis. Erik saw A Shtetl as an expression of the ideology of the trade bourgeoisie, which was losing its position in life, and tried to compensate for this loss by representing its class ideology in terms of absolute values, on the level of nature and God: “A Shtetl is a work of an ideologue of the middle-class trade bourgeoisie in the period of its final decline. Already in the framework of the capitalist society, the trade capital is deprived of its former independent existence, and functions as a mere agent of the industrial capital.”35 Remarkably, it was precisely this reactionary ideological position that made Asch so original and different from his predecessors. Erik pointed out: “Asch makes a revision of the dominant type of the pettybourgeois Yiddish literature, which did not spare dark colors for depicting the decline, destruction, and hopelessness of the shtetl life.”36 Previous attempts of Sholem Aleichem and Mordkhe Spektor to find virtue in the shtetl ended, according to Erik, not with the rehabilitation, but with the condemnation of the shtetl, which ushered in the realistic trend in Yiddish literature. Despite its militant tone and manifest ideological engagement, Erik’s critique remains perhaps the most insightful analysis of Asch to date, and I shall more than once refer to it in further analysis. After being cleansed of

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The Economic Crisis its vulgar jargon and political insinuations, this interpretation can serve as a foundation for understanding not only the works of Sholem Asch, but also the whole process of development of Yiddish literature at that time. Without going into the problem of representation of the shtetl in Yiddish literature, it is important to stress here the role the economy and money played in shtetl fiction.37 One of the reasons for the success of A Shtetl was its effect of the intimate verisimilitude, which Mayzel called “perception from within.” Asch succeeded in his project because he provided his shtetl with a functioning economic system and presented it as an integral part of the natural order, something his predecessors had not done. Money as the “truth-creating device” made Asch’s fiction plausible and alive. Another poem in prose, Reb Shloyme Noged (1913), was the next step in the direction of creating a traditional Jewish idyll.38 It reinforced the concept of the self-sufficient shtetl economy as a foundation for the ideal social order. The main character, Reb Shloyme, was a more confident and proud version of Reb Yekhezkl. The novella was written when the revolution of 1905 in Russia had been already completely suppressed, but new economic opportunities were opening up. According to Erik, Asch responded to these changes by eliminating the traces of social and religious tensions, which were still present in the prerevolutionary A Shtetl, and by emphasizing even more the principle of stability and order. The result is “a static descriptive ode,” completely devoid of dramatic quality (p. 45). The role of trade and money in Reb Shloyme Noged is more prominent than it was in A Shtetl. Here money is not just one voice in the orchestra, but its conductor. Money represents a comprehensive organizational principle of the ideal social, political, and religious order. The details, which were scattered over A Shtetl, are now brought together in one all-encompassing structure. The principle of economic exchange is the foundation for the virtues of order, stability, and morality. It is somewhat difficult to locate Reb Shloyme in history because Asch deliberately avoids mentioning any historical upheavals, such as wars and uprisings. On the one hand, he refers to the legendary time when the relationships between the Jew and the Polish landowners were most amicable: “The nobles treated him as their equal, he was a proud Jew” (pp. 23–24), implying that Polish nobility was still proud and therefore strong. On the other hand, there are indications in the text that the actual power already belonged to the Russians. Another sign of time is the allusion to the Berlin Haskalah, which attracted Reb Shloyme’s grandfather. This leaves us with a guess that the actual Reb Shloyme could have lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. At first, we meet Reb Shloyme on Friday morning as he returns home

The Economic Crisis to the shtetl after a usual week of business in the countryside. As he passes by fields and woods, the ears of grain and the trees bow down before him in a symbolic recognition of his status and power: “The trees in the forest and the ears of grain in field stand in awe of him. He has bought them, the contract is in his breast pocket. For him the forest grows and the grain ripens. He’ll let them grow, and he’ll order them cut down, when he sees fit” (p. 5). He enters a village, and now the peasants follow suit: “People in the village stopped. Peasants knew that Reb Shloyme was going home for Sabbath, and they began to bring from their homes whatever they had—a fat chicken, fifteen eggs. . . . Gentile fishermen were running after his wagon with sacks of fresh fish. . . . He did not bargain, threw everything into his wagon, and went further” (p. 6). The other part of Reb Shloyme’s business consists of dealing with a porets, the local Polish landowner. In this situation he also manages to remain strong and keep his dignity: “This was the time when the fairs were still full of peasants and wagons; deals were everywhere; the landowner had no idea about the city and needed the Jew” (p. 23). At home, Reb Shloyme, in a quasi-religious ceremony, counts his weekly income. He divides his money into two categories: the coins are designated for charity, whereas the banknotes go into the bureau for further business. The principle of division presumes that coins, made out of the noble metals, have a higher spiritual value than paper money. As we have already seen in A Shtetl, paper is not a reliable medium when it comes to counting money. According to this idea, Reb Shloyme never gives written receipts (incidentally, kvitlekh—the Yiddish word for receipts—also means little petitions that Hasidim give to their rebbe) with his transactions. All his business is based on trust and his word, which is why “God has chosen Reb Shloyme as His bursar” (p. 23). This attitude toward paper betrays the fear of the unknown possibilities of money, which are associated with modernity, state, and the city. Yet money can be dangerous and cause great trouble in the small world of the shtetl, as well. Reb Shloyme’s first wife, Nekhe, had a small pawnshop. As an exemplary pious woman, she always gave back pawned jewelry if a poor bride needed it for her wedding. Once, however, she forgot to do so, and, as punishment, was doomed to die before her own daughter’s wedding. The central event in the shtetl life is the annual fair, which attracts people from all corners of the shtetl world. The fair reinforces the links between the economy and nature: It is after the harvest, the Gentiles have already taken their crops into the barns, and now have come to sell the crop: one will buy for it a cow, another will buy a pig, to feed during the winter and sell in the spring; yet another peasant puts his own horse

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The Economic Crisis up for sale, which he does not need after the harvest, and wants to exchange for a good sheepskin coat. (pp. 47–48)

Economy here is inseparable from nature, and economic activity is not a goal in itself, but only a means to sustain the existing closed and selfcontained order. Therefore economy has to be subordinated to, and controlled by, the natural needs and considerations of the community, not the egoistic desires and ambitions of an individual. The fair displays the structure and hierarchy of Jewish society. The biggest social group consists of artisans and workers from various shtetls: gardeners and fishermen from Gabin, tailors from Gastinin, butchers from Zhakhlin, horsemen from Krashenvits (pp. 50–52). Each shtetl has its specialty, and each trade has its place in the order of the Jewish system of production. This place is determined by the nature of the trade, not by its profitability or the physical strength of the tradesmen. Each trade has its specific characteristics. The gardeners and fishermen are strong and healthy, both physically and morally: “They are Jews who have no fear for any Gentile and have never been in exile” (p. 50). The tailors’ position is lower since they are farther from nature: they are called “dried-up little tailors.” Butchers and horse traders are healthy, but violent. Their nature reflects the character of their occupation. They bring an element of instability to this orderly world, but this instability is manageable because it is natural. The only group that has no natural correlative is that of the brokers who arrange deals among peasants, Jews, and gentry. They are the only “cosmopolitan” group that is not related to a particular shtetl. The brokers are the outsiders in the ordered structure of life. Reb Shloyme stands on the top of this hierarchy. He mediates conflicts and restores order, avoiding outside intervention. When two thieves, a Jew and a Pole, cheat a poor peasant widow and sell her a sick cow, the situation in the marketplace becomes potentially dangerous for the Jews because the whole community can be held responsible for the actions of one criminal. Reb Shloyme settles the conflict by forcing the Jewish thief to pay back the money and himself paying the share stolen by the Polish thief, who has already spent it on drink. Even the Jewish criminal is superior to his Gentile counterpart in the idyllic world of Asch’s poem. The Pole steals because he wants a drink, whereas the Jew needs money for his old mother. By resolving the conflict, Reb Shloyme not only restores justice and saves the Jews from a pogrom, but also avoids the political danger of involving the Russian authorities. The established shtetl-centered system of social relationships can function as long as Reb Shloyme can mediate between its elements. He can hold this position solely because of his wealth. Interestingly, Reb Shloyme’s wealth and social status are not inherited. His grandfather Reb Elyokum-Getsl was a rebel against tradition. Many

The Economic Crisis years ago he left his wife and children, and his synagogue with its religious books, and fled to Berlin, the unclean city of Jewish Enlightenment (p. 21). That sin had ruined the reputation of the family, which was never again to reach its previous state of complete harmony between economic prosperity and religious learning. As a result, Reb Shloyme is not well learned. Indeed, he is not an ideal model of the traditional Jew, but rather an ideal type of Jewish philanthropist who can use his money to make up for his lack of religious education. The world of Reb Shloyme is not a paradise lost, but a paradise restored, not a past idyll, but a utopian dream of an ideal Jewish community. Although the story is comfortably situated in an indefinite past, it contains an ideological message for the actual present. At the political level, Reb Shloyme Noged is one of the first pro-Polish works of Sholem Asch and prefigures the more open Polish orientation of his novels such as Meri and the Three Cities trilogy. The poem argues that Jews could peacefully live side by side with the Poles, as long as the Russians are not involved. Jewish-Polish coexistence is part of the eternal natural order, whereas the Russians bring in an element of instability and change. This orientation toward a feudal Polish past is the reversal of the political position that dominated Yiddish literature in Russia from Aksenfeld to Sholem Aleichem. In The Headband Aksenfeld had expressed views that sounded like a direct negation of the political orientation of Reb Shloyme Noged: When the Pole pays the Jew for his hard work, he hurls the gulden on the ground: “Take it, bastard!” To put up with that kind of treatment, a man truly has to be a footpad, a drunkard, a hoodlum. Our Russian aristocrats are quite a different breed. The Pole’s overweening pride, the Pole’s arrogance is never found in a Russian. When a Russian gets to know a Jew and deals with him a couple of times, he calls him “brother” or “little brother.” Even a broker. If he serves him loyally, the Russian gets to love him.39

The Headband showed the contrast between the two socioeconomic orders: the old Polish and the new Russian. In the center of the Polish structure stood the local landowner, and the shtetl with the villages revolved around him. Poland was a conglomerate of these big and small structures without any supreme hierarchy or order. Russia, on the contrary, was a strong centralized bureaucratic state with the Tsar at the top of the pyramid. Each element had its place in the hierarchy, which determined its value. The Russian order was rational and open to everybody, including the Jew, who in turn had to be loyal, fair, and enterprising. The good influence of the progressive Jewish army contractors changed the life of the main character. Despite their conservative ideology, and perhaps even because of it, Asch’s fantasies set up a new trend in Yiddish literature. The radical novelty

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The Economic Crisis of Asch’s endeavor was the use of the European literary model, disguised as authentic Jewish fiction. He successfully developed this trend in his later novels, the most famous of which is Salvation (Der tilim-yid, 1933). Asch was able to satisfy the increasing demand of Jewish and non-Jewish audiences for an undisturbed rural idyll, which reflected a social reaction to the anxiety of modernization. A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged were an important new stage in the development of Yiddish literature. They represent the artistic response to the rapidly changing conditions of Eastern Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Similar situations in other societies called forth similar reactions in other literatures. Raymond Williams’s study of the complex system of relationships between the rural and urban consciousness in English literature demonstrates that this kind of fiction was one of the literary products of rapid modernization: “An idealisation, based on a temporary situation and on a deep desire for stability, served to cover and to evade the actual and bitter contradiction of the time.”40 Further, Williams points to two possible strategies of psychological reaction to an unsettling external situation: withdrawal from reality into a subjective world, or creation of a parallel reality, an imagined community that protects the endangered self: When we become uncertain in the world of apparent strangers who yet, decisively, have a common effect on us, and when forces that will alter our life are moving all around us in apparently external and unrecognisable forms, we can retreat, for security, into a deep subjectivity, or we can look around us for social pictures, social signs, social messages, to which, characteristically, we try to relate as individuals but so as to discover, in some form, community.41

As we have seen, Sholem Asch explored the latter approach; now we shall look at how David Bergelson developed the first option.

Money and Failure: Novellas of David Bergelson The novella At the Depot (Arum vokzal, 1909) was Bergelson’s first published work, and in many respects it established the thematic orientation and style of his fiction for at least the following decade. It introduced the main motifs and types of characters that would appear in more elaborated forms in his later works.42 Bergelson was perceived as a “poet of decline” of the wealthy merchant class of the Ukrainian shtetls, which was forced to abandon its leading position in Jewish society under the pressure of advancing capitalist urbanization.43 There is a distinct thematic and stylistic unity in Bergelson’s works during the first decade of his literary career. Avraham Novershtern suggests that the writer’s works of that period can be treated as one “text” with recurring themes, motifs, and characters.44

The Economic Crisis This “text” of the early Bergelson would include such novellas as In a Backward Town (In a fargrebter shtot, 1914) and Joseph Shur (begun as a novel, it was originally titled In Darkened Times [In fartunklte tsaytn, 1918]), as well as the novels When All Is Said and Done (Nokh alemen, 1913) and Descent (Opgang, 1920). In this chapter I shall analyze the place of the motif of money and commerce in the organization of the early novellas of Bergelson. A more comprehensive interpretation of Bergelson’s novel When All Is Said and Done is left for Chapter 4. The motif of money, which is further developed in the later works, plays an important organizational role in At the Depot. The plot of the novella unfolds within a group of Jewish grain dealers and merchants who live around a small railway station somewhere in the Ukraine. The main character, Beynish Rubinshteyn, is successful neither in his business nor in his family life. He is unhappily married to his second wife, who lives with her mother in a shtetl far away from the station. Beynish has not seen her for a long time because he is busily trying to improve his financial situation. Despite his efforts, he is unable to fit in with the group and to play by their rules; the only character with whom he manages to establish personal contact is Clara, the wife of a prosperous dealer, Avromtshik. The business community at the station is engaged in reselling future crops, a traditional activity of Jewish brokers in the Ukraine. In her introduction to the English translation of the novella, Ruth Wisse points to the intermediate position of these agents in economic relationships: “The agents are classic examples of economic middlemen, buying up produce from large landowners and sharecroppers and arranging for its distribution in the distant urban centers. They are themselves caught in the middle between the shtetl and the city.”45 The location of the merchant community at the depot corresponds to its economic position. The merchants are situated at the point where the old world of the shtetl, represented by the horse transport, meets the new world dominated by big cities connected by trains. Otherwise the station has no significance; it is not a center, but a “transitional point,” to borrow Bergelson’s term from the novel When All Is Said and Done. The life of the station community is ruled by the train timetable. The few trains that stop at the station bring prospective clients, and during their short stops the dealers feverishly try to bargain, sell, and resell their merchandise. The high season for trade is spring, when the dealers buy up all the future crops in the area and then resell them to distant commercial centers. Having done that, the more successful dealers spend most of their time in the station restaurant, telling stories and teasing their less successful colleagues. The novella opens with an ominous description of the landmark building:

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The Economic Crisis Whoever that sullen magician may have been, he has long since returned to dust, and his bones have grown black in the damp ground. But the station has yet to be released from its trance: somnolently it stands guard over the incoming roads, over the near and distant hills and valleys, and over the pretty village, scattered at the bottom of a long valley. . . . The old station shares in the silence of the village and countryside secretly, though, as it stares into the blue, unknown distance, it yearns for a proud and forceful hero to come storming the sleepy hamlets and recall to life everything languishing and dead. (p. 84)

The railroad station casts its magic power over the lives of the merchants and dealers. Previously, their lives had revolved around the shtetl, but the railroad, as a new means of communication and transport, has undermined their economic base and forced them to change their occupation. The first character to appear in the novella is the impoverished old man Pinye Lisak: Sitting alone on a bench was a gray-haired old man, blind in one eye, who tapped his worn cane against the hard stone platform. Once this man had been a messenger entrusted to carry documents and mail from town to town; now, bored perhaps by the sameness of his surroundings, he would have liked to tell someone of his poverty, of his open, unseeing eye, his children in America, and his wife, dead these many long years. (pp. 85–86)

Pinye once had an important function in the economic system of the shtetl, but with the advance of modern transport he has become superfluous. Beynish Rubinshteyn sees in Pinye’s fate a bad omen for himself: “His eyes were on the little figure of Pinye Lisak skulking forlornly, in an oversized black coat, around the three rented carriages. Having no money for the fare, Pinye was ignored by the coachmen. Finally Elye the ‘the Merciful’ invited him into his carriage and sat him up front with the driver” (p. 93). The irony of Pinye’s situation consists in his living at the railroad station, but being unable to pay even for a short coach ride. The impoverished old messenger Pinye, living at the mercy of other dealers, is Beynish’s nightmare vision of his own future. The spell of the station takes away Beynish’s will and forces him to retreat into the memories of his past. The same spell has the opposite effect on other people: they forget their past, lose touch with the traditional shtetl ethics, become engaged in feverish commercial activity and unscrupulous in their behavior. The physical separation from the shtetl causes moral amnesia among many members of the station community. It seems that forgetting the old traditional communal ethics is a more secure way to success than acquiring modern skills and abilities. New conduct, “Snatching a customer from under someone else’s nose” (p. 88), which contradicts the established social norm of the shtetl, has become the rule in the new environment. At first,

The Economic Crisis Beynish is described as a man possessing a fortunate combination of traditional and modern values: “He was well educated, of a good family and of decidedly liberal views, and he had recently remarried, receiving a dowry for the second time” (pp. 89–90). That dowry had been the starting capital, which he hoped to increase by doing business at the station. However, “the other dealers were earning a profit while he was eating up ready cash” (p. 90). As he keeps losing money, his confidence wanes and his frustration grows. Beynish sees himself as the last link in the old chain, rather than a beginning of a new one: Even farther beyond the same cloudy horizon lay another town with a main street that was wide and twisting, and there it was already night. Midway up that street stood his father’s house, an old crooked structure with misshapen windows. In that house he had been born, and in the old study house nearby he had spent his youth. At that very moment his father was probably sitting in the study house, surrounded by deferential Jews who still remembered his father-in-law’s impressive wealth. But he, Beynish, stood alone in an empty depot, without a home, and with a lock on the perfectly silent and empty house that was his. (p. 94)

Separated from his family, his natural and communal environment, from his childhood and culture, Beynish is completely alone, without a place of his own, and insignificant even to his new wife and mother-in-law.46 He falls into a vicious circle of memories and resentment; the more absorbed he is by memories of his father, his childhood, and his first, happy marriage, the less able is he to relate to the people at the station, and thus to pursue his business. In turn, the failure in business pushes him deeper and deeper into his past. Eventually Beynish becomes so obsessed with his thoughts that he is unable to concentrate even on reading (p. 101). The successful characters differ from Beynish in their attitude toward their past. They have been able to separate themselves from the traditional ties and now begin to live according to new rules. Meir Hecht is similar to Beynish in his background and family circumstances, but in contrast to him he is content with his life: “This fellow Hecht was a strange creature. His delicate sensibilities were outraged by trade and those who conducted it, and yet he was a tradesman himself. He had a pretty little wife back home in the province of Chernigov. She wrote letters to say that she loved him, and he wrote back that the price of bran was holding its own” (p. 100). Key words in this paragraph are “love” and “price”: Hecht’s self-satisfaction is based on his ability to put emotions aside and concentrate on business. Love and marriage become signs of commercial success. The boorish businessman Avromchik decides to mark his economic achievement by marriage and easily forgets his previous “farm wife.” In other cases, success bestows an aura of urbanity and comfort on people: “As for Itsik [one of

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The Economic Crisis the successful dealers], his life at the depot remained as solitary and mysterious as in the cities where he had once lived” (p. 103). Avraham Novershtern notes the close connection between the economic and the private spheres in the lives of characters in Bergelson’s early works. For successful merchants and dealers, business and life are merged into one: “success in one area is a means to achieve success in the other.” A recurring motif of the dowry is a metonymy of this unity: it combines wealth and marriage, financial security and personal happiness.47 Beynish, unlike the successful characters, cannot bring these two aspects together. Economically, he is connected with people who have otherwise nothing in common with him, whereas those who are personally close to him (such as Clara) have no business relations with him. The central moment of the plot is Beynish’s failure to renegotiate the repayment of an old loan. He visits the wealthy businessman Moni Drel who had once borrowed from him a substantial sum of money and then declared himself bankrupt. According to Novershtern’s interpretation of the poetic function of space in Bergelson’s early works, such a trip represents an effort in which the character usually fails.48 In contrast to Beynish, Moni Drel is the most successful of the merchants, and at the same time he is the most radical in his negation of the past: “Moni Drel . . . no fool . . . bankrupt just a year ago . . . built himself a new home. . . . Opposite the post office in Setrenitz . . . property. . . . manager at the sugar factory . . . leased the mill from the count . . . no fool, as I am a Jew . . . giddyup!” (p. 115). Drel’s success is a subject of rumors at the station: he has managed to move up the social ladder and amass a small amount of capital. This success is possible only with unscrupulous business behavior. Just a year ago, Beynish had returned Moni’s promissory notes for eight hundred rubles at 20 percent of their value. Beynish comes to Moni, who has by now completely recovered from his bankruptcy, and asks to pay the outstanding debt. Moni refuses, explaining: “having grown accustomed to it, I now have to maintain a decent standard of living” (p. 118). The responsibilities of the past mean nothing for Drel, who is concerned only with his present status. Indeed, his present life is possible only through rejecting the past and maintaining the present appearance: “Since I come into contact with people all the time and depend on these contacts for my livelihood, I have to make a decent impression when I show myself ” (p. 119). Bergelson accentuates the irony of this situation by adding to it a lecture in political economy, which Beynish overhears from behind the door while waiting for Moni. A young teacher explains to Moni’s daughter and her friends the basics of the concept of surplus value. His words remind Beynish of a question about the origin of capital, which he once heard from someone at the depot. Then the question seemed foolish to the other dealers who knew

The Economic Crisis only one source: “When you get your dowry, then you have your capital” (p. 117). Now, as Beynish is sitting in Drel’s nicely decorated house, which “was probably built with his money” (p. 116), he realizes that his lost capital has become the foundation of the other’s success. In the new situation, capital is no longer a symbol of stability and continuity, part of the traditional order of life. It turns into a sign of success and present status, which disguise rather than emphasize the past. Beynish’s last desperate attempt to recover his losses is an investment in the sunflower crop and an unreasonable loan to an untrustworthy man. The debtor goes bankrupt and Beynish loses his money, whereas the lucky Avromchik receives his thousand rubles from the same man. Beynish again finds himself in the same situation as with Moni Drel. As Beynish’s life among the dealers becomes desperate, he loses his temper and slaps the most impudent of them, Levi Pivniak. After that Beynish falls seriously ill, recovers, and finally is sentenced to two weeks in jail. This crisis, however, does not lead to a catharsis: Beynish does not commit suicide or go back to the shtetl, as, for a moment, he fancies he would. Instead, he comes back to the station and resumes his business, striking a new deal with Avromchik and Pivniak, his offender. Beynish begins a new cycle in his life, which will inevitably end in another disaster. The final scene of the novella is an ironic victory of the merciless reality of the new business order over the romantic world of dreams and old values. The only way to survive and achieve success in the world of the station is to throw away the burden of the old and pretend that no past exists at all. It is only today’s deals that matter and unite people. The new community is kept together not by shared values, beliefs, or a common past, but solely by mutual business interests. The final phrase brings back the motif of the enchanted station building, which symbolically frames the novella and closes the cycle of the plot: “On the hilltop that now lay behind them, the somnolent red station house stood, staring frozenly into the deep unknown” (p. 139). The key adjective in the money language of the novella is sokhrish (commercial, businesslike). The Soviet critic Yekhezkl Dobrushin registers the linguistic resourcefulness of this epithet in the text: Bergelson has expressions like der shtum-sokhrisher shmeykhl [silent business smile], sokhrishe koyles [businesslike voices], sokhrishe moykhes [commercial brains], sokhrish nit-farginen [commercial envy], sokhrishe girikayt [commercial greed], sokhrishe perception of nature, relation to crop and drought, which can represent various nuances of behavior, movements and vocabulary [of the characters].49

The commercial society of the station emerges as a collective sokhrisher portrait through which Bergelson shows the sokhrishe ethics and sokhrishe mentality as a special category (p. 37). Dobrushin’s interpretation of the charac-

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The Economic Crisis ters is based on a Marxist sociological reading of the novella. According to him, “Bergelson tries to depict people in a way that enables us to see behind their personal desires and behavior the social laws which shape their psychology and control their fates” (p. 44). These laws transform Beynish into a passive unconscious victim of the capitalist system: “As Bergelson shows, Rubinshteyn himself does not know who strangles him. He does not understand the social essence, the capitalist mechanism” (p. 34). Beynish’s ignorance is especially evident in the scene where he overhears the lesson in political economy. The ironic description of his reaction kills any hope of active responsible behavior based on an understanding of the new reality. Beynish is a failed hero: his rebellious attempt has been doomed from the start by his inability to understand the nature of his situation and to react adequately. His surrender to the system is inevitable. In the last episode he finally accepts his fate and becomes one of the slaves in the enchanted castle. “In At the Depot the author has completely closed the dark circle around his characters,” notes Dobrushin (p. 43). In his interpretation, the formal cyclical closure of the novella illustrates the official Soviet interpretation of the post-1905 period in Russian history: “there has not yet appeared the social force whose vocation is to find the way out, stand up against the increasing all-embracing commercial reaction” (p. 45). Dobrushin reads At the Depot as an uncompromising verdict, condemning the world of commerce. He believes that Bergelson deliberately rejected the possibility of any positive development of such characters as Clara and Hekht, because his intention was to show the dark and repulsive nature of the station world. The positive option was left for his later works, such as the novel When All Is Said and Done, whose main heroine Mirl Hurvits is a more developed and lighter version of Clara. The world of At the Depot is ruled by two impersonal forces: one is the supernatural power of the station, which casts its spell over everything around it and encloses the world of the novella; the other is money, which supposedly liberates people from the past and gives them freedom to control their own lives, but in truth destroys their personal autonomy. Drel’s house can be seen as a symbolic representation of the interplay between money and magic. Drel used the money he borrowed from Beynish to make his dream real. Now this materialized dream has power over Drel’s mind. Paradoxically, he refuses to pay his past debt not because he is poor, but rather because he is rich and therefore has to keep up his present appearance. Such is the magic of money that it turns dreams into reality for some people and reality into nightmare for others. This example illustrates the famous complexity of Bergelson’s style, which combines realistic precision in the representation of details with the impressionistic effect of creating a dominant mood that permeates the whole text. Nachman Mayzel

The Economic Crisis called Bergelson’s style “a kind of neo-realism, a synthesis of the substance and the spirit, a synthesis of the reality and the dream.”50 In the episode in Drel’s house, the material substance of money turns out to be an instrument of the supernatural power of the enchanted place. The liberation from the old power of the shtetl order leads to a new form of slavery that is worse because it is devoid of any foundation of ethics and tradition. Although in Asch’s fiction wealth is a part of the shtetl complex and represents stability and hierarchy of the patriarchal order, in Bergelson’s world it becomes a symbol of the new materialistic order, which is also cyclical, but its cycle is based on the circulation of money, not on the cycle of nature and the religious calendar. This cycle is ruled not by religious or natural laws, which require submission and offer stability as a reward, but by a strange and menacing power of chance, similar to that of Dinezon. “The repetition in Bergelson’s works,” writes Novershtern, “does not create an illusion of a familiar world but rather works in the opposite direction, contributing to the effect of uncertainty.”51 This effect of uncertainty is part of the ominous magic of the atmosphere of the novella. Money is perhaps the most evident, but not the sole motif that demonstrates the emptiness of the cyclical repetition in the new order. The fact that Beynish was sentenced on the eve of Shavuot (Pentecost) is an ironic evocation of the religious calendar, and the cynical attitude of the dealers to the drought turns upside down the traditional function of the nature motif. The old cyclical organization that affirms the harmony between man, God, and nature, and serves as the foundation of stability and order in Asch’s world, here becomes the capricious force that ruins people’s lives. The author is left with no choice but to “retreat into a deep subjectivity” (Raymond Williams), because he cannot see anything in the world that can withstand this pressure. The only possible artistic response left is irony, with which he shows how romantic illusion crumbles under the power of the new order of market exchange, represented by the station. The station scene in At the Depot is an artificial isolated place outside the traditional Jewish territory of the shtetl and the predominantly non-Jewish city space. In his subsequent works Bergelson extends his vision of the transformation of the traditional order to the familiar Jewish domain of the shtetl and the new world of the city. He also incorporates into his narrative the critical moments of human life, such as death and marriage, events that are not supposed to happen at the station. The shtetl is a setting of Bergelson’s novella In a Backwoods Town (In a fargrebter shtot, 1914).52 This is a story about young men and women who, for different reasons, all come back from big cities to the shtetl Dubrovitsh. The former student Burman has been elected as the government-appointed

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The Economic Crisis rabbi of the town, Froyke Tsherkis decided to invest his dowry in a printing shop, and Elisha inherited a house, loan business, kosher meat tax monopoly, and some cash from his grandfather. All of them are uncomfortable in the new place: Burman is lonely and disappointed, Froyke has problems with his wife and her family, and Elisha cannot come to terms with the town establishment, which demands payment for his grandfather’s burial. Two of the three young men are engaged in economic and financial activity, whereas Burman spends his time courting Fradotshke, Elisha’s wife. Novershtern interprets this “division of labor” between the characters as a complete separation between the novella’s economic and personal spheres, which correspond to two different narrative planes.53 Burman is completely absorbed in his love affairs, while Elisha and Froyke neglect their family relationships for the sake of their businesses. Although Burman is absorbed by his love affair, he is not in fact completely aloof to economic interests. He is concerned about getting married and receiving the dowry, but his laziness prevents him from pursuing this interest to the end. He also has his own shady “business,” which is mentioned in the second paragraph of the novella: as crown rabbi, he issues, in cooperation with the secretary of the local administration, false documents (probably birth certificates), which help young men avoid being drafted into the military. The plot of the novella is formed by the story of Elisha desperately trying to establish himself in a position of power in the shtetl. In the end he fails, and the inert Burman comes out the victor. When Elisha is killed by the butchers, Froyke exclaims: “Foolish fellow, is it so bad a legacy and a bad wife that Elisha has left you?” (p. 503). Burman dismisses Froyke’s words in his usual cynical way, “Fool, the world is so much muck, as sure as I’m a Jew!” (p. 504), but the reader can be sure that Burman realizes his gain. Both “economical” characters have received their initial capital in a traditional way, as a dowry or inheritance, and are now trying to increase it. Elisha immediately falls into a conflict with the powerful butchers’ lobby and starts losing money at the rate of two hundred rubles weekly. Froyke tries to negotiate a compromise between the sides, but both parties are stubborn and eventually come to open war. With the help of the police, Elisha tries to crack down on the nighttime smuggling of the kosher meat from another shtetl, which undermines his tax monopoly. In retaliation the butchers catch him and beat him up so severely that he dies in a few days. Thus, the money, which was the reason for Elisha’s coming to the shtetl, turns out to be the cause of his death. Elisha’s story is an ironic reversal of the conflict in the classic satiric play The Meat Tax (Di takse), by the young Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, which criticized the backward institution of the kosher meat tax monopoly. In the play, the shtetl oligarchy forces the young maskil, who had tried to protest against

The Economic Crisis the predatory institution, out of town. In Bergelson’s novella, the same oligarchy kills the young entrepreneur because he wants to keep the traditional institution for himself and does not want to share the profits with them. Elisha’s struggle is a pathetic attempt to restore the old order. The image of his grandfather inspires Elisha: in his dream, he sees the grandfather complain about the young generation, which cannot save money, and in his life, Elisha wants to prove he can live up to his grandfather’s standards (p. 45). In the modern situation, neither side in the conflict over the tax monopoly can be morally right, since each pursues its narrow egotistic interests. The shtetl order is presented as completely disintegrated, and even its most traditional and stable communal and financial institutions, such as the kosher meat tax, can no longer function properly. Unlike Elisha, Froyke tries to introduce the modern idea of capitalist enterprise into the shtetl. He opens a printing shop, and even receives two orders from a local Russian public organization. He also tries to negotiate the conflict between Elisha and the town to their mutual advantage. Despite his industriousness, Froyke fails in all his initiatives, his business collapses, and he cannot reconcile Elisha with the butchers. In the end, his wife leaves him because she can no longer stand the boring shtetl and her always-busy husband. Afterward, her uncle comes to claim the dowry and arranges for the sealing up of the printing shop at the most critical moment for Froyke: when he has to deliver his orders. As other episodes of the novella, this one also has a touch of anti-maskilic irony. Printing is one of the most prestigious and modern trades, which promotes education and enlightenment. Through his business, Froyke seeks to establish his contact with the Russian authorities as an individual, rather than as a member of the collective, like Elisha, with his inherited tax monopoly. In the maskilic and positivist tradition, Froyke could be presented as a positive hero, who brings light to a “backwoods” shtetl, and by doing so elevates his individual status in the larger society. But Bergelson presents him as an egotist, concerned only with his own economic success. Froyke’s adversaries are not the stereotypic representative of the retrograde old order, unlike his wife’s family, which wants back the dowry so that she can leave him and go to study in the city, that is, to achieve the venerable goal of education. The conflict is dragged down from an ideological plane to a set of competing egotistical interests. Bergelson demonstrates that neither the old nor the new economic mechanism can function in the shtetl anymore. Both ways are equally blocked, and the shtetl is doomed to lose its economic autonomy and become a part of the city-centered system. In a Backwoods Town is more direct in its message and poetics than At the Depot because it touches upon deeper conflicts. The shtetl Dubrovitsh is completely devoid of the aura of

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The Economic Crisis idealized Yiddishkayt. Religious connotations appear in the novella only in the commercial context, as a profit opportunity for Elisha. His main concern before the religious festivals is how to benefit from the meat sale if he manages to strike a deal with the butchers. As in At the Depot, Bergelson uses the framing motif, death and inheritance in this case, to represent the magic spell over the “backwoods town” where all activity is doomed. Elisha’s grandfather dies in the beginning and bequeaths his house, money, and monopoly to the grandson, who is unable to maintain it and, in turn, is murdered at the end, leaving his wife with all his possessions to Burman. The institute of inheritance no longer secures the continuity of the shtetl society. The novella Joseph Shur (Yoysef Shur, 1911–13) was originally intended to become a beginning of a new novel, which never materialized. The first chapter of the novella was published in 1915, and the whole novella came out in 1918.54 A brief look at this unfinished text can clarify how Bergelson used the money motif to expand his literary realm and to incorporate in it the city, which had become the real focus of the new economic structure. The novella includes several business configurations related to different economic systems that coexisted in the Ukraine before the First World War. The shtetl economy is represented by the melamed Jacob Nathan Viderpoler, who tries to arrange a marriage between a young shtetl mill owner, Joseph Shur, and the niece of a wealthy Kiev businessman, Abraham Rappaport. Jacob Nathan is a grotesque figure out of the bankrupt economic world. He is unable to support his wife, but tries to maintain the appearance of an old-fashioned merchant. All his economic hopes are connected with the success of his plan, the initial capital for which comes from an interest-free loan. This world lives on charity, but stubbornly adheres to the old values. The real power belongs to the new city money personified by Abraham Rappaport. He is a businessman with wide connections reaching as far as Moscow and St. Petersburg, serves as a member of the board of a large bank in Kiev, and owns a modern, luxurious house with bathtub and telephone on a “quiet and wealthy” street. His philanthropic activities also have a modern character: he supports modern Jewish art and Zionist organizations, and gives charity for Jewish settlers in Palestine. At the same time, he secretly contributes a thousand rubles a year to a shtetl rebbe, thus helping to maintain the traditional sector as well. Rappaport’s fortune is new, created merely five years ago with the help of a secret thousand-ruble loan. His pedigree is lower than that of his wife, who agreed to this marriage in exchange for the comfort of wealth. Now, she is afraid that the proposed marriage of her niece to Joseph Shur could drag her family further

The Economic Crisis down because the Shurs were always trying to imitate the Rappaports but were never regarded as their equals. It is not clear exactly how rich Joseph Shur is. He has inherited his father’s mill, which is described as being in good condition. But this may not be of much help, since Rappaport does not value inherited businesses which are, as a rule, poorly managed. It looks like Joseph Shur is not a good candidate in Rappaport’s eyes because he is an entrepreneur of the old shtetl type and not a capitalist of the modern urban kind. The social and personal conflicts in the novella remain underdeveloped; the reader can see only the demarcation of positions. The action unfolds slowly and presupposes a gradual development on the scale of a big novel. We can guess, however, that the economic profile of each character will be of crucial importance to their fate. The novella has no framing motif, and therefore it is difficult to see how the theme of fate and chance will be represented. Joseph Shur adds the third element to the established economic opposition between the shtetl and the city. The role of the station, an intermediary link between the city and the shtetl, is played by Shur’s mill, a modern capitalist enterprise in the middle of the backward countryside. The shtetl is bankrupt, and so is its economic order, which is based on pedigree and inheritance. The city values mobility and efficiency over the old shtetl norms of stability and prestige. The city has bought up the shtetl (the rebbe is on Rappaport’s payroll), and is taking over the intermediary link. Shur realizes that, economically, his future will be with the city and tries to secure his connection through the traditional link of marriage. At the heart of the story lies the collision between the remains of the old order (represented by Shur’s provincialism) and the new (Rappaport’s urbane lifestyle). As Novershtern summarizes, “in general one can say that during the first decade of his literary activity Bergelson had a tendency to create the effect of uncertainty both in the external expression of the hero and in his or her characterization.”55 This specific atmosphere of uncertainty, which permeates Bergelson’s early works, is an expression of his initial artistic response to the challenge of modernity. Bergelson’s characters withdraw from the harsh reality into the subjective world of nostalgic feelings, impressions, and fantasies. An objective correlative of this atmosphere of uncertainty is the situation of financial insecurity in the world, in which traditional economic relations and attitudes no longer work. The social structure based on the old money is disappearing under the pressure of the new money. This process has an aura of mystery for representatives of the old order, whereas the new people are only too busy capitalizing on the economic changes and have no time for reflection.

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Economy of Dreams: The Treasure Motif in the Works of Sholem Aleichem and Joseph Opatoshu The motif of the hidden treasure, which, if found, could miraculously change the life of an individual or a whole community, exists of course not only in Yiddish literature. As Marc Shell points out, its occurrence in a culture is an indication of limited social possibilities: It is a free and infinitely large gift, a blank check, which solves or resolves the quest and the question of the wasteland. A telling symptom of the societies from which the tales arose and which, in some measure, they decry, the hypothesis of the grail is part of the language of commodities that an unfree and finite economy speaks ventriloquistically through the mouth of theologians, economists, and poets.56

In the particular context of the Haskalah in Eastern Europe, the motif of treasure becomes an instrument in the ideological polemic with the old order. Aksenfeld uses this motif extensively in The Headband, where the central image of the headband serves as a symbol carrying the main ideological message of the novel. The expensive headband represented the old idea of treasure as a nonliquid asset, passed on from one generation to another. According to Dan Miron, it is a “symbolic representation of the economic attitude which connects the ambitions of an individual not with the movement of money, with the circulation of blood through all parts of the socioeconomic body, but with freezing the assets, their degeneration in the form of an ‘absurd’ treasure.”57 In Abramovitsh’s novel, The Magic Ring, the motif of the treasure took the form of a folklore image of the magic ring. Its didactic function was, in Miron’s words, to “illustrate the argument that the Jews’ deliverance from poverty would come not through supernatural means (the ‘false’ magic ring) but through knowledge and science (‘the true, natural magic ring’).”58 This message is far more evident in the first version of 1865, which still reflected the atmosphere of Haskalah, than in the second, revised edition of 1888.59 In the classic maskilic scheme, the treasure often signifies the illusory and irrational side of the old traditional order. In the course of the action, the fantasy about the treasure is to be discredited and replaced by the sound reality of positive values, represented by commercial capital and/or practical education. The motif of treasure, especially the one that appears to the character in dreams and fantasies, is then taken up by Sholem Aleichem. The manifold transformation of the symbolic and organizing functions of this motif in his works not only reflects Sholem Aleichem’s own artistic development, but is also indicative of the changes that took place in Yiddish literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sholem

The Economic Crisis Aleichem develops the motif of money from an essentially one-dimensional sign into a complex symbol, which provides grounds for a variety of interpretations of his works. With some degree of simplification, the entire corpus of criticism of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction can be divided into two parts, the first and larger one including various “idealistic” interpretations, and the second and smaller consisting of “materialistic” readings. Most of the influential critics and scholars belonging to the idealistic trend emphasized the writer’s ability to represent the eternal and the absolute through the material reality of everyday life. The Polish Yiddish critic Y. Y. Trunk called this quality of Sholem Aleichem’s works “primitive idealism.”60 It was used as a means to transform the poor materiality of Jewish life into symbolic images, which represented the character and the fate of the people. Trunk defined the main theme of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction in the following terms: “historical fate as a national idea—the psychological geshtaltung-form of the character of the national masses in the dialectic and in the movements of history.”61 Miron’s analysis of Sholem Aleichem’s literary persona further stressed the idealizing function of Sholem Aleichem’s art: “Experience as such is infernal; the Jewish experience is doubly so. The vocation of Jewish art is to transform it, to endow it with some sense, to redeem its unbearable pain and absurdity.”62 This idealistic reading of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction “from above,” that is, from the metaphysical perspective, was countered by the “essentialist” interpretation “from the ground,” which was developed by the Soviet scholar Meir Wiener. Unlike Trunk, who tried to combine Jungian collective psychoanalysis with Marxist sociology, Wiener took as his point of departure the aesthetics of German Expressionism influenced by Marxist dialectical and historical materialism. Despite his heavy Marxist vocabulary, Wiener could not free himself completely from his early passion for mysticism.63 He posited the eternal creativity of the folk as the main source of Sholem Aleichem’s inspiration. Discussing Sholem Aleichem’s early novels, Wiener wrote: “Their chief importance lies . . . in the urge to discover the foundations and to unfold the great creative forces of the folk, to uncover the obstacles preventing it from flourishing.”64 In Wiener’s concept of Yiddish literature, these “creative forces” of Jewish folk transcended the rigid picture of historical reality based on class relationships and represented yet another idealistic abstraction similar to Trunk’s “geshtaltung-form” of Jewish national character. David Roskies’s concept of a materialistic myth created by Sholem Aleichem can be regarded as an attempt to bring different particular idealistic interpretations to a common denominator. Roskies sees in Sholem Aleichem’s oeuvre “a normative mythology that Jewish literature

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The Economic Crisis had not seen before, a humanistic myth both profoundly consoling and deeply ironic.”65 This new mythology was mediated by material culture represented by a certain type of folk hero (like Tevye) who was situated outside the synagogue, the study house, and the yeshiva, and got his hands dirty in the mud and muddle of everyday life. To a greater or lesser degree these characters had their own ironic sense of the discrepancy between the real and the ideal. Through them, as through the celebration of the holidays, the myth was invoked as a foil to reality. (pp. 167–68)

The myth performs a double function in Sholem Aleichem’s world: it allows “a momentary reprieve from the pain and drudgery of life” and, at the same time, highlights “the unbridgeable gap between transcendence and life’s inherent constraints” (p. 174). The implementation of this function requires, according to Roskies, two complementary elements: a token of a heroic past and a recurrent structure of the present. In the traditional Jewish culture these elements were represented by the sacred history and the life cycle of religious observance. The most orthodox Marxist critic of Sholem Aleichem was Max Erik. He emphasized the concrete historical mimetic aspects of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction. For Erik, the writer was a product of the specific development of the Jewish petite bourgeoisie in the social, economic, and political context of the Russian Empire, and the value of his fiction lay in its capacity to represent the most characteristic aspects of this reality. Erik did not accept any interpretation going beyond the socioeconomic plane. Any search for eternal or absolute meaning in Sholem Aleichem’s fiction would be for Erik a “convenient escape into ‘pre-capitalist fantasies,’ so as not to confront the woes attending capitalism.”66 Both trends take into account the money motif in Sholem Aleichem’s fiction but treat it differently. For Trunk, money is the idealistic concept that relates to the essence of the Jewish psyche: “Money itself, as substance, the good, dear geltenyu, in which all realities of the world are represented as an abstract concept beyond any reality—it alone has the ability to relate to the life ambitions, the movements and attitudes of the Jewish psychology.”67 Capitalism is the economic “objective correlative” of the Jewish collective psyche, and Sholem Aleichem becomes the artist who is able to show this in his writings: “As Sholem Aleichem demonstrated, we can find in the Jewish masses the entire substructure of the capitalist economy. Capitalism there is the innermost and primeval feeling of existence.”68 Capitalism is a metaphysical concept, for which the Jewish collective psyche is a congenial medium. Max Erik proceeds in his study of Menakhem-Mendl from the opposite assumption. For Erik, Jews are not the eternal bearers of

The Economic Crisis the capitalist mentality (this would contradict the principles of historical materialism, even though Marx himself described the historical role of Jews precisely as such), but rather a good example, illustrating the universal character of capitalism as a socioeconomic formation: “Menakhem-Mendl is relevant not only for understanding the Jewish petite bourgeoisie, but also for understanding basic characteristics of the social psychology and behavior of the petite bourgeoisie as a whole. This is an important and real achievement on the part of Sholem Aleichem.”69 The following analysis will trace the inner dynamics of the motif of money in several works by Sholem Aleichem. This analysis is by no means complete or comprehensive; its goal is to discover certain patterns in the function of money, which will be important for further considerations, in the fictional world of Sholem Aleichem. The point of departure for my study is David Roskies’s concept of “a mythology of the mundane” as the underlying principle of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction.70 Obviously, money, with its double nature of being simultaneously a “reality” and a “representation,” is bound to play a most prominent role in any “materialistic” version of the Jewish myth. In the didactic maskilic fiction before the 1870s the treasure motif had been closely connected with the motif of the dream as opposed to reality. Later, money and dream become separated: in Abramovitsh’s novels The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third and The Mare, as well as in the second, enlarged edition of The Magic Ring, the dream motif lost its somewhat one-dimensional mercantile connotation and became part of a more complex symbolic system, which reflected expectations and frustrations of the period of disillusionment with the Haskalah ideals. Now dreams were increasingly treated in a way that would leave room for their positive interpretation as a driving force of the awakening of the national consciousness. Dreams could no longer be brushed aside as a mere vestige of the period of primitivism; they represented a serious albeit irrational force that affected people’s lives. Miron has pointed out the ambivalence of the dream about the treasure in Sholem Aleichem’s fiction of the late 1880s.71 On the one hand, Sholem Aleichem still carries out the positivist-maskilic tradition of Aksenfeld and young Abramovitsh and criticizes the shtetl Jews’ attachment to dreams, which prevented them from positive actions. One example of this attitude is Sholem Aleichem’s early Hebrew story “A Treasure” (early 1880s). The other interpretation of the treasure motif becomes prevalent in Sholem Aleichem’s later fiction and coincides with the weakening of the positivist voice in his fiction. Elements of this attitude appear already in a Yiddish sketch “A Treasure” (Oytser, 1888) and run through most of Sholem Aleichem’s works up to his last autobiographical novel, From the Fair (Funem yarid, 1916). In this work the leitmotif, a hidden old treasure, signifies the

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The Economic Crisis collective unity of Jewish people and is a projection of the utopian dream about the happy future. As such, the dream becomes transformed into a positive force that enables people to survive in the hard conditions of real life. An example of the negative interpretation of the dream motif is provided by Sholem Aleichem’s early Russian satirical story “The Dreamers” (Mechtateli, 1884). The two characters, rather poor replicas of Abramovitsh’s Benjamin the Third and his companion, Senderl, imagine themselves to be doubles of the Messiah and the prophet Elijah.72 Their adventure ends in disaster: the “Messiah” ends up in a mental asylum and dies, whereas “Elijah,” hearing of this, hangs himself in despair. The satiric culmination of the story is “Elijah’s” visit to the provincial governor whom he wants to convert to his messianic belief. The lesson is clear: dreamers are ridiculous and dangerous for the community. The dream motif is still being used to lampoon the old order, in contrast to the prototype novel of Abramovitsh, where the grand dream of Benjamin the Third is presented with more sympathy. Another Russian short story by the young Sholem Aleichem, “Characters from the ‘Small Bourse’ ” (Tipy “maloi birzhi”), written in Odessa where the author fled after his bankruptcy, already treats the dream motif differently.73 The hero, an anonymous prototype of Menakhem-Mendl, is inspired by a news item about someone who has made one hundred thousand rubles in currency speculations. The hero himself is described as a person of an uncertain look and age: “a short and plump bachelor with an extremely animated face, already not young, forty to fifty years of age, depending on circumstances: when he was doing well, he became ten years younger, but when things were bad, he did not look so young, although his face never lost its liveliness and he always kept smiling” (p. 558). This man has a strong premonition that now is a good moment to bet on the ruble. Since he has lost his entire fortune in previous speculations, he needs to convince a wealthy merchant to risk some money, and together they win a substantial sum. When the triumphant hero sits in his hotel room surrounded by all kinds of delicacies and writes a letter to his family, the news arrives that as a result of a sudden financial crisis abroad, the value of the ruble has drastically fallen. Despite the failure, the hero remains in the city (Odessa), confident that one day “his star will rise on the horizon and shine as bright as never before” (p. 566). An important new characteristic of this dreamer type is his ability to withstand adverse circumstances. Unlike the old messianic dreamers, the new financial dreamer is not devastated by his failure and reemerges undamaged, sitting in an Odessa cafe and awaiting his next chance. This transformation of the dream motif from a dangerous illusion that brings about the destruction of a personality into a cyclic device that determines the recurrent rise-and-fall pattern marks the appearance of a new organiza-

The Economic Crisis tional structure in Sholem Aleichem’s works. This cyclical pattern underlies Sholem Aleichem’s first Yiddish novel, Sender Blank and His Household (Sender Blank un zayn gezindl, 1888). The children of a wealthy businessman rush home when they hear about the apparently mortal illness of their father. Each character in the novel—the three children, the wife, and the servant—hopes to receive a large part of the inheritance. To their disappointment, Sender’s illness turns out to be a simple problem of indigestion and he recovers speedily. Tragedy turns into farce, nobody is hurt, and all the characters are ready for the next act. The expectations of the characters are subverted, and so are the expectations of the common reader, who is used to the primitive literary conventions and looks forward to a dramatic denouement. Summarizing the double satiric effect of the novel, Ken Frieden writes: “The satire attacks both bourgeois Jewish society and the fictions it has helped to spawn.”74 Technically this is achieved through the cyclical organization of the plot around the treasure dream motif. In the new bourgeois comedy the characters are not destroyed as a result of the failure of their expectations and are ready for new adventures. With the transition from the messianic eschatological realm of medieval religious fantasies to the mundane world of bourgeois reality the dream motif loses its supernatural power to transform the character and replace the wrong old order with a right new one during the course of the action. Instead, the motif of a dream about the treasure rearranges the world of the narrative into an open-ended cycle of events. The unrealizable, but also indestructible, dream about the treasure sets up a cyclical pattern in which the end of one story contains a possibility of a new beginning. The linear scheme of transformation, characteristic of the didactic Haskalah novel, is replaced by a new ironic cyclical scheme of classification. The cyclical organization enables the author to establish a social and moral classification of characters. This new classificatory function of the treasure motif becomes prominent in Sholem Aleichem’s most famous works, such as Tevye the Dairyman and Menakhem-Mendl. Miron defines these series of stories as “anti-novels,” because their cyclical organization precludes any development of characters. Their structural principle is the recurrent pattern of expectation, derived pleasure (real or imagined), and inevitable failure. The heroes of the stories are not developing romantic or realistic characters, but stable archetypes, which have no distinct personal and individual qualities. As Miron observes, the decisive event in the life of the heroes takes place before the beginning of the action and therefore does not belong to the world of the stories. Such construction makes it possible to create an open and potentially endless plot based on the cyclical pattern of expectation and failure.75 Sholem Aleichem’s persistent interest in the treasure motif can be explained by personal and psychological reasons, such as the trauma of the sudden loss of economic stability in the writer’s childhood, or the need for compensation for the “com-

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The Economic Crisis plex of the failed great expectations.”76 Be that as it may, these personal reasons led to the invention of the narrative structure, which enabled Sholem Aleichem to create his universalistic “mythology of the mundane.” In the story of Tevye the dairyman, a found treasure lays down the economic foundation for his future relative prosperity. His accidental encounter in the forest with two women has not only brought him cash but also provided him with a steady business. As a dairy supplier of a family of Yehupets (Kiev) nouveau riches during their summer dacha season, Tevye benefits from the financial success of the new Jewish urban bourgeoisie. His economic stability is a product of someone else’s realized capitalist aspirations. The actual cycle of Tevye stories can begin only after the initial finding of the treasure. Although Tevye is sometimes perceived as an epitome of the traditional Jew rooted in the past, his way of life is, like that of Reb Yekhezkl in Asch’s A Shtetl, not a continuation of the family tradition. Tevye himself denies the family continuity of his occupation: “After all, if I sell butter and cheese and such stuff, do you think that’s because my grandmother’s grandmother was a milkman?”77 Each story in the cycle is based on the failure of Tevye’s expectation of repetition of the initial miracle. The first, successful realization of the treasure dream winds up the mechanism of the expectation-and-failure cycle. This pattern is potentially endless for Tevye so long as the outside conditions of his life remain stable, but for the younger generation each episode is unique and has a purely linear structure. As the more detailed analysis of Tevye the Dairyman in the last chapter of this volume will demonstrate, Sholem Aleichem managed to combine in his masterpiece a highly realistic portrayal of concrete historical reality with an abstract symbolic representation of Jewish fate. When Menakhem-Mendl, another famous creation of Sholem Aleichem, makes a cameo appearance in Tevye’s cycle, he initiates the potentially endless chain of Tevye’s misfortunes. Hoping to increase his small fortune, Tevye entrusts it to this distant relative of his wife, but MenakhemMendl loses the money in his irresponsible speculations. This character’s role in the life of Tevye is episodic but highly suggestive. As Ruth Wisse points out, “By bringing his two main characters, Tevye and MenakhemMendl, together, . . . Sholem Aleichem provided a complicated gloss on the interdependency of Jews within their modern predicament.” Wisse reads the episode “Tevye Blows a Small Fortune” (A boydem, 1899), in which Tevye experiences his first failure, not just as a “warning against radical investments on the stock market,” but also as a more general “warning against the spirit of radicalism in other areas of life, including politics and literature.”78 As one of the first literary manifestations of Sholem Aleichem’s conservatism, this story also establishes a structural cyclical pattern of imagined successes and real failures that will later dominate all of Tevye’s enterprises and most of Sholem Aleichem’s other works.

The Economic Crisis Menakhem-Mendl’s stories unfold according to the same pattern. He never enjoys any actual success, but this does not discourage him from planning new schemes of enrichment. The pattern of expectation and failure is so strong in his imagination that he does not even try to undertake real action. Menakhem-Mendl lives out his projects in his dreams; as Max Erik notes, “the only place he played was his imagination.”79 This monomaniac character is driven solely by the grand dream of a treasure, which submerges his entire personality. In practical life, Menakhem-Mendl is completely helpless: he even fails to recover a very real part of his wife’s dowry from her Kishinev uncle. His fantasy, however, has no limits. Erik places this abstract concept of a man into the context of the socioeconomic reality: “What motivates him is not simply the desire for an income, merely eking out a living, but the passion of speculation, for making deals, the sight of ‘millions upon millions,’ the exhilaration of being swept up in the capitalist whirlwind.”80 Tevye and Menakhem-Mendl do not adhere to the traditional order of shtetl economy. Their economic foundation is not a dowry or an inheritance, as was the case with Bergelson’s and Asch’s characters; neither do they continue a family business. In the framework of Roskies’s concept of the “mythology of the mundane,” money fulfills the double function of the myth-creating device in their life stories: it represents the “heroic” past, the original miraculous event, which laid the foundation of their present situation, sets up the recurring pattern of expectation and failure, and organizes the realistic present of the material condition of exile (goles).81 In the case of Menakhem-Mendl this heroic past exists in his imagination only: he ignores the failure of his first enterprise and immediately proceeds to the expectation-and-failure pattern. A modification of the treasure motif appears in Sholem Aleichem’s artist novels, Stempenyu (1888), Yosele the Nightingale (Yosele solovey, 1890), and Wandering Stars (Blondzhende shtern, 1909–11). Here the treasure takes the form of artistic talent. Although talent itself belongs to the immaterial sphere, the artist who possesses it lives in a concrete socioeconomic situation and has to use it to make his living. Thus talent, which is initially a gift, becomes a commodity that involves the artist in a system of economic relationships. To the reader of Sholem Aleichem’s novels about artists, the economic aspect of art is usually overshadowed by the romantic conflict between the celestial and the mundane in the life of the artist and his relationship with material reality. In this conflict, the artist is usually perceived as an idealistic victim of the materialistic forces of reality. For example, this is how Anita Norich summarizes the conflict of Sholem Aleichem’s early novels about artists: In the first two novels, the artist figure falls in love with a woman who represents the best of idealized shtetl life but is taken in hand by a practical woman of the mar-

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The Economic Crisis ketplace world with whom his freer spirit is entirely incompatible. The hero’s love for the ideal shtetl woman is never consummated and his union with the other woman is joyless. The hero, innocent of all sense of economic reality, ends as a socially alienated and emasculated figure.82

This summary presumes the “economic innocence” of the artist. In fact, all artists in Sholem Aleichem’s novels have quite a specific economic function in their respective social structures. The violinist Stempenyu and cantor Yosele represent a traditional type of a traveling professional artist. This type has its economic roots in the old Polish order of life and its economic niche in the shtetl. Unlike Tevye, Stempenyu has inherited his talent and profession from his father, and lives according to the rules and customs of this profession. Even his love affairs with Jewish and Polish women are part of the established tradition. Stempenyu’s marriage to the “woman of the marketplace,” who exploits him in a feudal manner as a serf, is another indication of his inability to overcome the limitation of the old economic order. One can suspect that this outcome was not uncommon among people of his profession. In contrast to Stempenyu, “the ideal shtetl heroine” Rokhele develops into a successful entrepreneur of the new economic type. The romantic feeling, which Stempenyu has aroused in her soul, becomes in the end transformed into a commercial drive. Rokhele wakes up to reality and propels her family to the new step on the social and economic ladder. She encourages her husband to leave the sleepy shtetl Mazepovke and establish a dynamic new business in the city of Yehupets (Kiev). Their economic success is caused by this reorientation from the old shtetl economy to the new trade centers of Russia: “It is not at all bad to trade with Moscow. Moscow is fair in business and likes Jewish clients.”83 The economic scheme of Stempenyu resembles that of The Headband, with the important difference that the male and female protagonists swap their roles. From the economic point of view, Stempenyu’s talent is a treasure similar to the headband in Aksenfeld’s novel. Its authenticity makes it part of the old economic order, and as such it is doomed to deteriorate in the stagnating shtetl. Stempenyu’s talent inspires Rokhele to seek new economic opportunities and to change her backward way of life. Rokhele becomes a harbinger of the new, a role that in the traditional Haskalah scheme was reserved exclusively for men. Sholem Aleichem’s second artist novel, Yosele the Nightingale, is a variation on the same theme, but with a sad ending. Yosele’s vanity and lack of discipline pull him into a marriage with Perele, a selfish and manipulative woman. This is a personal tragedy for himself and his romantic beloved Esther, but it also reflects the tragic situation of the shtetl society in general, according to the reading of Anita Norich. Esther, in contrast to

The Economic Crisis Rokhele, “has no control over her fate and is compelled to marry a man she can never love.”84 This ending effectively closes the novel and leaves no opportunity for future development, or even for a repetition in the spirit of “material mythology.” Certainly, the closed structure raises “a question of society as the concern that predominates over the individual”(ibid.). However, in this case the question is not of society in general, but more specifically of the deteriorating precapitalist shtetl society, which does not allow one enough space to pursue a dream of the treasure. Wandering Stars is the latest and most complex of the three artist novels. Norich believes that this is also the most personal one and “brings us much closer to Sholem Aleichem himself, however elusive he may still remain for us.” On the one hand, the novel reflects the “ideological upheaval” of the author in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution and pogroms, and his choice of the “westward path” as his personal response to the events. On the other hand, it presents the most comprehensive portrait of the artistic life in modern society in Yiddish literature and raises problems of the relationship between art and life (p. 244). The motif of gold appears early in the novel, and accompanies the characters on their journey through countries and cultures. Gold and success are inseparable attributes of the artistic dream. Trying to persuade the parents of the beautiful heroine Rosa to let her join his company, the entrepreneur of an itinerant Yiddish theater promises them that in just a few years she will bring them a “hat full of gold.”85 He himself has put all his fortune in gold and diamond rings, which he always has on his fingers (vol. 1, p. 47). This image of a businessman investing his profit in jewels is of course a stark contrast to Aksenfeld’s idea of the modern entrepreneur, whose money is always in circulation. In the world of Yiddish theater, money is still the manifestation of the old dream and not considered commercial capital. Thus a provincial theater company becomes the representation of a shtetl “factory of dreams,” an escape route from capitalist reality. Rosa and her counterpart Leo are led by their dreams of artistic success that will make them rich and famous. Theater is for them a magic device, a “God’s paradise,” which can transform reality into a dream for the spectators, and dream into reality for the successful actors (vol. 1, pp. 37–38). This power is part of the spell that attracts people to the theater world. The magic of big numbers and fascination with money are inseparable from this dream. An American newspaper article presents Rosa’s career as a sequence of magic figures of her honorariums: a half-million francs, ten thousand crowns, two hundred pounds, and finally the culmination, two thousand dollars for one concert (vol. 2, p. 180). And yet, according to the rules of the fairy tale, even at the height of her success, Rosa remains the same simple girl from the shtetl. She comes back to her shtetl following the pattern

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The Economic Crisis of the novels by Aksenfeld and Mendele, but not in order to bring change into the old order. She appears there as a good fairy and buys the house of her childhood dreams for her poor parents. This version of the familiar motif of the return to the shtetl negates the previous ones: in nineteenthcentury Yiddish fiction, the role of the returning hero was to transform the old order and bring it closer to reality, not to strengthen its imaginary aspect. The attempt to write a novel according to the rules of the fairy tale inevitably creates a problem of the ending. As Anita Norich demonstrates, Sholem Aleichem tried two different variants of the ending of the novel, a happy one for the American audience, and a not-so-happy one for the proposed Russian translation. Both of them are, in her opinion, “anticlimactic” and “inorganic” (p. 247). This situation reflects the difficulty of reconciliation between the mythological treasure fantasy and the requirement for a novel to have an organic ending, that is, one related to the development of its characters. Any ending, except for yet another cycle, would be perceived as inorganic. The characters in Wandering Stars remain doomed to repeat the same pattern of theatrical failure and success over and over again. The mythological pattern of success and failure dominates the mimetic representation of the inner development of the characters.86 The stage on which the characters move is not limited by the shtetl and Pale of Settlement; it includes large cities such as Bucharest and Lemberg, Vienna and Paris, London and New York. Nonetheless, the Jewish world remains the same everywhere: “London’s Whitechapel is a kind of Berdichev, or Vilna, or Brody, or perhaps all three together, and maybe even Jerusalem,” says the narrator in the opening chapter of the second volume (p. 7). Despite its much broader geographical perspective, the world of Wandering Stars is less diverse than that of Stempenyu: the move from Mazepovke to Yehupets in the latter novel changes the characters’ lives more radically than the move from the Bessarabian shtetl of Holeneshti to New York in the former. Sholem Aleichem’s America does not offer the immigrants genuinely new opportunities, it merely reverses the old status structure. As Khone Shmeruk summarizes Sholem Aleichem’s view of America, “In the Jewish community, at least, anything goes. While Old Country aristocrats who had been respected there become degraded and suffer greatly in America, others with absolutely no qualifications achieve prestigious positions.”87 Sholem Aleichem saw America from an Old World vantage point. The vision of the young American Yiddish writers was fundamentally different from their European colleagues even when the American writers dealt with the familiar Old World situations. To illustrate these differences we now consider the treatment of the same money and treasure motifs in the first

The Economic Crisis novel called Romance of a Horse Thief (A roman fun a ferd-ganef ), by the American Yiddish writer Joseph Opatoshu.88 Dreams occupy an important place in the life of the main character, horse thief Zanvl. His childish imagination is filled with legends and tales about robbers, goblins, and witches. His ideal is the famous forest robber Elye Vilner (perhaps an ironic allusion to the Prophet Elijah, the folklore protector of poor Jews), a Jewish Robin Hood, who never attacks the poor and the Jews but has no mercy for landowners and priests. Zanvl dreams how he could imitate his hero in order to get rich, marry his beloved Rachel, and even become a king: “[T]he Polish church was said to contain a golden Madonna with diamond eyes that was worth a few hundred thousand. He would break in and steal the holy statue. The money would buy him some long-tailed Cossack horses and the weapons he needed. Then he would round up a band of trusty men and hole up in the Radzenov Forest. . . . Soon the whole region would lie in fear of them. But they wouldn’t harm the poor, and in time every dispute would be brought to them for arbitration. He, Zanvl, would be king; his pale Rachel with the beautiful black eyes and long black hair would be his wife, his queen!” (p. 151). In reality, Zanvl takes part in the criminal activity of stealing horses and smuggling them across the Russian border to the German province of East Prussia. For 150 rubles (a fortune for a few hours work) he is hired by his boss Moyshe to take a herd of horses to Germany. The economic foundation of this thriving business is the great demand for Russian horses across the border. The legal export of this military article is prohibited because of the Russo-Japanese War. The same political event that had ruined Hillel Abelman’s legal trade in Dinezon’s The Crisis creates favorable conditions for the criminal business of Moyshe and Zanvl. The business itself is not new: Zanvl has inherited his profession from his father. But, unlike his father, who for many years has not been able to achieve even a modest prosperity under the stable political and economic conditions, the ambitious Zanvl has a good chance to do well in the new volatile situation of the war. Of course, Zanvl cannot be aware of this broad socioeconomic context in which he acts, and the author provides only a few details that are relevant to the general picture of Jewish life in Russia on the eve of the revolution of 1905. And yet, despite the narrative’s narrow focus on Zanvl’s personality, one cannot understand the novel without analyzing the relationship between the concrete socioeconomic reality of a Jewish shtetl near the Russian western border and the world of fantasies and passions of the hero. Zanvl is torn between two conflicting forces: he wants to marry his beloved Rachel and enter shtetl society, but his will is subject to the constant pressure of his fantasies about unlimited wealth and power. The conflict intensifies in the course of the novel, until Zanvl falls completely under

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The Economic Crisis the spell of his dreams. He eventually loses Rachel, who marries a weak yeshiva student. The loss makes him even more desperate, and he is carried away by his criminal fantasies: “Stealing horses,” he thought, “is no job for a real thief. Any guy with guts can do it. At night, when no one’s in the stables, you just pry off a board and lead the horse out. It’s no big deal. But stealing into a house when people are asleep, breaking open the safe and taking a pile of money—there’s a job for you! Horses are the old man’s business.”(p. 206)

At the end of the novel Zanvl kills a dog; this act symbolizes the beginning of a new stage in his life free from the traditional Jewish inhibition against murder. The figure of Zanvl belongs to the same set of artistic characters as Stempenyu and Yosele in Sholem Aleichem’s novels. Zanvl is an artist in his own right, and as such, occupies a marginal position in shtetl society. He has inherited his trade from his father and tries to find for himself a place in the new situation. Like Yosele, Zanvl faces a dilemma: either to attempt to overcome his marginal state, get married, and start climbing the social ladder, which means giving up his fantasies and artistic vocation, or to follow his imagination and abandon his social aspirations. The heroine’s choice is the same in both cases: Rachel in Opatoshu’s novel, like Sholem Aleichem’s Esther, prefers a weak but stable traditional type to the wild and untrustworthy artist and voluntarily buries herself in the shtetl. Yosele’s betrayal of Esther leads to his moral and artistic degradation. Opatoshu transforms this closed situation into an open-ended one. The dreams, which ruined Stempenyu and Yosele, become a new force leading Zanvl to the unknown future. The novelty of Opatoshu’s novel is not only in the new type of character, which signifies, in Ruth Wisse’s words, “a departure from the clearly respectable concerns of early writing” in Yiddish literature.89 As we have seen, the character is constructed similarly to the familiar artist characters of Sholem Aleichem. The most important innovation is the new treatment of the dream and treasure motifs. Opatoshu breaks with the rationalistic maskilic tradition of associating dreams with the dying past. He also does not use dreams and treasure motifs as myth-creating devices that produce the cyclical organization of the narrative around the expectation-and-failure pattern. Opatoshu depicts a new individualistic hero who is able to break with the conventions of the past and follow his dream. This dream is not a fairytale fantasy; it is as tough as real life. Stempenyu and Yosele were destroyed by their inability to reconcile their artistic vocation with the norms of society. Zanvl revolts against those norms and leaps into the unknown, dangerous, but exciting future. A marriage in this situation would imply the

The Economic Crisis rejection of his dream and the repetition of his father’s unsuccessful life. It is true on one hand that the novel is “part of nostalgia-literature dedicated to preserving the rapidly disappearing world of the East European shtetl.”90 But on the other hand, the novel is also an attempt to create a new, futureoriented hero, free from the traditional limitations of the shtetl. The treasure dream becomes a prototype of the American dream, and Zanvl is an East European prototype of Opatoshu’s tough guys from the New York ghetto. The dream of money is a motif that runs through the entire history of modern Yiddish literature. Its treatment provides a classification scheme, which can be helpful for interpreting the relationship between the ideological orientation and aesthetics of writers of different periods. The rationalistic Haskalah convention referred the dreams about wealth to the irrational precapitalist order, in which money was a privilege that could not be earned in a positive way and belonged to the world of fantasy. The sign of the new reality was the rational process of accumulating capital, skills, and knowledge, which was possible only if one rejected empty dreams and embraced capitalism. The post-Haskalah disappointment, connected with the worsening of the Jewish conditions in Russia after 1881, found its expression in the creation of a new mythology focused on the pursuit of dreams. The treasure dream had lost its destructive connotation and become the myth-creating device, which established the expectation-andfailure pattern. The new revisionist interpretation of the motif became possible as a result of the massive political and social changes that shook the entire foundation of East European Jewish society. In this situation of the unknown future, the dream came to signify the new hope for a treasure, which lay somewhere outside the traditional Jewish habitat and could be attained only through a concerted effort.

Conclusion: Monetary Discourse and Modernity Concluding his study of the role of the money motif in literature, Marc Shell writes: “My argument is not that money is talked about in particular works of literature and philosophy (which is certainly the case), but that money talks in and through discourse in general. The monetary information of thought, unlike its content, cannot be eradicated from discourse without changing thought itself, within whose tropes and processes the language of wares is an ineradicable participant.”91 Economy and money certainly talk in Yiddish literary discourse. Yiddish prose of 1905–14 provides us with a variety of representations of the economy that reflect the aesthetic and ideological orientations of the authors. Perhaps no other

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The Economic Crisis period produced such a polyphonic discourse of different “money talks,” ranging from precapitalist mercantilism to advanced financial capitalism. The mood of maskilic optimism that was prevalent in Yiddish literature until the early 1870s gives way in the following decades to a more cautious and less didactic approach to the economic reality and prospects of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Dinezon comes close the style of “primitive realism” of Aksenfeld and Dik with his meticulous description of the Jewish commercial world and naive belief in the organizing power of chance that rules in this world. Dinezon has no interest in the broad socioeconomic processes that affect the life of a typical Jewish merchant. The story of Abelman’s bankruptcy is driven by the same simple force as the sentimental love story in The Black Young Man. In both stories it is force of fate, not the play of social or personal factors, that brings about the final catastrophe. Dinezon reflects the popular taste and stereotypes that have become the point of departure for the younger writers who went in different directions. Sholem Asch began his literary career by creating a shtetl fantasy that came close to the popular tradition in its broad appeal and sentimentalism. However, Asch radically weakens the power of chance in his fictional world and subordinates chance to the dominant cycle of nature and religion. This artistic innovation effectively separates the world of Asch’s fiction from the reality of his time. The economy of this world is based on the exchange of natural products, with the circulation of money following the dominant cycles of nature and religious observance. This cyclic organization is eternal and cannot be broken by any outside intervention. The Jewish merchant becomes the central element of this fictional world because of his economic position as mediator in the cyclical exchange process between the peasants, the landowner, and the outside world. In this economy, money signifies stability and respect. Money establishes a person at the center of discourse and provides him with the authority and the means to express and execute this authority. The wealthy merchant is the master not only of the economic, but also of the moral, the religious, and even the natural order in the shtetl universe. The last aspect is particularly visible in the special relationship between Reb Shloyme and trees and corn, or between Reb Yekhezkl and the river and timber. This Ptolemaic universe revolves around one center, the old and established Jewish merchant. All other elements, such as women, young people, and Jewish artisans, not to mention peasants, belong to the periphery of the world and have neither the will nor the power to break up the established hierarchical order. David Bergelson takes the opposite course. He elaborates on the magic aspects of Dinezon’s concept of chance and develops it into a complex symbolic system that represents the total insecurity of an individual in the capitalist reality. Here, too, money plays the central role. Its ambivalent nature

The Economic Crisis signifies the conflict between the stability of the old order, based on the slow movement of capital and coordinated with the rhythm of human life, and the insecurity of the new urban capitalism with its rapid flow of capital and accelerated pace of life. In the old order, wealth normally changed hands at the most important moments of the human life cycle, those of marriage and death. Inheritance and dowry laid the foundation for the slow but steady growth of capital. Now the old cycle is broken, and the new order threatens this stability with its fast and seemingly uncontrollable flow of money. In the new order one can quickly become rich as well as poor through speculation and fraud. The mystery of money reflects the feeling of anxiety of the growing number of middle-class Jewish men who can no longer rely on their dowries and inheritances and have to navigate their way in the unfamiliar world of high risk and financial instability. The anxiety and frustration of a Jew who had grown up in a stable world and suddenly found himself under the increasing pressure of modernity was intimately felt by Sholem Aleichem after his own bankruptcy in 1890. His artistic response was the creation of a materialistic mythology of Jewish life. Like any other mythological system, this one is organized according to a cyclical principle. The dream of the treasure, which has had negative connotations in the Haskalah system of values, now receives a double function of a “memory about the glorious past” and the cycle-forming device. The memory of the once realized dream about treasure relates the characters to the fictitious precapitalist past and provides a psychological defense mechanism against the rough present, whereas the pursuit of the new dream about quick enrichment sets up the pattern of expectation and failure, which organizes the characters’ life as an open-ended series of episodes. This mythology is different from that of Sholem Asch, who seeks to enclose the literary universe within the narrow limits of the shtetl patriarchal, precapitalist order, and to exclude any development. Instead of excluding development from his world, Sholem Aleichem neutralizes its harmful impact on the characters’ personality with the help of the hypnotic power of dream. A modification of this pattern transforms the money motif into a more open magic device, which enables the character to overcome the limitations of reality. Apart from money, artistic talent is another form of representation of the treasure. In Sholem Aleichem’s first two artist novels, the treasure motif is still part of the rationalist maskilic conceptual complex, based on the separation between dream and reality. In his last novel, Wandering Stars, the power of the talent-as-treasure motif finally becomes strong enough to defy reality and endows the artist-characters with the ability to withstand all the difficulties of life. On the surface, this refined “artistic” version of Sholem Aleichem’s mundane mythology is more idealistic and spiritual in its claim of reality than the more primitive

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The Economic Crisis material world of Tevye or Menakhem-Mendl. On the structural level, however, the constructions of the characters of the dairyman Tevye and the theater diva Rosa Spivak are not different. Joseph Opatoshu takes up the task of adopting the East European model to the American agenda. In order to do so, he shifts the focus of fictional discourse from the center to the periphery and replaces the exhausted shtetl characters by a robust and fresh villain. Opatoshu explores a great potential of strength and power of imagination in this type, and makes him a prototype and cultural hero of the young American Jewry. The spiritually immature and adventurous Zanvl is closer to the frontier characters of contemporary American fiction than to the quintessentially Old World Tevye and Menakhem-Mendl. The traditional shtetl world becomes incompatible with youth and energy, which carry the new hero away into the unknown future. In the following chapters we shall explore how these structural representations of money and economy relate to thematic complexes of revolution and immigration. The omnipresent image of money permeates all other representations of reality and plays the role of an important signifier of modernity and change.

c h a p t e r

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The Crisis of Revolution

Introduction: Political Paradigms in Yiddish Literature before 1905 From its beginnings in the early nineteenth century, modern Yiddish literature in the Russian Empire was politically engaged. Aksenfeld was among those who set up a political agenda—the struggle for the integration of the Jewish population into the centralized infrastructure of the Russian state and the fight against Hasidism—that dominated the literary scene until the late 1870s. Aksenfeld’s choice of Yiddish as the language of literary creativity was motivated by practical considerations. As he pointed out in 1841 in his petition to the education minister Count Sergey Uvarov, neither Hebrew nor German could be properly understood by the Jewish masses. Aksenfeld suggested a new approach: “One had to find other means: to write in a language which the common Jewish people would understand, to find funny and educating events, to lure the reader by the story so that truth should always be revealed, but to make it appear in a pleasant tale.” In conclusion, Aksenfeld asked the minister to help him overcome the resistance of Jewish publishers who refused to print his Yiddish works.1 The historian Raphael Mahler saw in Hasidism a product of the decentralized society of the old prepartition Poland, which was based on the feudal mode of production. His observation of this link between Hasidism and the feudal economy in Galicia can be relevant to the situation in the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, which became part of Russia in

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The Crisis of Revolution 1793–95, as well: “prior to the social transformation of Hasidism, prosperous elements from the feudal sphere joined its ranks and were a component of the movement’s social structure. What all these elements had in common was their dependence on the feudal economy.”2 As Mahler noticed further, Hasidic teaching and way of life strengthened the feudal socioeconomic structure in which Jews were cut off from “any direct contact with the production process.”3 This Jewish social structure had its own centers and periphery, and did not coincide with the infrastructure created by the developing capitalist economy. Hasidic life revolved around the seats of the rebbes in small shtetls, whereas most big urban centers were regarded by the Hasidim as a dangerous frontier. Although Mahler’s conception of Hasidism can be criticized for its socioeconomic determinism, his observations can provide helpful insights into the “political unconscious” of Yiddish literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Aksenfeld not only criticized the old Jewish economy and Hasidism, but also advocated the change of Jewish social, economic, and political orientation from the old Polish nobility to the new Russian administration. He believed that the pro-Russian orientation would release the Ukrainian Jewry from stagnate isolationism and abolish their capricious exploitation by Polish landowners and Hasidic rebbes so that Jews would eventually become part of the large, state-regulated Russian economy and society. This change of allegiance would bring economic prosperity, social order, enlightenment, and, eventually, civil rights. The following observation of the historian Israel Bartal helps to place this trend in the historical context of that epoch: The increasing gap between the political tendencies with which the Enlightenment identified itself and trends in Polish society placed the Enlightened intellectuals in clear opposition to the manifestations of Polish nationalism. Even though it is a historical fact that there were many manifestations of Jewish identification with the national aspirations of the Poles, many intellectuals of the Jewish Enlightenment generally took either a pro-Russian or a pro-Austrian position. In Hebrew and Yiddish literary works this attitude is expressed by the traditional negative traits that had previously been attributed to the Polish nobility which were now being attributed to the negative essence of Polish nationalism.4

By the 1840s, the time of Aksenfeld’s literary activity, Haskalah in Russia had organized itself, as another historian, Michael Stanislawski, informs us, into “a well coordinated movement of several hundred committed adherents preaching their gospel in a coherent and persuasive manner.” The maskilim received enthusiastic support from the minister Uvarov, who hoped with their help to “reproduce in Russia the social and intellectual metamorphosis that had taken place among Western European Jewry,” and to achieve the ideal of rapprochement between Jews and the rest of the popu-

The Crisis of Revolution lation.5 Eventually many maskilim were employed by the government as teachers in new primary and secondary Jewish schools, which served as the main instrument of implementing the comprehensive reform of Jewish life. Uvarov’s reform created a unique situation in which many maskilim received direct support from the Russian state, even though the government did not endorse the ideology of the Haskalah completely.6 An echo of this optimistic mood, which was shared by the RussianJewish liberal intelligentsia during the 1860s–70s, could still be heard in Sholem Aleichem’s novel Stempenyu. As we have seen in the first chapter, Stempenyu’s personality had been shaped in the socioeconomic situation of the old Polish order. On the one hand, he was a romantic hero whose behavior was ruled by his artistic temperament and passions. He imitated the careless and irresponsible behavior of Polish nobility, in whose estates he was a welcome guest. As befitted a romantic character, Stempenyu even had a history of romantic affairs with their wives and daughters. On the other hand, Stempenyu, who, in the words of the Soviet scholar Nokhum Oyslender, “stood on the threshold of the underworld,” was also a prototype of the future neoromantic criminal heroes of Sholem Asch and Joseph Opatoshu.7 In contrast to Stempenyu, the exemplary Jewish woman Rokhele embodied the prudent bourgeois values of moral discipline and self-control; the qualities that the optimistic young author associated with the Jewish future in Russia. The climax of the novel, the decisive conversation between the hero and the heroine, is symbolically situated under the walls of the Catholic (that is, Polish) monastery that contains, according to a local legend, the grave of Mazepa, the infamous Ukrainian military commander who, during the war between Russia and Sweden, betrayed Peter the Great and sided with his enemy. Mazepa was killed after the defeat of the Polish-Swedish coalition in the Battle of Poltava, Russia’s first major victory in modern history. The dramatic story of Mazepa’s betrayal and his beautiful daughter’s love for the Russian general was immortalized by Alexander Pushkin in his famous poem Poltava (1829), which became a compulsory part of the Russian school curriculum. As a private teacher, Sholem Aleichem would have known the poem very well and understood its political connotations. According to Yurii Lotman, the poem affirms the dominating power of history over the ambitions and passions of the individual. In Poltava, Pushkin condemns the romantic egotism of Mazepa—the hero of Byron’s and Ryleev’s poems—and asserts that “history retains memory only of those who completely merge with it.”8 In this context, Rokhele’s rejection of Stempenyu not only signifies the victory of the bourgeois values of prudence and discipline over unrestricted romantic passions, but also reconfirms Russia’s power over Poland on the “Jewish street.” As Oyslender

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The Crisis of Revolution keenly observes further, the antiromantic ending of the novel has an additional function of blacking out the liberation motif, which has been quite prominent in the first half of the novel.9 Putting the ideological message of the novel in Pushkin’s phrase, one can say that the future of the Jews lies “in the citizenship of the Northern Empire.” In the maskilic conceptual system, the attributes of the Russian state signify solid reality, which was opposed to the world of dreams and fantasies associated with the old Poland and Hasidism. Traces of this conceptual framework can be seen in Abramovitsh’s novel The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third (1878), where the positive state authority is represented by a Russian official who appears at the end of the story and puts things straight, in the deus ex machina manner. A Russian general saves Benjamin and Senderl from the nightmarish future in the military where they have been sent by vicious Jewish khapers (literally “snatchers,” Jews who kidnapped Jewish boys and young men for the Russian draft). This intrusion of reality comes into a sharp contrast with the dream world in which Benjamin and Senderl live, but does not destroy it altogether. The final episode of the novel leaves open the possibility of further development and can be read as an open end, suggesting another cycle in the potentially endless chain of adventures: “And now be off,” the officers say to the heroes, “and let this be last of you.”10 In the epilogue, the author promises a second part of the story, which he never wrote. However, an earlier novel by Abramovitsh, The Mare (Di klyatshe, 1873), already marks the beginning of the new, more skeptical and pessimistic attitude toward Russian society and state. In The Mare, the world of political and social reality is symbolically represented as a kingdom of Ashmedai,11 administered by the people even more insane and irrational than the novel’s hero, Yisrolik the Madman. This is one of the first works of Yiddish literature in which the representation of the Russian state is not opposed to the irrational world of Jewish dreams but, on the contrary, associated with it. A strict but benevolent Russian official is replaced by a simple Jewish woman, the protagonist’s loving mother, as the representation of the ultimate truth. Yet, because of the limitations of the world of the past that she represents, her intervention cannot resolve the conflict. Having spent some time with his mother, Yisrolik must continue his futile efforts to conquer the hostile sociopolitical reality and find his place in it. The Polish uprising of 1863 reminded Russian Jewry of the problem of political loyalty. There were Jews, especially in the semiautonomous Congress Kingdom of Poland, who sympathized with the rebels; however, as Stanislawski tells us, “the vast majority of the Jews, particularly in the Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian provinces, still viewed the Polish struggle as irrelevant to their lives and either remained aloof from the bat-

The Crisis of Revolution tle or in some measure supported the tsarist regime.”12 Opalski and Bartal describe the problem of the attitude of Jewish writers to the Polish uprising using the categories of center and periphery: In Jewish literature the link between the center and the periphery is discussed in strongly political terms. As a rule, a distinction is made between the Warsaworiented Jewish Polonophiles and the provincial connection of their opponents. The key to understanding the ideological dimension of this distinction—a dimension that is far more essential to the plot of Jewish works than their equivalents in Polish literature—lies with the sociocultural background and geographical roots of those Jewish writers who dealt with the 1863 theme. In fact, all the early literary responses by Jewish writers (i.e., works in Yiddish and Hebrew produced during the uprising and the following two decades) were written far from the center of Poland’s political activity.13

The most loyal members of the new Russian-Jewish intelligentsia that appeared in the 1860s as a result of the acculturative policy of the government expressed their open support of Russia’s military action against the uprising, and in their patriotic zeal even embraced the Russian nationalistic ideology (shared, among others, by such prominent Russian writers as Leskov and Dostoevsky), which put the blame for the emerging radical movement in Russia on the anti-Russian Polish conspiracy.14 Lev Levanda’s Russian novel Times of Turmoil (Goriachee vremia, 1871–73) is probably the most prominent example of this pro-Russian orientation in Jewish literature.15 It is important to note, however, that even this patriotic novel cannot avoid showing a split between Russia the motherland and Russia the bureaucratic state. As a Russian official in Vilna tells the main character of the novel, Russian patriot Sarin: “In Russia one is not allowed to agitate even for Russia.”16 Thus, the Russian official is no longer the embodiment of progress of Aksenfeld’s novel, but rather a conservative bureaucrat whose main goal is to protect the existing order. This separation between the two aspects of Russia reflects the increasing dissatisfaction of Jewish intelligentsia with the political situation in society and prepares the ground for the future revolutionary fiction. Nevertheless, the representations of the Russian bureaucracy and the Polish nobility in Jewish literature remain different. Whereas a Polish aristocrat is an absolutely negative symbol of the old order, the criticism of Russia is milder: only Russian bureaucracy is perceived as an obstacle in the way of progress. Bartal offers an explanation of this: From the 1880s onward no further attempt was made in Jewish literature to identify a positive model of behavior in the spirit of the Enlightenment with a certain sector of the Polish nobility. Similarly, the Russian official also ceased to be taken as a model. However, in the Polish case the negative image was extended to the entire

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The Crisis of Revolution noble class, and the application of the traditional vocabulary of negative traits which had been preserved during the Enlightenment period, reached down to deeper literary levels.17

Finally, with the ultimate loss of the Polish nobility’s political importance at the end of the nineteenth century, its representation in Jewish literature becomes incorporated into the shtetl myth. Bartal describes this phenomenon as the “reduction of the role played by Poles to the one-dimensional background of the relations between the porets, the Jewish lessee, and the Jews of the shtetl” (p. 365). At this stage the neoromantic trend meets with the conservative tendency, which has its roots in pre-Haskalah traditional literature: “This literature depicts the Polish nobleman as protector and savior in times of trouble, as an economic ally and an example for certain fashions of dress and behavior. At the same time, however, he is seen as capricious and permeated with vice, violent and untrustworthy” (p. 357). This attitude, which, according to Bartal, “idealized the relations between the Polish nobility and the Jews in the pre-nationalistic period,” can be traced through the works of such nineteenth-century Hebrew and Yiddish authors as Abraham Mapu, A. B. Gottlober, I. M. Dik, and Peretz Smolenskin to the twentieth-century shtetl novellas of Sholem Asch (pp. 360–62). Russian-Jewish literature of the early twentieth century began to present the Jewish situation in terms of oppression and poverty. Two prominent writers, David Aizman and Semion Yushkevich, turned to portraying the life of factory workers. In the prerevolutionary period of 1903–5 they actively participated in the almanac Znanie (Knowledge), an organ of radical Russian literature edited by Maxim Gorky, who was sympathetic to the Jewish plight. Following the critical realist trend promoted by Znanie, Yushkevich and Aizman focused on the desperate conditions of the Jewish working poor.18 Along with their Russian colleagues on the eve of the revolution of 1905, the Jewish writers were searching for a new positive hero, a young rebel and leader, who could lead the masses in their revolutionary struggle against the despotic tsarist regime. Another new motif, which figured prominently in the literature published in Znanie, was the woman’s struggle against the double oppression of family and society.19 In this semiotic system, Jews along with women and the poor came to signify the universal concept of the victim. Some of the Russian authors of the Znanie group paid considerable attention to their plight, in which they saw a characteristic element of the general situation of political and social oppression (for example, the play Jews by Evgenii Chirikov and short stories by Alexander Kuprin). The increasing politicization of society on the eve of 1905 forced many writers to search for new symbols and images, which would convey the dense atmosphere of the time. Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Georgian, and

The Crisis of Revolution Armenian writers experimented with new forms and stylistic methods in order to reflect adequately the rapidly changing world around them. This search produced a stylistic mixture of neoromanticism, symbolism, realism, and naturalism, in which, as a Soviet scholar tells us, “the Romantic world perception and revolutionary symbolism coexisted with the artistic investigation of life in the forms of life itself.”20 Jewish writers possessed their own resources for creating new symbolic imagery on the eve of 1905: the recent Kulturkampf in Jewish society between the traditionalists and the maskilim. David Roskies stresses the importance of this particular personal past for the development of Hebrew literature, which accompanied the process of radicalization of Jewish youth. “What actually inspired the next generation of young rebels and eventually transformed the writing of modern Hebrew prose was the one maskilic genre that chronicled its utter defeat: the confessional autobiography.”21 A similar phenomenon, even though on a smaller scale, can be noticed in Yiddish literature. The two-part novella Pioneers (Pionern, 1903–5), based on the personal experience of its author, S. Ansky (pen name of ShloymeZanvl Rappoport, 1863–1920), is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt in Yiddish literature to reinterpret the old models and symbols in terms of the new revolutionary ethos.22 In contrast to Aksenfeld, Ansky depicts maskilim not as champions of bourgeois order and Russian patriots, but as young rebels. Pioneers takes place in the late 1870s and portrays a protorevolutionary commune of young shtetl Jews who live in a non-Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of a town and are engaged in the active propaganda of their radical teaching. Roskies summarizes their ethos and system of values: Theirs was a permanent adolescence, a counterculture that knew no compromise with bourgeois respectability or with religious observance. Instead of aping the dress, speech and manners of the German merchant or the Russian university student, they fashioned their own folklore that specialized in parodying sacred rituals and texts; affected a rough exterior and gloried in their vows of poverty. . . . [T]hey obeyed a code of non-interference in their interpersonal relations and tried to suppress all erotic desire for the sake of the cause. Their practical work consisted of subverting the faith of other young men under the cover of teaching them Russian. The nineteenth-century maskilim would hardly have recognized these shock troops of the revolution.23

Ansky’s maskilim adopt the system of values and way of life popular among Russian radical youth, so-called nihilists, who followed the role model of “new people” portrayed in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done (1863).24 This radical revision of the maskilic heritage from a radical perspective enabled Ansky to create a new revolutionary pedigree for the Jewish youth of the early 1900s, which allowed them to claim the same cul-

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The Crisis of Revolution tural heritage as their Russian comrades. The new set of values included the concept of the Jewish folk, constructed along the lines of Russian Populism (narodnichestvo).25 In order to adjust themselves to the new notion of nationhood, the members of the Pioneers commune “turned the maskilic hierarchy on its head”: the top was now occupied by the newly discovered genuine folk elements, whom Roskies defines as “déclassé by choice; children of the lower and middle classes who took up manual labor for the sake of leading a ‘productive life’ or who hoped to gain admittance to the university by dint of their own effort.”26 Ansky’s novella reflects the growing interest and fascination of Yiddish writers with bohemian and underworld characters, which Oyslender traces back to Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu.27 The method used in the revolutionary literature for a radical revision of the Jewish past and its adjustment to the present is similar to that used earlier by the maskilim. Its aim in both cases is to incorporate Jews into a new imagined community of Russia. In the nineteenth century, the future society imagined by the maskilim was a liberal monarchy of the Western type, where Jews played a prominent role in trade and industry. The state and its administration were regarded as benefactors of Jews, ready to lead them into this future. On the eve of 1905, this image of the future was replaced by a vision of radical reconstruction of society. Now the Russian official was regarded as a retrograde enemy of progress and was relegated to a position alongside the Polish landowner on the other side of historical progress. The new “big brother” was the Russian revolutionary, and this ideological transformation required an appropriate reconsideration of the whole Jewish past.

Revolution as the Transfiguration of the Shtetl: Novellas of Mordkhe Spektor and S. Ansky The revolution of 1905 had a tremendous impact on the consciousness of Russian Jewry. For the first time in history, large numbers of Jews became active participants in Russian politics. “I do not know how others number the years. But I count them from 1905,” wrote the Yiddish poet David Einhorn years later.28 Radical politics became part of the daily experience of many young men and women in Jewish shtetls of the Pale of Settlement and in the big cities: “During the revolutions of 1905–1907, those movements that combined revolutionary socialism and Jewish nationalism came into their own. In their many varied and rival forms, they now achieved an unprecedented popularity within the Pale of Settlement.”29 The new theme of the revolution almost immediately became central in Yiddish literary discourse, a position it retained until World War II, when the next cata-

The Crisis of Revolution strophic event in Jewish history overshadowed it. Episodes of the 1905 and the 1917 revolutions became an integral part of almost every novel that dealt with the contemporary Jewish situation. Such works as Sholem Asch’s trilogy Three Cities (1929–31), I. J. Singer’s Brothers Ashkenazi (1936), David Bergelson’s At the Dnieper (1932), and Eli Shekhtman’s On the Eve (1974) are perhaps the best known, although not the only examples of large panoramic novels in which revolutionary events play a major part. To a large extent, the representation of these events is based on symbols and structural patterns that were developed in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution. The fiction written during and right after the events represents the spontaneous artistic response to the new experience. Unlike the abovementioned monumental novels, this vision of 1905 is not informed by the knowledge of the future catastrophes, such as the First World War and the October Revolution. The authors writing in the aftermath of 1905 could not, of course, realize that they were facing not a unique phenomenon, but a recurring pattern that would determine the development of the entire world for the rest of the century. They perceived the revolution as an extraordinary event that changed the perspective of the lives of Jews and nonJews alike. The responses of Yiddish writers to the revolution of 1905, as well as of Jews in general, were not uniform. Among the younger generation, little sympathy was felt for the old regime, but people differed in their reaction to the revolution. For some, it was the beginning of the messianic age that would eventually lead to the redemption of all mankind in the form of liberation from any oppression, including anti-Semitism, whereas others perceived the revolution as another mutation in the history of Russia; it might bring some good to the Russian people, but augured ill for the Russian Jews. On the ideological level this discord found its clearest expression in the polemics between Simon Dubnov, who argued against Jewish involvement in the revolution, and S. Ansky, who believed that only the revolution could end the oppression of Jews in Russia.30 Within each of the groups there existed many shades of opinion. Were the Jews to participate in the revolution as a separate national group or to dissolve in the all-Russian revolutionary movement? If the Jews were not with the revolution, were they to emigrate to America or Palestine, or were they to remain in Russia and join the liberal reform movement, or, perhaps, try to assimilate into Russian society? All these ideological positions were articulated by Yiddish fiction of that time. There is, however, an important distinction between a direct ideological statement and its representation in literature. In a piece of fiction an ideological concept acquires a voice and becomes part of a character structure.

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The Crisis of Revolution Literature domesticates politics and ideology, and transforms it into a “literary fact,” which, in turn, affects the further development of the entire literary system.31 The representation of such new phenomena as the revolution required new artistic means and methods. The traditional style of nineteenth-century Yiddish prose, rooted in the order of the shtetl life based on the cycles of natural seasons, religious holidays, and human life, was no longer adequate. The revolution meant first of all a break with the established orders, including that of the shtetl. Did it mean a total destruction of the ordered life as Jews knew it, or was it rather a painful replacement of the bad old order with a good new one? The confrontation between the old shtetl and the new forces of the revolution became one of the first revolutionary themes to be explored by Yiddish writers. We shall begin our analysis with two novellas published in 1906 that present the optimistic vision of the revolutionary events. The novella Avrom Zilbertsvayg by the prolific Yiddish writer Mordkhe Spektor (1858–1925) represents an attempt to deal with the new theme from within the traditional framework. It was published in the St. Petersburg Yiddish newspaper Der fraynt in 1906 as an immediate response to the events of 1905.32 The novella is written in the reportage form characteristic of Spektor and introduces the main elements and patterns of revolutionary fiction. The story takes place in the small industrial town N in Russia, which has no characteristic traits. In fact, the town itself is not shown in the story at all. The two topoi of the novella are the house of Avrom Zilbertsvayg and his factory. The protagonist is a capitalist of the old type: he is the master of the town and controls all aspects of the workers’ lives. He considers himself their benefactor because he provides the entire population of the town with their livelihood and therefore tolerates no violation of order in his factory: “If only my worker makes a sour face—that’s it; get out!” (p. 20). Zilbertsvayg regards himself not as a cruel and self-willed despot, but rather as a strict father who values discipline among his workers above all else. He might even help the family of a worker fired for disobedience, but he would never take him back to the factory “because such a worker can spoil others” (p. 20). Zilbertsvayg believes that the order that he has established and maintains in his factory is the best one possible and can last forever provided the proper measures are taken in time. Although a capitalist himself, he shares the basic feudal belief in the stability of the existing order. The opponent of Avrom Zilbertsvayg is his favorite daughter, Esther. This intelligent and active young woman is full of compassion for the poor workers and condemns her father for exploiting them without mercy. The third character in the story is a distant relative Leon, an urban industrialist in love with Esther. On the rational level Esther cannot love Leon because

The Crisis of Revolution he is a capitalist, but emotionally she has some affection for him. Leon comes to visit his relatives quite often, and every time he brings disturbing news about strikes and vague rumors about pogroms. At first, Zilbertsvayg does not believe that any event of this sort can happen in N: “These things can happen only abroad or in your places, where you want to imitate the foreign customs” (p. 21). Leon tries to explain to him that nowadays the workers have become different: they have their own organization and follow its instructions. Their discipline is stronger than the discipline imposed on them by the owners. Leon represents the type of modern urban bourgeoisie, which is aware of the insecurity of the modern world and is ready for compromises in order to remain afloat. Very soon, Zilbertsvayg realizes that Leon had been right in his warnings. The factory stops, and all his proven means of restoring order no longer help. The siren, a symbol of the old order, which used to organize the life schedule of the whole town, becomes silent, and this makes Zilbertsvayg sick. He resorts to the authorities, which always helped him in these situations before, but they advise him to seek a compromise with the workers. He can agree to bargain with the workers oyf dem sokhrishn shteyger (as a businessman), but the idea of their own organization, “such a wantonness as ‘delegates’ ” (p. 37), is totally unacceptable to him: “In my factory I will not allow that foreign comedy, complete with ‘strikes’ and ‘delegates’ ” (p. 34). He would rather sell the factory and go away than speak with his workers on equal terms. As Esther begins to advocate the workers’ cause, Zilbertsvayg realizes that they speak different languages and therefore belong to different camps. Esther uses the new language of the workers’ movement, which contrasts sharply with the usual business talk of her father: Some time ago he had heard from her for the first time these strange modern words which she had acquired in the provincial capital: “strike”, “normal working day”, “labor and capital”, “working class” and so forth. Earlier, when he had heard from Esther all these words, that the power of his factory lay not in his capital and efficiency, he looked at her like a child who reads all kind of fairy tales in books; but now, when he encountered all of “Esther’s words” in real life, he regarded her as an enemy who was taking over. (p. 37)

Being a faithful observer of life, Spektor conveys the stylistic nuances of the speech. The ideological conflict is represented on the linguistic level. Zilbertsvayg uses in his communication with workers a raw and arrogant “jargon,” a mixture of Yiddish and Russian, which means to demonstrate his contempt for them. Esther’s “words” strike him at first as bookish and abstract; only when he hears them from the others does he realize that he is losing ground to the new power. Esther convinces her father that her argu-

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The Crisis of Revolution ments are taken not from books but from life itself: “No, father, I don’t need my books here, you see yourself . . . a blind person can see it, too” (p. 40). As they continue their discussion, Zilbertsvayg gradually gives up: he accepts Esther’s arguments and adopts her language, and eventually even tries to present himself as a victim of capitalism: “Yes, I know, Estherl, I’m not the master, I’m an eternally poor slave of capital” (p. 42). Finally, he agrees to meet the demands of the workers. Zilbertsvayg is unable to express himself in this new situation because he has no adequate linguistic resources for a public speech: “If I start speaking to them, I know I won’t be able to stand it.” He asks Esther to make the final agreement: “Esther! If you want to save my health and bring back my peace—you talk to the delegates, raise their wages, but I don’t want to hear it” (p. 42). This episode contains elements that are common to all Jewish revolutionary fiction. The social conflict is represented through a conflict between two types of discourse. The traditional colloquial Yiddish of the shtetl confronts the new urban language of revolutionary agitation. The old discourse is raw and uncultivated; it incorporates bits of Russian and Polish without melting them into a cohesive unified language. The new language is purer and more sophisticated, but also artificial; it seeks to elevate Yiddish to the level of universal concepts. The new discourse is being born in the social conflict, which assigns concrete meanings to abstract concepts, and thus transforms them into a powerful weapon. This linguistic dichotomy corresponds to the opposition of generations, and, in some cases, of genders. The young daughter represents the new, revolutionary order, whereas the old father stands for the old capitalist one. The daughter’s rebellion has two aspects: her involvement in the previously inaccessible masculine world of politics, and her refusal to follow the tradition of arranged marriage. These two elements contribute to the main message of the revolutionary fiction: the radical breakdown of the old order in all aspects of life. The second half of Avrom Zilbertsvayg is permeated with the anticipation of the pogrom. As with the strike, Zilbertsvayg is incapable of imagining such a catastrophe happening in his N. As before, he turns for protection to the Russian authorities, who have always been friendly and helpful to the Jewish capitalist. To his great surprise, he realizes that the police chief is no longer willing to help the Jews and refuses to send the Cossacks to stop the mob. His old friend, the provincial governor, suddenly changes his tone: “Jews should be quiet,” “The most important thing is not to give any pretext for a pogrom from their side” (pp. 52–53). This change of mood challenges the belief of the Jewish middle class in the Russian authorities as their protectors, the remnants of the maskilic optimism. As rumors of the pogroms persist, Leon tries to convince his relatives to go abroad until the

The Crisis of Revolution danger passes. The whole town is desperate because people have placed all their hopes in Zilbertsvayg as their protector. In the new situation, he is no longer capable of fulfilling his function, and in the final scene Esther symbolically takes over his role. She refuses to leave her workers, and now Leon has to make his choice between love and security. He chooses the former, and “for a long time Esther’s tears were running down his neck, many tears, many tears . . . ” (p. 57). The pogrom theme presents a problem for the short fictionalized chronicle of the revolution. The pogroms in southern Russia that followed the announcement of the October Manifesto in 1905 became linked with the revolution in the collective consciousness of Jews. The authors of short fiction about the revolution in the aftermath of 1905 were ambivalent in their dealing with this theme. On the one hand, incorporating a pogrom in a short story or novella would shift its focus away from the revolutionary events and carry a strong negative connotation. The pogrom would abruptly close the narration on a pessimistic note. On the other hand, avoiding the pogrom theme altogether would jeopardize the mimetic truth of this literature, which was essential for its authors and readers. Spektor rounds his story up in a melodramatic way, which is characteristic of his all works: Esther and Leon embrace near the window, behind which dark clouds are gathering over the shtetl.33 This ending demonstrates the inability of the writers of the older generation to find an adequate form of expression of the new revolutionary reality. As we shall see further, only the genre of the novel with its polyphonic character becomes capable of incorporating such contradictory moods as revolutionary optimism and pogrom pessimism. Of all his contemporary Yiddish writers, S. Ansky was the most active in the revolutionary movement. An old adherent of Populism of the 1880s, he became one of the founders of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries during his time as an émigré in France and Switzerland. Ansky returned to Russia after the October Manifesto of 1905 with the intention of continuing the struggle for freedom. His novella In Stream (In shtrom), In a New Stream in the Russian version, belonged, like Spektor’s novella, to the first Yiddish literary responses to the events of 1905. It was originally written in Russian in 1906 and published in Yiddish in the St. Petersburg newspaper Der fraynt in 1907.34 The setting is a town N in the northwest of Russia (which can be easily identified as Vitebsk, the town where Ansky spent his childhood); the time—three days, from Thursday to Saturday, in the Jewish month of Tammuz (or June, in the Russian version) of 1905, on the eve of the first mass rally of the workers. The heroine, a young working woman named Bashe, is a member of the committee of the local organization of

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The Crisis of Revolution the Bund (General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia). Ansky describes her revolutionary work in great detail. The whole town seems to be involved in preparing the organized revolutionary action. Various parties are feverishly trying to strengthen their positions with the radical youth of the town. This activity creates a new system of relationships among individuals and groups, which is based on collective participation in revolutionary work. The space in the novella is organized around the so-called birzhe (bourse, exchange), a meeting place of the revolutionary youth. The term implies the radical reevaluation of the old concept: the aim of the new workers’ birzhe is to destroy the world dominated by the old, conventional financial bourse, which figured so prominently in Sholem Aleichem’s MenakhemMendl. Ansky provides one of the most detailed descriptions of the revolutionary birzhe in Yiddish literature: The new spirit which destroyed the old forms of life has affected the park as well. More working men and women began to appear in the park. Gradually they occupied the park until they finally forced the “clean public” out. The park became a possession of working people; from now on it became the favorite place for their strolls. In recent years, when the masses started to join the revolutionary movement, and the movement itself was ever more emerging from the underground to the streets, under the open sky,—the park had become the center of the labor movement, something like a workmen’s club, and therefore had received the name of workers’ birzhe. At the birzhe workers would meet with each other and with their representatives; there instructions were passed to party members and party literature was distributed. This was a place for debates and discussions, for presenting improvised papers. . . . The “bourse” had its own constitution. The walks of the park were strictly divided between parties and factions. The Bund, as the most numerous party in N, controlled the central walks. The sidewalks were divided between the “Iskra” [Menshevik] group, Socialist Revolutionaries and different Zionist groups. Two or three walks were left neutral, and there members of different parties would meet for debates and “diplomatic talks.” . . . Meetings at the “bourse” usually took place in the evenings, after work, and lasted two or three hours. (pp. 19–20)

Thus, the birzhe becomes the first space conquered by the revolution and freed from the class of exploiters represented by the “clean public,” which used to stroll in the town park. In contrast to the rest of the Russian Empire, the birzhe already has its constitution and party system, which makes it an island of the future just order in the midst of the present unjust one. This new social phenomenon was not limited to Vitebsk alone. Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, the daughter of the Jewish historian Simon Dubnov, mentions in her memoirs a similar situation in the town Gomel not far from Vitebsk, where she lived in 1904–5: “According to an unwritten

The Crisis of Revolution statute, the birzha enjoyed a special autonomy: a few policemen stood on duty outside, but did not intervene in its internal affairs.”35 For the characters in Ansky’s novella, the birzhe has become the leading authority in their lives. They consider it a model of the future organization of the whole society. The word organizatsye is reserved in the story for the local Bund organization, but it also signifies the new organizing principle of the whole world, which is to be implemented through the efforts of the revolutionaries. In the words of the historian of Jewish labor movement, Ezra Mendelson, “the inhabitants of this new world regarded themselves as members of a new brotherhood, the bearers of a new mission.”36 One of Ansky’s ideological goals in the novella is to demonstrate that the young revolutionaries’ vision of the future is in harmony with the ancient folk ideal of social justice, which has been living in the collective memory of the Jewish people for thousands of years. The parents’ generation—Bashe’s mother Esther and Elyokum the scribe, the pious father of Bashe’s revolutionary colleague—acknowledge the truth espoused by their children and sanctify their work by the authority of tradition. On his deathbed, old Elyokum compares his life to the lives of young members of a Jewish self-defense organization who were murdered in Gomel trying to protect Jews from the pogrom: “During all my life I have been fulfilling, as well as I could, all the commandments—and the Lord did not find me worthy to sanctify His Name . . . [and to die] defending the Torah scrolls that I have been writing all my life. . . . And to them [the Gomel martyrs] He gave this honor!” (p. 43). According to Elyokum, the young revolutionaries were holier than himself because they performed one of the greatest religious commandments, that of kiddush hashem, that is, to be murdered for the sanctification of God’s name. This act alone weighs more than his entire life of daily religious observance. Elyokum’s deathbed confession signifies the approval of the revolution on the sacred level. On the profane level, this approval is voiced by Esther. She recalls how, in her youth, she too had participated in the class struggle, although only indirectly, by singing folksongs. She sings to Bashe the beloved song of her husband, Bashe’s father, and adds: “The rich people did not like this song, they became angry when he sang it” (p. 56). The ultimate blessing of the revolutionary struggle by the whole Jewish community takes place on the Sabbath in the old synagogue. When the confrontation between the revolutionaries and the police in the park reaches its peak, the young crowd bursts into the synagogue during prayer and starts a rally immediately after the Torah reading. At first the congregation attempts to protest and continue the service, but the revolutionaries take over and deliver speeches from the bimah, the elevated place in the middle of the synagogue designated for Torah reading. The episode ends in

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The Crisis of Revolution a symbolic act of reconciliation: after the rally the cantor blesses the new month, and the words of the traditional prayer acquire a new meaning: “May He who performed miracles for our fathers and redeemed them from slavery to freedom, speedily redeem us, and gather in our dispersed people from the four corners of the earth, so that all Israel be united in fellowship; and let us say, Amen”37 (p. 186). Finally, the new revolutionary teaching becomes part of the tradition along with the old Torah, and is sanctified by the liturgy. The revolutionary masses, all their roughness and primitivism notwithstanding, are represented as the only force capable of building a better future. In their midst “the all-encompassing idea is being formed, the synthesis of the people’s life, which is both universal and national” (p. 51). In this process, the Yiddish language becomes the form of expression of this idea that belongs simultaneously to all of humanity and to the Jewish nation. The formation of the idea goes hand in hand with the creation of the new language that is being born in the struggle of different groups, each of which tries to defend its opinion without realizing that it is part of one national entity: and the hard and tragic work of thought is going on, and at the same time there is going on the much harder and more painful work of the word, which seeks to transform the folk language that has not gone through the crucible of a high culture, into a scientific language. In thousands of speeches, in thousand of minds a great idea struggles tragically and desperately, in its effort to be fully realized. (p. 51)

Ansky envisions the formation of a new Yiddish language, which would unite Jewish people. As many other contrasts, the difference between the language of Jewish masses and that of the revolutionary intelligentsia became especially evident for Jewish intellectuals on the eve of the first Russian revolution. Sofia Dubnova-Erlich recalls January 1905: “I intensely listened to the language [of the working class suburb of Gomel]: it was the animated tongue of the masses, a primitive, expressive and bold Yiddish of the street, the factory, the heder, the workshop. But the language of lectures and intellectual discussions remained Russian” (p. 102). Ansky stops on the verge of the great events, the first clashes between the revolution and the regime, and the subsequent defeat of the revolution accompanied by the pogroms. The novella reconsiders the traditional symbolism and brings it into accord with the new revolutionary ethos. Not only the maskilic past, but also Jewish folklore, and even the religious tradition are reinterpreted in the spirit of the future revolution. The revolutionary situation unites the old with the new and sets them before a common future. Although the defeat and the pogrom are not part of the text, a close reading of the new symbolic code can help uncover signs of the impending catastrophe. The events in the novella take place in Tammuz, and the new month,

The Crisis of Revolution which is being blessed in the synagogue after the demonstration and Torah reading, is Av, the most tragic month in the Jewish calendar. This timing synchronizes the new linear time of the revolution with the old cyclical time. The revolutionary events acquire a strong traditional connotation of khevley moshiekh, the pains that precede the coming of the Messiah who, according to tradition, will reveal himself in the month Av. The representation of the revolution as a secular redemption brought about by the radical messianic revolutionaries contradicts the ideology of the Bund—the most powerful party in N—to which all the main characters belong. Ansky, perhaps deliberately, substitutes the Marxist view of history as a product of the class struggle with his own Socialist-Revolutionary idea of revolution as the ultimate result of the desperate struggle of select individuals ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Thus, the Bund, despite its deterministic ideology, takes a proactive part in the struggle of will for the new order. Hannah Arendt suggested a metaphor that links the representation of the revolution as a miracle of redemption to the dream motif discussed in the first chapter: “The history of revolutions . . . which politically spells out the innermost history of the modern age, could be told in parable form as the tale of an age-old treasure which, under the most varied circumstances, appears abruptly, unexpectedly, and disappears again, under different mysterious conditions, as though it were a fata morgana.”38 In Stream captures the precious moment of the epiphany of that “age-old treasure” and stops on the verge of its disappearance. The ideological message in this case is that the continuity of the past and the future must be reinvented through a radical recoding of traditional symbolism. The symbolic clichés, which have long ago become a routine part of everyday life, suddenly acquire relevant new meanings that radicalize the present. A different treatment of the revolutionary theme can be found in the Hebrew story “In Winter Storms” (Besacarot hah. oref, 1907), by Aaron Abraham Kabak.39 The main heroine, Dinah, is the daughter of a family of factory owners in a small shtetl (presumably also in the northwest of Russia). Her father has died and her mother works as an accountant in the factory. The other partners in the ownership are her uncle and aunt, who, with her mother, form Dinah’s family circle. She is about to be engaged to Kolya, the son of a shtetl pharmacist. After their marriage, Kolya plans to open his own pharmacy to support the family. Life is monotonous and boring, every day the same people, tea, cards, and endless talk about business, bad times, and dangerous socialists. One winter day, a new man appears in town. Alexander is different from anybody Dinah has met before. He talks about the workers’ struggle for a better life and tells Dinah and her friend Sonya marvelous stories about the life of revolutionaries, their heroism and suffering. He also teaches them some revolutionary songs.

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The Crisis of Revolution Alexander believes that nothing is impossible if only one has a sufficiently strong will. Dinah is attracted by his strong personality and feels increasingly estranged from her own family circle, particularly from Kolya. She wants to leave the shtetl and her bourgeois environment. Alexander encourages her to move to a big city and to live there on her own, working and studying. Finally, Alexander reveals to Dinah that he has been exiled to the town for the time of the trial for his revolutionary activities. Now that the trial is over, he has been acquitted and is free to go wherever he wants. Immediately thereafter, a strike starts in the factory, apparently organized by Alexander. This puts Dinah in direct conflict with her family: her relatives are terrified of Alexander’s power, although she is excited by it. She runs to the frozen river to skate with some peasant girls and meets Alexander with a group of workers who have gone there for an illegal rally. In the evening Sonya comes to Dinah and asks her to hide Alexander’s papers because the police are after him. Alexander leaves the shtetl and wants to take Dinah with him, but she decides to stay. The story ends abruptly, leaving the reader to guess what will happen to Dinah next. As one can see, this Hebrew story follows the main conventions of the post-1905 fiction about the revolution: the central character is a young woman from a shtetl and the conflict is presented through the opposition between the old and the new forms of social organization. The old order is represented by a middle-class family with its bourgeois values of marriage, business success, and social stability, whereas the harbinger of the new is the young man from the city with the new revolutionary experience. The heroine is more attracted by the romantic aspect of the revolution and by the power of the new man than by the social agenda of the movement. At first, the conflict unfolds on the personal level as a love triangle formed by Dinah, Kolya, and Alexander, but it is soon transformed into the social struggle that culminates in the strike. The social conflict demonstrates the new man’s power not only over his own destiny, but also over the social order. Whereas Spektor and Ansky had at their disposal a rich variety of stylistic registers of the living Yiddish, Kabak faced the challenge of creating convincing speech characteristics in Hebrew for his apparently Russianand Yiddish-speaking heroes. Alexander’s speech is modeled after the elevated metaphoric language of contemporary Russian literature: I love the feeling of yearning! It’s good to yearn. . . . I remember, when I was exiled to Siberia. It was late spring, and I was together with other exiles on the train for prisoners. The window was open, and I was looking outside, and I saw wide fields, woods, lonely huts in moonlight run before my eyes. And everything far away was dreaming, only a chilly wind sometimes touched my face. I was overcome by a sadness that has neither name nor image. (p. 68)

The Crisis of Revolution Representatives of the older generation speak with a Yiddish intonation. Dinah’s mother makes a futile attempt to talk to her daughter in a traditional manner: “My life! My crown! Tell me, what’s wrong with you? Are you ill?” (p. 85). Thus, Dinah, like her counterparts Esther and Bashe, works on a new vocabulary: mitkomemim (rising masses), burganim (bourgeoisie), milh.amah bah.evrah (social war) (p. 73). The conversation of Alexander and his friends revolves around Russian literature and its universal themes: Dinah is fond of Turgenev and Goncharov, but Alexander recommends that she read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and the stories of Maxim Gorky. The older generation and Kolya talk mostly about everyday concerns: business, shopping, family, fear of the strike. In this system of representation, colloquial Yiddish speech has no future; unlike Esther and Bashe, Dinah masters the new idiom of revolution not in Yiddish, but in Russian. Indeed, she is more comfortable with the Russian peasants (peasant girls on the frozen river) than with her own Yiddish-speaking bourgeois family. Kabak does not elaborate on the details of the revolutionary ideology. The revolution is the ideal of justice and happiness, not a theory and practice of the organized class struggle. This ideal can be achieved through a self-sacrificing struggle of chosen individuals, not through the understanding and mastering of the objective laws of historical development. This struggle requires, first of all, a strong will; it is not a manifestation of the objective class struggle. Alexander evidently is an adept of the voluntarist Socialist-Revolutionary ideology, as are the majority of the revolutionary characters of Jewish literature of that time, and not the deterministic Social-Democratic brand. Dinah does not become a convert to any revolutionary ideology. She stays behind in her shtetl and Alexander goes on his mission. This ending implies the possibility of another development: the heroine’s soul and mind have been awakened and she is prepared to accept a new ideology that will lead her into the future. The only option left open after she has rejected the revolution is Zionism. In this case her rejection of Yiddish is justified from a national point of view: when she is ready to embrace Zionism, she will find at her disposal the linguistic and conceptual resources of modernized Hebrew not spoilt by the shtetl “jargon.” The pro-Hebrew position of the radical Jewish youth was well captured in the essay “Language Insomnia” by the Hebrew literary critic and journalist Rachel Katznelson, who, incidentally, came from the same area as Kabak’s heroine. Remembering in 1918 the mood of the young Zionists in the aftermath of 1905, Katznelson wrote: “The essential thing was that, even though Yiddish is a living language, the language of the people and of democracy, there is a trend of thought, which for us was revolutionary, that expresses itself in Hebrew; whereas Yiddish literature is ruled by narrow-

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The Crisis of Revolution mindedness, mostly inert and reactionary in our eyes and, at best—only weak echo of what was revealed in Hebrew.”40 Young, unmarried, socially active women became a new symbol of the revolution in fiction. They represent the new beginning, the dream of justice and happiness. This connection is not a discovery of Russian or Jewish literature. Doris Kadish observes that “politicizing gender,” as she calls “the semiotic process of linking femininity and revolution,” was an important characteristic of the English and French novel in the aftermath of the French Revolution.41 Kadish suggests an explanation of this universal rise of the role of woman in revolutionary literature: “The reason that gender played such a predominant role at that time undoubtedly had much to do with availability: familiar and omnipresent, at a time when class and other distinctions were uncertain, gender provided a convenient and universally understandable analogy to be used.”42 Contrary to the Haskalah convention, which emphasizes the role of young men in the process of evolution, the Yiddish and Hebrew revolutionary fiction puts women on the front line of the struggle for radical change. This shift in focus stresses the “feminine” universality of the principles of revolution in contrast to the “masculine” national agenda of the Haskalah as the movement for Jewish emancipation. This opposition between feminine universalism and masculine particularism can be traced in the Soviet Yiddish fiction of the early 1930s, which, following the Communist Party line, sought to represent the enforced collectivization of 1929–30 as yet another revolution. The main character of Note Lurye’s socialist-realist novel The Steppe Calls (Der step ruft, 1932), the party’s emissary Elke Rudner, embodies the universal aspect of the revolutionary transformation that defies nationality, as opposed to male Jewish peasants burdened with their past, families, and, worst of all, property.43 The form of representation of the revolution described above lays the foundation for a new mythology. Elaborating on David Roskies’s concept of the “mythology of the mundane,” we can interpret the episode of the social awakening of a young woman and the first episodes of the revolutionary struggle as “a token of a heroic past,” the first necessary element of a newly created mythology. This moment, unlike a traditional mythological past, can be located in time with great precision: in the winter and spring of 1904–5. Constructing the second component in this scheme of the new radical mythology based on the heroic revolutionary past, which, according to Roskies, should represent a “deep, recurrent structure of Jewish life in exile,” is a more complicated problem, which we shall consider in the following sections.44

The Crisis of Revolution

Disintegration of the Shtetl: I. M. Weissenberg The novella A Shtetl (1906) by I. M. Weissenberg (1881–1937) belongs to the antiromantic trend in post-1905 Yiddish literature.45 It was written as a naturalistic rebuttal of Sholem Asch’s A Shtetl. Ruth Wisse elaborates on the contrast between Asch’s original and Weissenberg’s parody in her introduction to the English translation of Weissenberg’s novella: In sharp, angry reaction to the romanticism of Asch, Weissenberg published his literary rejoinder two years later, flaunting a title as close to the original as parody would allow. . . . Weissenberg follows Asch’s calendar, but the festivals, shorn of sanctity, are now regarded as occasions for social protest. In place of the communal harmony that Asch locates in the shtetl of memory, Weissenberg offers the mounting violence, even the brutality, of the contemporary town, rent by class dissension, united only by its common impotence in the face of Tsarist or peasant might.46

David Roskies places Weissenberg’s novella in the beginning of the objectivist trend that chronicled the decline of the traditional way of life of East European Jewry under the impact of the pressure and hostility of the outside world: A Shtetl was a study of violence through radical politics, the first of its kind in Yiddish and Hebrew fiction. Written to challenge the romantic revival of the shtetl, Weissenberg’s novella was more profoundly an all-out attack on notions of communality, on the hegemony of learning and respectability that was said to characterize traditional Jewish society, on the supposedly inexorable bond that tied Jews to other Jews, analogous to the covenant that tied them to God. In stark and carefully selected detail, A Shtetl documented the centrifugal forces that turned workers against the bosses, poor Jews against rich, carpenters against butchers.47

In our analysis we shall explore not so much the opposition between naturalistic and neoromantic trends in the representation of the shtetl, as the relationship in which A Shtetl stands to the revolutionary fiction, which has been discussed in the previous section. Unlike Spektor or Ansky, Weissenberg presents the negative side of the revolution, the self-destructive violence that threatens the very existence of the traditional Jewish communal organism. To be sure, he does not value this organism very much, but the new order that the revolutionaries try to establish can be only worse. The initial setting of A Shtetl, the events of the spring of 1905 in a Jewish shtetl in Poland, resembles the situation familiar from the stories by Ansky and Spektor. Weissenberg is more meticulous in reproducing details of the economic and social situation in the shtetl on the verge of the breakdown. He also avoids generalization and creating symbols out of the everyday reality, which is characteristic of the revolutionary fiction. As Roskies notes, the story “is told by a dispassionate narrator who dwells on bits and pieces of

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The Crisis of Revolution external detail, on observable reality alone. . . . There is no room here for history or myth.”48 In contrast to Ansky and Spektor, Weissenberg does not stop at the verge of the decisive events, but chronicles the entire development of the 1905 revolution from its rise in the early spring to its decline in the late fall. His story of revolution is closed and therefore pessimistic. The time structure of the story combines three different calendars: the old natural and religious cycles, and the new linear revolutionary chronology. The story begins a few days before Passover, the holiday that coincides in the novella with the breaking of the ice on the river. The revolutionary line of the story begins with a confrontation during a communal meeting in the synagogue: Yekl the carpenter is trying to protest against the high price of Passover flour that the shtetl merchants have just announced. He is severely beaten up by the butchers, the guardians of the shtetl oligarchy. In the context of the revolutionary mood, this small and isolated conflict over a routine issue acquires the significance of the universal class conflict between working class and bourgeoisie. Encouraged by outside agitators, the emissaries of the Bund from Warsaw, Yekl establishes a local party organization. The organization grows both in numbers and power during the summer of 1905. The revolutionary activity culminates in a rally, which ends in a crushing defeat. Yekl is arrested and his comrades are beaten up by their enemies; their attempt at revenge causes the murder of an innocent man. After the announcement of the October Manifesto, Yekl comes back and tries to stir up a revolt. He fails, gets arrested again, and is sent into exile. The revolutionary situation in the shtetl does not create a new spatial structure. The meeting place of the Bund members in A Shtetl is not a town park but a cemetery, an element of the traditional shtetl topography. Whereas Ansky stresses the high moral standards and linguistic and intellectual creativity of the masses, Weissenberg shows them as corrupt and dull men incapable of grasping new concepts. Their meeting is not different from a drinking party, which inevitably ends in debauchery: Yekl held the proclamation up to the light: “Genossen un genossinen!” he began, in the Germanic style of these proclamations. “Translate!” cried Itchele. “Brothers and sisters,” Yekl continued. “What sisters?” “In the cities,” he explained, “the girls also take part.” “You mean they actually have a hand in it?” “Yes, of course.” “Everywhere but here,” smiled Itchele. “What a town this is!” “Let’s get him a couple of girls,” came an offer, and everyone laughed. Itchele pounded his friend on the back, and the merriment spread. Soon they were jumping over the benches. . . . (p. 30)

The Crisis of Revolution A scene like this is hard to imagine in the world of Ansky’s characters. They live according to the new moral code, which, according to the historian of Jewish labor movement, Ezra Mendelson, is “especially evident in relations between the sexes. While participation in the movement enabled young men and women to meet and work together as equals, . . . it imposed upon them a strict moral code which bordered on puritanism.”49 The birzhe in In Stream was dominated by the “female element,” as Ansky called it. The khevre (a group, equivalent to the organizatsye) in A Shtetl is exclusively male, and its members look at women with a mamzerish (bastardly) smile (Yiddish ed., p. 295). Weissenberg shows that Yekl and his comrades are above all interested in power, which they need in order to take revenge on their enemies. In their first act of retaliation, the revolutionaries attack the butchers’ synagogue. Their most efficient weapon is the strike that paralyzes the entire life of the shtetl. Ultimately, the very mention of the strikers is enough to terrorize the whole shtetl: “if a mother had trouble putting her child to bed, she would threaten to call the strikers” (p. 48). Weissenberg’s radicalism finds its expression in the treatment of religious symbolism. In Ansky’s novella, the synagogue signifies the continuity between tradition and revolution, and the unity of the Jewish people. In A Shtetl, the synagogue becomes the locus of violence and disruption within the Jewish community. This brings us to the main question of the representation of the revolution by Weissenberg. Uriel Weinreich demonstrates in his analysis that the social conflict in the novella is represented through the structural contrast between two kinds of time: the linear and the cyclical. According to Weinreich, the action in the novella is set in motion by three “springs”: “the one active, the revolution, and two passive, automatic—the calendar of nature on the one hand and the religious calendar on the other.”50 The revolution is represented on the local scale, but it functions as a powerful “spring” that brings about the destruction of the old order. Roskies sums up the desperate condition of the shtetl: “Whatever choices made and whatever bloody victories won within the shtetl are overwhelmed by the larger forces that descend upon it from without. At story’s end, the movement is quashed overnight by a contingent of Russian soldiers who arrest all the workers and drag them off in chains.”51 Weissenberg constructs his representation of the revolutionary crisis through the conflict between the aggressive, and eventually destructive, linear movement of the revolution and the recurrent cycles of nature and tradition. The revolution unfolds along the straight line of increasing violence, which crushes the traditional mechanisms of self-preservation of the shtetl order. The linear structure of transformation, associated with the revolution, destroys the cyclical structures of classification, created by the recurrent patterns of the natural and religious calendar—the foundations of Sholem Asch’s shtetl.

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The Crisis of Revolution

Revolution as Soap Opera: Sholem Aleichem’s novel The Flood As a polyphonic genre, the novel is open to the incorporation of different ideological voices and is capable of representing a complex multilayered picture of reality. In the case of the novel about revolution, Bakhtinean methodology can become especially useful if applied specifically to the ideological polyphony in the text. The reading of Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed by a leading American neo-Marxist literary theorist, Fredric Jameson, suggests an approach to the analysis of the novel that can serve as a methodological framework for the interpretation of the revolutionary theme in the Yiddish novel. On this reading, then, the “novel” as an apparently unified form is subjected to a kind of x-ray technique designed to reveal the layered or marbled structure of the text according to what we will call generic discontinuities. The novel is then not so much an organic unity as a symbolic act that must reunite or harmonize heterogeneous narrative paradigms which have their own specific and contradictory ideological meaning.52

Our purpose, following Jameson’s line of thought, will be first to discover “heterogeneous narrative paradigms” in the texts of the analyzed novel, and then to explore their possible meanings in the context of Yiddish literature of the time. The final stage of the analysis is the understanding of the whole as the interaction of its parts: what meaning(s) can be ascribed to the fusion of those different narrative paradigms into a “symbolic fact.” As we have seen from the previous analysis of the Yiddish revolutionary novella, various “generic discontinuities” played an important role in creating new narrative paradigms. The comprehensive crisis of reality is represented through various conflicts in the novel, which unfold according to certain generic conventions. The plot structure can be interpreted as a system of codes producing new meanings that challenge the familiar picture of reality. The Flood (Der mabl, 1907) belongs to the second series of Sholem Aleichem’s novels, along with Wandering Stars, The Bloody Hoax, and the autobiographical novel, From the Fair. The first novelistic period of the 1880s was characterized by the author’s optimistic belief in his mission as the reformer of the entire Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem intended to create a series of novels à la Balzac or Zola in order to represent artistically the whole panorama of Jewish life in Russia, and to provide a model for other writers. After an interruption during the 1890s caused by his bankruptcy, when Sholem Aleichem wrote mostly short stories, including the inaugural parts of the Menakhem-Mendl and Tevye cycles, he returned to the novel in the early 1900s. This time Sholem Aleichem had no ambitions to launch

The Crisis of Revolution a new epoch in Yiddish literature. He needed an income to support his large family, and serialized novels served this goal better than short stories and feuilletons. Nevertheless, the novel remained an important form of Sholem Aleichem’s creativity, and he planned to continue his series of novels about artists.53 The dramatic events of 1905 affected Sholem Aleichem’s life in more than one way. As David Roskies writes, The year 1905 was the best and worst of times for Sholem Aleichem. The best, because the granting of civil liberties within the tsarist empire meant that Yiddish newspapers of various persuasions could compete on the open market, that the twenty-three-year ban on the Yiddish theater was lifted, and that the most beloved of Yiddish storytellers could now take his show on the road under his own banner. The worst, because the counterrevolutionary pogroms hit Sholem Aleichem and his family directly, forcing them to flee the beloved city of Kiev and, for all intents and purposes, to quit Mother Russia.54

Sholem Aleichem left Russia immediately after the October pogroms of 1905 and spent a year touring Jewish communities in Europe. The writer and his family arrived in New York in October 1906.55 The enthusiastic reception by the American Jewish press and public filled him with optimistic expectations. “[The] nearest future foretells a lot of good things. Perhaps, a new era is appearing on our horizon, filled with success, luck and happiness,” he wrote from New York to his daughter Ernestine.56 Sholem Aleichem stayed in New York until June 1907, but, despite his initial hopes, this visit became, according to Nina Warnke, “one of the most disappointing periods in his life.”57 His attempt to reform the American Yiddish theater fell through, and the reception by the New York Yiddish literary establishment, especially by its influential socialist and anarchist wings, was rather cold.58 The novel The Flood was one of several literary projects undertaken by Sholem Aleichem during his first New York visit. While still in Kiev, he wrote a drama, which he wanted to be produced in New York, about the 1905 revolution. According to Sholem Aleichem’s own brief description, the play, titled provisionally “The Last Sacrifice” (Der letster korbn) or “The Bloody Days” (Di blutike teg) resembled in some aspects his next novel, The Flood.59 The play was never produced or published, and its text is apparently lost.60 Perhaps Sholem Aleichem hoped that a novel would bring him the success that he could not achieve on stage. The publication of the novel began in the New York Yiddish daily newspaper with the largest circulation, Di varhayt (The truth), on March 29, 1907, just one day before Passover.61 In his “Letter to the Editor,” which served as a preface to the novel, Sholem Aleichem explained the nature of his work:

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The Crisis of Revolution a reflection of the great mishmash that took place in the Jewish world over there, in the vast and disrupted Russian land. A reflection of movements, aspirations, bloody fights among the parties, races and nations; a portrait of everything that the author has experienced, participated in and suffered from, together with all the six million of his brothers and sisters, presented as objectively as possible in the form of a novel written already here, on the quiet soil of happy and free America, with a cool head and calm attitude. . . . 62

The author emphasized the panoramic nature of his novel, which made it different from anything written in Yiddish before. Sholem Aleichem’s intention was to present to his American audience a new novel that would be not a product of imagination, but rather a comprehensive eyewitness report of the tremendous upheaval in their old country. The novel opens with a scene of three families preparing for the Passover of the fateful year 1905. All of them live in the same house in a city somewhere in the Ukraine (apparently Kiev), but on different floors, according to their social standing. The top floor is occupied by a successful Jewish dealer, Itsik Shostepal, with his wife Shivke; in the middle resides a widowed pharmacist and apikoyres (freethinker), Solomon Rafalovitsh; and the basement is occupied by the family of a poor shoemaker, Nekhemiah. Shostepal’s daughter, Tamara, and Rafalovitsh’s son, Sasha, study in St. Petersburg, and when the novel begins, they are on the train bound for home for the holiday. On board they discuss revolutionary politics: Tamara advocates the general struggle for freedom in Russia, of which the fight for Jewish rights is only a part, whereas Sasha insists on the priority of the Jewish national struggle over the interests of the Russian revolution. The fathers are likewise divided by their ideologies, but share the understanding that their children must receive a modern education. To prepare his daughter for the gymnasium, Shostepal has hired a private tutor, a university dropout named Romanenko, the son of an anti-Semitic gymnasium teacher. Tamara inevitably falls in love with her tutor and becomes influenced by his revolutionary ideas. She rejects her father’s wish that she marry immediately after graduating from the gymnasium. Instead, she decides to study medicine in St. Petersburg. Sasha’s gymnasium study, meanwhile, brings him into contact with new nationalist ideas, much to the distress of his assimilationist father. Sasha also wants to continue his education in the capital, at St. Petersburg University. The first part of the novel is a long flashback, which depicts the events in St. Petersburg preceding the Passover, that is, the fall and the winter of 1904–5. The central character of an important subplot in this part is Masha Bashevitsh, the daughter of Lipe, a poor worker from the same town as Sasha and Tamara. Masha was an outstanding student in the gymnasium, and now she is continuing her education in an institute in St. Petersburg.

The Crisis of Revolution She boards with a Jewish family together with several other young Jewish radicals. The tenants of the boarding house form a small commune of which Masha is the acknowledged leader. Masha earns her living by working at a factory and is deeply involved in revolutionary activities. She is responsible for printing proclamations. Once she invents a bold trick: early in the morning, she and a group of workers occupy a printing shop of an anti-Semitic newspaper, and during two or three hours they produce several tens of thousands of proclamations. After three successful operations of Masha’s group, the secret police dispatch “the king of Russian detectives,” a baptized Lithuanian Jew named Yashka Vorona, to catch her. Accidentally Yashka hears Masha speak at a Zionist rally, where she argues fiercely against the nationalist ideology. He tracks her down to her lodgings, but Masha feels the danger looming and leaves the house to find a safe haven elsewhere. Masha seeks refuge with Tamara, from whom she had felt estranged in their native town because of their social difference. In St. Petersburg their relationship improves, and Tamara accepts Masha’s moral superiority. Tamara also takes part in revolutionary work. She admires her former tutor Romanenko, an important person in the movement. His love for Tamara notwithstanding, Romanenko decides to use her as bait in order to recruit a young Guards’ officer, the Georgian prince Rokashidze, for the cause of the revolution. Tamara is not happy about her role in the movement; coincidentally she receives a short note in Hebrew from somewhere, and for the first time in her life she feels ashamed of not knowing her “national language.” One day she runs into Sasha Rafalovitsh on Nevsky Prospekt, and they start a long discussion about nationalism and internationalism that continues with interruptions throughout the entire novel. Tamara boards at the home of a printer, Abram Markovitsh, a comic and extremely talkative graphomaniac who prints his own poetry but cannot sell it. He is admired by his wife, Rosa, but the real center of the home is their young son, a perfect child resembling in his beauty the self-portrait of the Italian painter Raphael. This little family idyll is destroyed by the intrusion of the police led by Yashka, who arrest Masha and Tamara. In the meantime, while the two young women are in prison, the poor child falls victim to the Bloody Sunday massacre on January 9, 1905. His old nursemaid takes him for a walk, and he is accidentally killed in the turmoil of the sudden military attack on the peaceful rally. Thanks to the intercession of the influential Prince Rokashidze, Tamara is soon released from prison. Again she accidentally runs into Sasha, who tries once more to convince her of the importance of Jewish national interests over the general struggle. He quotes from “In the City of Slaughter,” Bialik’s famous poem about the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, and the poetic lines strike Tamara as a powerful

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The Crisis of Revolution example of national culture of which she knows nothing. In the meantime, Rokashidze and Romanenko get arrested: the former for attempting to shell the Winter Palace from the Peter-and-Paul Fortress across the Neva during a fireworks display, the latter for the assassination of the Moscow governor-general, Prince Sergey Aleksandrovich. The second part of the novel takes place in the provincial city where Tamara and Sasha come back to celebrate the Passover feast. The meeting of the parents and the children is not easy. During the seder, Tamara asks her father her own four questions, which are directed against his selfishness and hypocrisy, instead of the traditional “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Sasha insists on conducting a real Jewish seder in the house of his atheistic father; Solomon Rafalovitsh is so ashamed that he closes all the windows lest anybody see him celebrating the Passover. Sasha, his father, and his friend spend the evening debating the question: “Are the Jews a nation?” In the meantime, important events take place in Nekhemiah’s basement. The day before Passover one of his sons brings home a guest. During the seder the guest tells the family a story of his latest escape from prison and mentions Masha Bashevitsh, who also took part in that adventure. Unfortunately, a police agent (Yashka, as the reader can gather) recognized Masha on a streetcar and she was arrested yet again. A series of discoveries follows, and the guest finds himself at Tamara Shostepal’s, much to the surprise of her bourgeois father. The guest’s name is Misha Bereznyak, and he was one of the members of Masha’s commune in St. Petersburg. Tamara learns from him about the arrests of Masha and Romanenko. Itsik Shostepal suffers because of his daughter’s behavior. She disappears every day for several hours, and her father knows nothing about her life. In this situation he is ready to accept Sasha as a prospective son-in-law. One day Shostepal finds his daughter very upset in her room, but she refuses to talk to him. The trouble seems to be caused by a foreign newspaper, which he is unable to read. He takes the paper to Sasha, who finds out from it the details of Romanenko’s execution. Another newspaper reports Masha’s suicide in prison. Her death stirs a series of protest rallies and strikes throughout the country. The memorial service in the local synagogue turns into a revolutionary rally. Masha’s father goes mad from grief. These events push Tamara into the front line of the revolutionary struggle in the town. Soon she gets arrested, ironically, by a “friend” of her father, a police officer. She is thrown into the very prison that her father supplies with food as a contractor. He tries to use his connections to help his daughter, but to no avail. This misfortune brings Itsik even closer to Sasha, and together they spare no effort to release Tamara. The October Manifesto comes as an unexpected redemption. A crowd

The Crisis of Revolution led by Misha Bereznyak frees Tamara and other prisoners. They try to organize a spontaneous rally near the prison, but the police break it up with gunfire in which Sasha is wounded. At home, while taking care of Sasha, Tamara arrives at the realization that perhaps he is right in his commitment to the Jewish cause. A pogrom breaks out in short order, during which Tamara witnesses the anti-Jewish violence in the streets. Each family experiences the pogrom in its own way. Solomon Rafalovitsh is assaulted on the street but manages to escape, pretending he is a Protestant convert; the Shostepals watch the terrible event through the window of their top floor apartment; Nehemiah’s sons and their friends actively participate in the Jewish self-defense, and his youngest son is killed. In the final scene of the novel all the central protagonists gather at the railroad station, waiting to leave the town. Most of them, including Nehemiah’s family, are going to America; only Solomon Rafalovitsh decides to go to Palestine. Sasha and Tamara will join him after they finish their studies in St. Petersburg. In order to make some sense out of this complicated narrative, it can be helpful to undertake a classification of the numerous characters according to the points of view from which the events are depicted. True to his introductory statement, Sholem Aleichem presented in The Flood a real mishmash of styles, voices, and subplot developments. The narrator changes his voice depending on the situation and the characters he describes at any given moment. The most recognizable is the ironic intonation of Sholem Aleichem’s narrative voice, familiar to many readers of his stories. The author employs this voice when he presents a character who belongs to the category of such shtetl types as Itsik Shostepal, familiar both to the author and to the readers: “Itsikl! The name alone tells you that this should be a Jew of the old world, a Jew who deals with timber, with distilleries, with corn, with contracts” (Mar. 30, 1907). The narrator at once establishes a connection between the character and the implied reader: “When you meet this person, you may approach him directly, on my responsibility, don’t be afraid, and say to him: ‘sholem aleichem, Reb Itsikl!’ ” (ibid.). In this case, the narrator, the character, and the reader all find themselves in the familiar world of the global Kasrilevke, the fictive shtetl location of many of Sholem Aleichem’s stories. For a moment we even glimpse the familiar persona of Sholem Aleichem the writer, encoded in the greetings, which evokes literary associations from the Old Country. The second character, Solomon Rafalovitsh, is also introduced in an ironic way. He “is not a hero, he is a pharmacist, of a type that would eat a sausage dipped in sour-cream, with uncovered head and unwashed hands, before prayer on Yom Kippur morning. Then it was a trick, a heroic act, similar to throwing a bomb at Tsar Nicholas as he sits and thinks: should I give them a Constitution, or rather order to whip them, as my grandfather

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The Crisis of Revolution used to do?” (ibid.). As a freethinker, Rafalovitsh may be the ideological opponent of the traditionalist Shostepal, but this difference is irrelevant in the context of the novel. The narrator’s intonation makes them both citizens of the same universal Kasrilevke. These types do not necessarily reside in a shtetl; nowadays they can be found even in St. Petersburg. One of them is Moyshe Malkin, the “ink-maker from Kasrilevke,” the owner of the boarding house where Masha Bashevitsh lives with her commune. Another is the “artist” Abram Markovitsh: “Everybody knows Abram Markovitsh! My profession is printing, but I myself am a bit of a painter, a bit of an artist, a bit of a writer, a bit of a poet, a vegetarian and a follower of Tolstoy” (May 5, 1907). In the latter case, Sholem Aleichem’s irony does not stop short of making fun of a typically Jewish defect characteristic of the Russian spoken by some native Yiddish speakers: the inability to pronounce a hard “R” sound. It indicates that in reality Abram Markovitsh speaks Russian, although with a Yiddish accent. (We know of course that he writes poetry in Russian.) In any Russian literary text, however, this imitation of the Jewish speech would have an unmistakably anti-Semitic connotation. The opposition to the “Kasrilevke” in the novel is represented by the community of revolutionaries. These are heroic figures, and the narrator treats them with respect. There are two major representatives of this kind in the novel: Tamara’s tutor, Romanenko, and Masha Bashevitsh. The former student Romanenko came back to his native town only for a short time, apparently because he had to hide from the police. The narrator introduces him using a different voice: he addresses the reader, “who is familiar with today’s life in the great and desolate Russian land and knows the history of the movements in recent time.” Only such a person “will understand the meaning of the words ‘former student’ ” (Apr. 4, 1907). In this case, as with the provincial Jewish types before, the narrator also appeals to the knowledge of the reality that he shares with the implied reader. But this aspect of reality has to do with the new revolutionary activity and not with the old shtetl. The narrator switches the register and uses a new tone free of ironic condescension. Now he activates a new insider’s code of revolutionary discourse, full of hints and omissions, which is a stark contrast to the verbal excess of shtetl speech. The implied reader is expected to share this code as well. The narrator looks up to his revolutionary characters, not down, as was the case with the shtetl ones. The same voice is employed for introducing Masha Bashevitsh: “ ‘Our Masha’—so she was called in certain circles, and many people were ready to go through water and fire and to the end of the world for her” (Apr. 10, 1907). The elevated intonation and the choice of words here (certain circles) indicate that Masha belongs to the secretive world of the revolutionary parties, altogether different from the familiar Kasrilevke. As the narrator tells

The Crisis of Revolution us confidentially, she is “second to Father Gapon”63 (ibid.) in the revolutionary hierarchy of the Russian capital. Masha plays the role of an elder sister in the commune of revolutionaries in Malkin’s pension. She is almost superhuman in her hatred for the regime and her love for her comrades. Despite her weak appearance, she is a convinced advocate of revolutionary terror, the “flood of blood” (ibid.), which helps us to locate her among the terrorist wing of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries. Romanenko’s personality has been formed under the impact of his family experience. His mother came from an impoverished Polish aristocratic family, whereas his father was a simple Ukrainian. The father oppressed the mother, and the young son always sided with her. From this experience comes his acute sensitivity to any form of social and national injustice and solidarity with the oppressed. Romanenko’s love for Tamara is a projection of his feelings toward his mother. Tamara’s Jewishness becomes a substitute for his mother’s Polishness, which signifies the state of being oppressed, both in the family and in society. Romanenko elevates his feelings to the universal level of the struggle for liberation of all oppressed peoples. His love becomes a particular case of this universal revolutionary structure of feeling. Romanenko had a real-life prototype, the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Ivan Kaliaev (1877–1905). Kaliaev was born in Warsaw (where Romanenko’s parents met), his father was a Russian police officer, and his mother came from the impoverished Polish gentry. Kaliaev studied in the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and became famous as the assassin of Prince Sergey Aleksandrovich (Feb. 4, 1905). Kaliaev was arrested on the spot and executed in the spring of 1905. Sholem Aleichem may have learned about him during his stay in Europe in 1906; Kaliaev’s hagiographic life story was depicted in the anonymous brochure Ivan Platonovich Kaliaev, published in Russian in Geneva by the Party of SocialistRevolutionaries immediately after his execution in 1905. As the textual parallels demonstrate, this brochure was not only an important source of information about the revolutionary movement, but also served as a model for the high narrative style of the novel. Ideal characters are not necessarily revolutionary heroes. To this type also belong victims, such as the innocent child Zyuzya, the son of Abram Markovitsh, “a white marble face of an angel, long silk-colored locks, deep sky-blue eyes, a sculptured nose, a small mouth, antique features, a classic figure of an outstanding grace” (May 7, 1907). Zyuzya falls victim to the brutal regime and thus becomes a universal symbol of the innocent suffering of the people. Along with sweet sentimental and heroic tones, the narrator occasionally uses a dry matter-of-fact style for the description of the revolutionary heroes: “Misha Bereznyak (real name Moyshe Fidler)—close

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The Crisis of Revolution to forty. Fugitive from Siberia. Has two university degrees. A rare hero. His speech is like a roar. Most wanted by the police” (Apr. 25, 1907). The use of police record style serves the purpose of defamiliarizing the character and separating him from the familiar everyday context. A similar style is also used to introduce the villain, Yashka Vorona: “In the documents he is registered as Yakov Vladimirovitsh Voronin, thirty two years of age. His real name is Yankl Voroner, from a small shtetl in the Grodno province” (Apr. 12, 1907). All three “ideal” types, the heroine (Masha), victim (Zyuzya), and villain (Yashka) are Jewish, but all are devoid of characteristic Jewish traits. Their function in the novel is to underscore the universal character of the revolution in which they are all involved, albeit in different capacities. At the same time, these characters strongly resemble the types of the shund novel, which is traditionally built around the hero-victim-villain triangle. The main protagonists of the novel, Sasha and Tamara, as well as some secondary characters, such as the shoemaker Nekhemiah and his family, are as close to the conventional realism as Sholem Aleichem could get. The author stresses their humanity and normality, so that the reader can easily identify with them. Depicting these characters, the narrator puts himself at the same level and appeals to the common sense and everyday experience shared by him and his audience: “The pharmacist’s son Sasha was a fine young man and one of the best students in the gymnasium. He studied well, read a lot, and did not think about those things that other young men are usually preoccupied with. But since he saw Tamara’s beautiful big black eyes, he became dreamy and wanted to meet with them again and again— until they came to him one night in a dream” (Apr. 3, 1907). This introduction contains all the elements necessary for the development of a romantic intrigue in the style of popular fiction. Sholem Aleichem often substitutes realism with a mix of irony and pathos. Thus, Sasha combines heroic and comic traits in his character: as a national activist, he organizes a Jewish national party at St. Petersburg University and founds a Jewish national library and Hebrew courses in the capital; but in relation to Tamara, his role is ironic, he has red hair and an awkward figure, and is shy before Tamara. Nehemiah the shoemaker belongs to the realistic group of characters by virtue of being engaged in productive labor. He resembles an ironic Kasrilevke type in more than one respect, and were he not a working proletarian, Sholem Aleichem would certainly not spare his irony on Nehemiah, as one can see in the case of his friend Yudl Kotonti: “Yudl Kotonti’s profession is tailoring, but he is preoccupied more with politics, with peripheral business, with local town problems” (Mar. 31, 1907). The middle-class intelligentsia, represented by Sasha and Tamara, and the proletarians Nekhemiah and his sons form the realistic plane of the novel. This

The Crisis of Revolution plane is sandwiched between the two others, the heroic and ironic. The realistic mimetic characters serve as a backbone, to which are attached many episodes written either in Sholem Aleichem’s distinctive ironic manner or in the style of sensational reportage. The serialized publication of the novel in a newspaper presumes a specific kind of relationship between the narrator and the implied reader. In the newspaper version of the novel, the narrator addresses the reader directly day-by-day, referring to their shared experience in Russia and their common understanding of Russian life, history, and politics. This type of actual novel has something in common with the modern soap opera, where the characters become the viewer’s life companions. Thus, The Flood is interesting not only as an attempt at creating a new revolutionary novel in Yiddish literature, but also as Sholem Aleichem’s search for a new American voice and a place in the American Yiddish cultural life. He imagined the reader of the newspaper novel as a freshly arrived Russian-Jewish immigrant, who shares a common past with the characters of the novel, but is not necessarily well oriented in the newest Russian reality. The reader is interested in the recent developments of his old country, but is also preoccupied with establishing himself in the new home, and therefore may not be able to follow the publication from one issue to the next. The serialized form of presentation helps to create the illusion of immediate storytelling. The fictional episode appears side by side with dramatic news about actual upheavals in Eastern Europe, pogroms, and political crises. In the foreword, the author explains his artistic method. He depicts the mighty stream of recent revolution—the flood—in the form of a novel divided into chapter-episodes. The author “went step by step with the events, did not ignore the psychology of individuals and the masses.” But the novel is not a documentary, as Sholem Aleichem stresses: “In order to make it interesting for the common reader who looks for a story, I added some suspense and intrigues, but not too much, God forbid!” (Mar. 29, 1907). In short, Sholem Aleichem promises the audience a first-hand panoramic report of Russian-Jewish life during the revolutionary year, including insights into personal and mass psychology, organized according to the rules of the adventure romance. The ubiquitous narrator feels at home almost everywhere in the space of the novel, from Nehemiah’s basement room to the palace of a certain General Belomedvedev in St. Petersburg. The psychology and motivations of all characters, from the shtetl Jews to the revolutionary heroes, are open to him. He even knows their dreams, which reveal their hidden desires and passions. The dreams are used as tools of psychological characterization: Itsik Shostepal sees in his sweet dreams Tamara’s future husband in the person of a young Poliakov (one of the wealthiest Russian Jewish families)

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The Crisis of Revolution from St. Petersburg (Apr. 6, 1907); Masha Bashevitsh’s dreams betray her fascination with the printing process: “the word ‘printing shop’ had for her more charm, more attraction than the gilded letters on the gold signboards: ‘Bank’, ‘Credit’, ‘Exchange’ ” (Apr. 10, 1907). Interestingly, the dreams of these two very different characters refer to the same familiar treasure motif. Shostepal’s dream is more straightforward: the Poliakovs’ fortune. Masha’s version is more complex and juxtaposes two opposite concepts of a treasure: the ideal one—a proclamation as a tool for attaining universal happiness—and the material one: money, the most common object of desire. Both aspects of the treasure are related to paper representations of power: money and proclamations. The proclamations exert the same magical power over Masha as money does over other people: she is fascinated by the big numbers—fifty thousand, seventy-five thousand, or a hundred thousand—the numbers of copies she managed to print. This link is shrewdly noticed by the police detective Yashka Vorona. Other characters also dream about paper representations of their desires: Abram Markovitsh imagines a huge number of copies of his poetry collection, whereas Tamara associates Romanenko with the big-lettered word konstitutsye (May 9, 1907). It should be obvious for the intended American reader that in America the political dreams about freedom of the press and the constitution have already become reality. The very publication of a novel like The Flood is a proof of the miraculous character of the new country. The elements of suspense, such as accidental encounters, miraculous escapes, cross-dressing, and chase, played an important role in the shund literature, which was so harshly criticized by Sholem Aleichem. In this novel he accepts a more ambivalent, playful position in regard to shund. Openly, he expresses his condescending attitude toward the “compilers of the most interesting novels.” At one point he makes fun of a colleague-writer, who allegedly advised him to make his heroes the relatives of two Russian high officials, Trepov and Witte, and thus introduce the theme of high society into the novel. The narrator rejects this recommendation, because “nowadays one cannot deceive anyone, even in America” (May 24, 1907). He often stresses that he writes about “real life,” and the reader should not expect any princes and miracles in this realistic novel. And yet precisely these fantastic elements hold the construction of the novel together and provide it with the necessary suspense and tension. Tamara is miraculously saved from prison through the intervention of Prince Rokashidze, who later develops an incredible plot to shell the Winter Palace from the Peterand-Paul Fortress across the Neva during a fireworks display. In fact, the whole revolutionary part of the novel is written according to the rules of the thriller genre, in which real events and characters mix with fictive ones.

The Crisis of Revolution Romanenko stands for Ivan Kaliaev, Masha is the fictitious assistant to Father Gapon, and so on. Thus the author of the novel does precisely what the narrator objects to in his declarations. The “residence” city of St. Petersburg fulfills a special function in the novel. The capital is presented as a phantasmagoric space where most unusual things can happen. There is no other city in the world where there are so many police and so much control over the people; and yet, nowhere are the revolutionaries so active and bold as in the capital of Russia. Speaking about St. Petersburg, the narrator uses grotesque language reminiscent of Nikolai Gogol’s The Petersburg Tales: “I shall not be surprised for a moment if I read one morning in the news that the entire city of St. Petersburg with its inhabitants and belongings has been found somewhere down there in the Caucasus or far away in Siberia” (Apr. 7, 1907). In this city the gatherings of revolutionaries can take place in the best aristocratic parlors; Masha Bashevitsh prints proclamations in the print shops of anti-Semitic newspapers; Romanenko, who is wanted by the police, lives and acts freely under another name. In short, this is a carnival place where people are not what they appear to be, where names and roles are mixed, and where a dangerous play is being staged.64 The author conveys this phantasmagoric character of the city through an eclectic mixture of different genres, which include a love story, adventure story, sensational reportage, and a historical document.65 In order to stress the verisimilitude of this highly fictive reality, the author liberally uses the letter genre. Sometimes the letters quoted in the novel sound artificial and even improbable, like the long, wordy letters that Masha writes, presumably to her father, every day. Romanenko’s letter from prison is simply a translation of Kaliaev’s last letter to his mother.66 These letters fulfill the same familiar role of “truth-creating devices” as other indirect narration, such as quotes from newspapers: they tell the heroic story in the objective voice, which allows the narrator to remain within the framework of conventional realism. The effect of verisimilitude is important for this novel, which supposedly tells the true story of the 1905 revolution.67 On the ironic level, verisimilitude is achieved through familiarity: “Everybody knows Itsik Shostepal, and he knows everybody,” the narrator tells us, introducing his hero (Mar. 30, 1907). The world of the shtetl is familiar to the reader, first because he himself comes from it and is surrounded by it even in America, and second, because it is the creation of the famous writer, Sholem Aleichem. The revolutionary world is a different matter. Very few readers can claim that they have actually met those people in real life, but almost all have heard about them. Masha Bashevitsh has become famous because her tragic story was published in a newspaper. (The fact that it was published in the foreign press only adds credibility, especially with the Jewish reader. It

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The Crisis of Revolution also indirectly makes the entire novel more trustworthy.) The heroic characters are real because they participate in real history. Zyuzya becomes real not because he is depicted in a realistic manner or is a typical Jewish child (like Dinezon’s Yosele), but rather because he is killed during a very real event familiar to everybody, Bloody Sunday. Those schematic and shallow figures are not real characters but mere signs of the new reality. The old reality of the shtetl and the new reality of the revolution belong to different planes that barely cross in the novel. Masha’s father adores her, but the cultural and ideological gap between them is so great that even her letters cannot give him any idea of her real life. In turn, the revolutionaries are indifferent to the old world of the shtetl. The encounter of the heroic characters with the ironic ones cannot produce any meaningful relationships and finishes disastrously. When the revolution appears in the world of the shtetl, it brings about the shtetl’s destruction: the revolution is followed by the pogrom. The two worlds are also separated in space: St. Petersburg is the playground of the heroic forces; the provincial town belongs to the ironic reality of the shtetl. The Flood did not become part of Sholem Aleichem’s canon. It was included in the writer’s collected works under the title In Storm (In shturem) only as a greatly abridged version. The prevalent opinion among critics and scholars is that the novel is a failure. Y. Y. Trunk calls it “a sensational newspaper reportage, quickly rearranged as a novel . . . with some of the Kasrilevke types shoved in the middle.”68 Dan Miron criticizes the novel for the domination of Zionist ideology over the plot and the clichéd representation of the love story.69 The two translators, Aliza Shevrin (the English translator of the shorter version, In Storm) and Arye Aharoni (Hebrew), are more appreciative of the novel. Shevrin praises the images of the women, Tamara and Masha; Aharoni stresses the topical character of the novel in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.70 The artistic defects of the novel are evident. Sholem Aleichem never was a skillful novelist, and, in addition, he faced the difficult task of meeting so many expectations: to produce, in a few months’ time, a contemporary novel that would entertain, educate, and be acceptable to an American audience. And yet, despite its many artistic flaws, The Flood is an interesting literary experiment that can help us understand the mechanisms of a new genre in the making: the political novel in Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem’s solution is similar to that of some Russian writers who attempted to give a novelistic representation of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. This strategy consists in putting together heterogeneous materials in order to create the impression of a raw reality that could not be represented through previous conventional literary schemes suitable for representations of the ordered world. Yurii Tynianov, the leading theorist of the Russian

The Crisis of Revolution Formalist school, formulated this strategy, in application to Konstantin Fedin’s post-1917 novel, Cities and Years, as “a stratagem of constructing a plot-oriented novel out of topical material.” The resulting text is characterized by the juxtaposition of contrasting or disparate styles, such as “oldfashioned narration, authorial effusions and such immediate bits of nonliterary discourse as newspaper clippings and propaganda pamphlets.”71 The main artistic challenge for an author of this kind of novel lies in incorporating the “topical material” into the conventional novelistic structure. As we have seen, this task can be solved by introducing real-life characters who serve as mediators between the two spheres. Their role in The Flood is to establish connections between the new world of the revolutionary struggle and the old world of Kasrilevke, to reunite children and parents, and thus to save the integrity of the Jewish collective, restructuring it according to the demands of the time. The plot has two driving forces: at the personal level the novel is propelled by the romantic intrigue between Sasha and Tamara, while on the collective one it unfolds according to the logic of the revolution and pogroms. From the very beginning of the novel Sasha embodies the author’s nationalist ideology. In a way, his nationalist stand follows naturally from the conflict between the fathers and the children, which is a general characteristic of the modern age, as well as a presumed situation in the novel. This is the primary reason why Tamara has to become a socialist in her worldview, in contrast to her father’s petit bourgeois traditionalism. The young Romanenko sides with his mother, an impoverished Polish aristocrat, against his oppressive father, a Ukrainian antiSemite and a Russian nationalist. Solomon Rafalovitsh is a rationalist and an assimilationist; therefore, his son is bound to be a modern neoromantic nationalist. This is the starting point of the characters’ development; their further progress is determined by the unfolding of the revolution. As fictional constructions, Sasha and Tamara are the most artificial among Sholem Aleichem’s cast of characters. They are neither recognizable ironic types like their parents, nor the new revolutionary heroes created after real models. The reader is unlikely to have ever heard of such young people or met them in real life. The purely fictitious nature of Sasha’s character is both his weakness and his strength. He cannot compete with the heroic figure of Romanenko, Tamara’s ideal. At first, Sasha’s arguments are utterly unconvincing to her, as he himself is unconvincing to the reader. In order to strengthen his position, he uses a trick: he borrows the heroic voice from the national poet Bialik. The poem helps him to start up a dialogue with Tamara, who recognizes the truth of this voice and, in turn, uses it in her argument with her father. In the course of events this strategy becomes more and more successful. Sasha convinces his father to make a “Jewish Passover,” and then utilizes the traditional narrative of Exodus for

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The Crisis of Revolution his nationalist propaganda. Itsikl recognizes Sasha’s authority and seeks out his advice on how to manage Tamara. Finally, after he has been wounded at the demonstration, Sasha becomes heroic enough for Tamara, too. The union of Sasha and Tamara and their unification with other characters at end of the novel signifies the harmonization of the personal and national planes of the novel. At the end, Sholem Aleichem resolves the multiple conflict caused by the revolutionary situation in essentially the same melodramatic way as his much less ambitious colleague, Mordkhe Spektor. Summing up the three main stylistic components of the novel, we can identify them as feuilleton (the shtetl), melodrama (the love of Sasha and Tamara), and sensational reportage (the revolution). It remains to be understood how the implied author manages to bring these different genres together in one novel, and how the respective roles of these modes can be interpreted within the framework of his ideology. Two major events in the novel bring all the major characters to one place and frame the novel’s actual time: Passover and the pogrom. The St. Petersburg subplot is simply a long digression from the main plot. This structural relationship between the main plot and the subplot reflects the relationship between the revolution and Jewish history, in which the revolution appears as nothing more than one long digression in the eternal course of sufferings and exiles. Jewish history is present in the text as the symbolic code of the story of Exodus. The novel begins with preparations for Passover 1905, and the newspaper publication of the novel two years later also starts on Passover eve. Thus, for the American newspaper readers, the novel becomes a story of contemporary suffering and redemption, retold as a tale of Exodus. Before Passover, the characters are separated and alienated from each other through divisions of class and age, as is stated in the opening sentence of the novel: “Three different celebrations of Passover were in preparation in house number 13” (Mar. 30, 1907). The fathers Shostepal and Rafalovitsh are preoccupied with their own petty problems and despise each other; Sasha and Tamara are alienated from their parents both spatially and spiritually; between themselves, the young people disagree over politics; and the revolutionaries in St. Petersburg are busy preparing the apocalypse for the old world. The intertextual relationships between the novel and the tale of Exodus suggest a providential character for the narrative, which elevates it above the simple adventure romance. Thus, introducing the tenants in Malkin’s commune, the narrator refers directly to the beginning of the Book of Exodus: “These are the names of the tenants that live at Malkin’s under the sky” (Apr. 25, 1907). Another biblical image, that of the chief butler from the story of Joseph, makes its appearance in the novel in the guise of a Russian drunkard, Seryozha, Malkin’s cell mate in the police precinct. In the

The Crisis of Revolution morning, two messengers came, says the narrator, the one to release Seryozha, the other to send Malkin to the court—a clear allusion to an episode in the story of Joseph (Apr. 24, 1907). Tsar Nicholas II is repeatedly referred to in the novel as “Pharaoh,” and the Russian Empire as Mitsrayim (Egypt). Celebration of Passover is the only reason for the physical reunion of the characters, who belong to different walks of life, under one roof; the seder narrative helps them to start a productive dialogue. The traditional significance of the religious festival acquires a special personal meaning for each individual. For Tamara, the traditional four questions are a rhetorical device to express her socialist convictions, and accuse her father, and through him, the entire Jewish bourgeoisie, of complacency; for Sasha, the seder ritual carries only a nationalist-Zionist meaning, whereas for Nekhemiah and his secret guest, the story of the Exodus becomes transformed into an adventure story about the escape of revolutionaries from prison. The chapters that recount the different celebrations of Passover in three families have telling titles that underscore the traditional formal elements of the ritual: “Tamara Asks Her Father the Four Questions” (chap. 37); “The Son Conducts the Seder, And the Father Asks the Four Questions” (chap. 38); and “The Shoemaker’s Guest Tells About Miracles of the Exodus” (chap. 40). The different interpretations of the festival serve as guidelines for different paths into the future, as opposed to the traditional understanding that relates Passover mostly to the unified version of the common past, with some vague references to the messianic age. The novel, on the whole, acquires the meaning of a new Passover Haggadah. The newspaper publication of The Flood in America is another example of Sholem Aleichem’s creativity as a “mythologist of the mundane” (David Roskies). As in the other, more celebrated cases of Menakhem-Mendl, Tevye, and Motl (which will be discussed in the next chapters), Sholem Aleichem seeks to combine the concrete sociohistorical experience with a mythological paradigm. The “heroic past” in this case is the turbulent year 1905. Fate, the recurrent mechanism of repetition, is represented through the motif of emigration as a yet another Exodus. The narrative of Exodus is linked to the story of violence, which steadily increases from Bloody Sunday to the October pogrom. Neither the heroic nor the ironic characters at first take the possibility of the pogrom seriously because it does not suit their conception of reality. For the revolutionaries, the pogrom is irrelevant, since it belongs to the old world that is to be destroyed anyway; the shtetl Jews, on the contrary, believe in the eternal stability of the established order. The shtetl discourse created by Sholem Aleichem in his Kasrilevke cycle is not capable of dealing with the pogrom reality, as Roskies explains: “for as the shtetl falls apart, its central tongue also seems to do so, creating a possibly unbridgeable gap between faith and pragmatism.”72 In order to

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The Crisis of Revolution fill this gap in the novel, Sholem Aleichem needs to invent a new hero. It is only the new realistic hero Sasha with his vision of historical development based on the national ideology who can foresee a pogrom as a result of the revolution. The pogrom destroys all illusions, and the characters finally realize that they cannot survive without each other, that all of them are parts of one national body, which is yet to be built. The pogrom has a liberating effect because it destroys old social borders: the characters are no longer individuals insulated in their personal fragmented experience, but members of the national collective on the verge of a new epoch that is about to begin outside Russia, in America or in the Land of Israel. Sholem Aleichem’s artistic ambition was to create dynamic modern Jewish characters who would not only reflect in their development the contemporary crisis of the Jewish condition, but also actively react to it. His previous creation, the archetypal character such as Tevye or MenakhemMendl, was not suitable for this task because its unchangeable nature made it incapable of developing under the impact from outside. Therefore, Sholem Aleichem attempted to create a synthetic work that would incorporate various genres and modes of contemporary Yiddish and Russian writings into a panoramic representation of that multidimensional crisis. For the first time in Yiddish literature, a novel included genres and modes as different as poem and reportage, ironical anecdote and adventure story, newspaper feuilleton and revolutionary brochure. The Flood was an ambitious effort to expand the thematic and representational limits of Yiddish literature in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution. As a grand representation of the reality of the Old World through the literary medium of the New World, The Flood had yet another aspiration: to create a new vision of the Jewish communal unity in America. The author himself functions as a mediator between the old and the new orders. Through Sholem Aleichem’s narrative, the sixty thousand anonymous readers of the newspaper, day after day, shared in their imagination the hope, disappointment, and suffering of their fellow Jews in Russia. The publication of the novel in installments was intended to produce a cathartic effect on the newspaper audience, to make it once more experience the painful but liberating process of preparing to emigrate. Benedict Anderson points to a similarity of roles for the novel and the newspaper as social institutions: “these forms provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation.”73 As Anderson demonstrates in his study of modern nationalism, the novel and the newspaper have an important unifying function in the process of the creation of a modern national identity: “fiction seeps quietly and continuously into reality, creating that remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the hallmark of modern nations.”74 The Flood was perhaps the ear-

The Crisis of Revolution liest example in Jewish literature of this kind of novel of national imagination. The reader, the narrator, and the characters of the novel were united in an almost real time setting. The crisis they were all experiencing led them into shaping a new “imagined community” of the Jewish nation that united all parts of the Jewish Diaspora.

Revolution as Temptation and Sacrifice: The Novel Meri of Sholem Asch Sholem Asch could not escape the powerful impact of events of 1905 and had to reconsider his artistic and ideological position. Asch approached the revolutionary theme in a number works written between 1905 and 1914, in which he created a representational pattern that he later used for the largescale portrayal of Russian-Jewish life in his trilogy Three Cities. One can argue that the revolution of 1905 provided Asch with artistic means for dealing with historical and political reality. Elements of this revolutionary narrative can be discovered in such diverse works as the historical romances Kiddush Hashem (1920) and The Witch of Castille (Di kishefmakhern fun Kastilye, 1921), and the realistic social novel East River (1946). The year 1905 marked for Asch, as for other Yiddish writers, a new beginning in his creative work. In the immediate observations of the events on the street, he emphasized the tragedy and the pathos of the historic cataclysm that was unfolding before his eyes. He sympathized with the revolutionary workers but at the same time felt estranged from their struggle, psychologically broken, and incapable of acting. In a short piece written in the form of a diary, “Moments of the Days of Freedom” (1908), Asch presents an immediate account of the events of 1905 in Warsaw.75 In the opening entry he points out the unusual character of this literary form for him: “Today, the 22nd March 1905 (certainly this is the first time in my life when I record a date)” (p. 172). Even though it is supposed to be an eyewitness account, “Moments” demonstrates a tendency for the young Asch to charge reality with symbolic meaning: “And ‘di shvue,’ like God’s word, like a wind that has just been released from the ‘treasury of spirits,’ is being carried over the streets” (p. 181).76 The function of the revolutionary song here is similar to that of the Jewish melody in A Shtetl. Thus the rhetoric of the revolution echoes the rhetoric of Jewishness. In both cases Asch employs a solemn and heavy style saturated with references to Jewish tradition. The incorporation of new revolutionary elements, such as Ansky’s poem, into this symbolism enables Asch to remain within his traditionalist neoromantic conceptual system even when dealing with a completely new reality.

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The Crisis of Revolution The revolution is depicted in the “Moments” as a new experience that has created a new unity of the people. The crowd on the street becomes one body in which all differences between people suddenly disappear: complete strangers hug and kiss each other, and even the soldiers turn from enemies into brothers. There is no more hatred between free citizens (pp. 190–91). The culmination of the revolutionary feast is the march to the infamous Pawiak prison. It seems that the revolutionary crowd will be victorious, as the police chief relents and promises to free the political prisoners. The moment of culmination comes when the first released revolutionary, who, incidentally, is a woman, appears at the prison gate. At this moment, a regiment of Cossacks throws itself at the crowd from a hiding place and destroys the utopian illusion (pp. 191–94). A sudden tragedy replaces the enthusiastic celebration. Asch compares the place in front of the prison to the arena of a Roman circus covered with parts of dead bodies. The figure of a liberated woman, who symbolized the new freedom a moment ago, turns into a lonely mother weeping for her lost child. This episode, one of the first depictions of mass violence in Asch’s works, serves as a prototype for large-scale scenes of pogroms and massacres in historical romances set in Renaissance Rome and the Ukraine in the seventeenth century. It is easy to see here how Asch utilizes the common stock of revolutionary motifs that he shared with Ansky, Spektor, and Sholem Aleichem. All writers depict the emergence of a new community from the raw revolutionary crowd, the transformation of the urban space, the symbolic figure of a woman as the representation of the new order, and finally, the crushing of the dream under the boot of counterrevolutionary reaction. On a broader scale, the revolution is depicted in Sholem Asch’s first novel, Meri (1911).77 In this novel Asch uses the plot scheme and chronology of Sholem Aleichem’s The Flood. Like Sholem Aleichem, Asch takes his young middle-class protagonists Misha and Meri from a Ukrainian town to St. Petersburg on the eve of the 1905 revolution, and then brings them back to their native town at the time of the October pogroms. Asch’s St. Petersburg agenda is more ambitious than that of Sholem Aleichem because he attempts (for the first time in Yiddish literature) to portray the assimilated Jewish elite of the Russian capital. The presence of the revolution is not as dominant in Meri as it was in The Flood. The events of 1905 have a serious impact only on the young student Misha. As a result, Misha does not become a conscious revolutionary himself; like his counterpart Sasha in Sholem Aleichem’s novel, he finds his own way with a combination of revolutionary enthusiasm and devotion to his people’s cause. The sequel to the novel, The Road to the Self (Der veg tsu zikh, 1914), completes the story of Misha’s search for his place within the national collective. But Meri, unlike

The Crisis of Revolution Tamara, remains completely aloof to the call of the revolution and ends up being alienated both from her own people and from society at large. In the first chapters of the novel Asch presents an analytical picture of a provincial town in the Ukraine on the eve of the cataclysmic year 1905. This town does not possess the harmonic integrity of A Shtetl. Instead, it is sharply divided in two parts, the central section populated by the better off, and the poor suburban area called Rov (ravine, ditch in Russian). The Rov is characterized not only by worse living conditions, but also by the physical and psychological deficiencies of its inhabitants. Life there is hopeless and desperate regardless of one’s social status: the petite bourgeois owners of small workshops are no better off than the workers in their employ. The entire population of the Rov suffers from inherited common poverty and genetic diseases. The Rov spells rapid physical and mental deterioration for everyone who was born there: “There was a curse on everybody who was born in the Rov so that no one could get out and you had to spend your entire miserable life there” (p. 50). The image of Rov in Asch’s novel resembles the depiction of the workingclass area with the same name in Gomel in 1904, which one finds in the memoirs of Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, an active participant in the 1905 revolution: Kuznechnaya street led to a shallow but long ravine—we called that place Rov— whose bottom and slippery slopes were built over with shabby huts. This ravine was the nest of the direst poor; here side by side with workers lived beggars, lumpenproletariat and reckless rogues. The local population enjoyed even greater autonomy than the inhabitants of Kuznechnaya street: the police almost never descended into the dark ravine, and therefore here one could call secret meetings, print illegal literature and even manufacture primitive bombs.78

Like Asch’s fictional character Misha, the real Sofia Dubnova-Erlich discovered Rov as a result of her involvement in the revolution. Thus the revolutionary situation creates an acute sense of the division between the rich and the poor within one town, which only a few years earlier looked like an organic unity. The vision of the depressed Rov on the eve of 1905 in the beginning of the novel calls forth a strong sense of guilt in Misha’s soul: “And he thought: here I am going about with my fantasies, and there are people in this place, not strangers, Jews, and not few, but the entire people, the entire Jewish people lives like this in Russia, except for some lucky ones who managed to get out of the Rov and live in the cities” (p. 51). Misha’s thoughts echo the narodnik ideology, which had a strong impact on the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia. As we have seen in the example of S. Ansky’s stories, these radical ideas captured the imagination of the young Jewish intelligentsia at the turn of the twentieth century,

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The Crisis of Revolution when one discovered that along with the Russian narod in the villages there were Jewish folk in the shtetls. For Asch, it is important to stress that these Jewish folk, who so densely populate the Rov, are united by their common territory and fate much more than they are divided by social differences. Those few who have left the Rov for better places have a moral obligation to repay their debt to the people by serving their brothers in need. Misha’s urge to reestablish his contact with his people sets up the ideological perspective from which the revolution is shown in the novel. One of the select individuals who take this obligation seriously is Doctor Leyzerovitsh, an old Jewish narodnik. He has settled voluntarily in the Rov with his family in order to serve his people. Leyzerovitsh’s son David, Misha’s friend, is a revolutionary of the new generation who fights for the happiness of the whole of mankind, not Jews alone. As a Bundist, David believes that justice can be achieved only through class struggle and not through philanthropic work. Through David, Misha becomes involved in revolutionary work. He attends secret meetings where young Jews who have never seen peasants and workers in their lives come together to speak about the redistribution of the land and the abolition of capitalist exploitation. The depictions of the Jewish radicals express Asch’s negative attitude toward the participation of Jews in the revolution. Misha feels this uneasiness, but is unable to articulate his ideas: “Gentlemen—he began to stammer—I wanted us to talk about that . . . about that—he stammered—what are we? What am I?” (p. 84). In the atmosphere of revolutionary excitement Misha’s quest for identity remains ignored by the group. The next episode of the revolutionary subplot of the novel, a rally in the woods beyond the Rov, highlights the physical contrast between the party activists from the urban intelligentsia and the workers from the Rov: “They [the intelligentsia] looked like giants of a different race in comparison to the people from the Rov. Most of the workers from the Rov were a whole head shorter than normal people, they had thin little bodies with small underdeveloped hands and feet. . . . They were standing and listening casually to a speech of a young man whom Misha met at Dr. Leyzerovitsh’s” (p. 108). At the rally, two competing parties, the Russian Social-Democrats and the Jewish Bundists, try to woo the population of the Rov, but neither of them comprehends the real needs of those people. The party activists talk about class struggle and call on the workers to strike, while the inhabitants of the Rov do not see any difference between the owners and the employees: “What does it mean, who gives the work? We ourselves give the work and we ourselves work and we ourselves sell our products on the market” (p. 110). The people of the Rov cannot understand the purpose of a strike because it will only make their situation worse. When their representative comes to speak, the tone and the content of his speech is different from

The Crisis of Revolution those of the party functionaries: “He spoke neither about strikes, nor about owners and workers. In very simple words he described the life of the inhabitants of the Rov. His voice was harsh and hoarse, so that the people from the town could barely understand him. But the people from the Rov listened carefully to his every word and understood everything he said” (p. 112). Asch makes it clear that for him the class boundaries are less significant than the national one. The guilt of educated Jews is not in their being better off but in their separation from the Jewish masses. Eventually the protest of the Rov takes the form of a spontaneous march, which is under David’s leadership and looks like a macabre parody of the revolutionary actions described by other writers: David dragged out of the houses a couple of poor sick women and put them in front, with their children in their arms; then he took someone on crutches and a blind sick Jew and made them lead the protest march. Two rows of tall consumptive women with their sick children in their arms, and behind them—the Rov, accompanied by the crying and screaming sick dirty children. He pushed the “intellectuals” away, did not let them join in. (p. 115)

When this grotesque procession, a mixture of a macabre dance and a political demonstration, reaches the bourgeois center of the town, local people react to it with disdain: zhidovskaya svad’ba (kikes’ wedding), they sneer (p. 116). The first Jewish political action ends in a tragicomical disaster: a Jewish student who has been expelled from the gymnasium for revolutionary activities shoots at the director and misses. The student is arrested, but the whole incident is so irrelevant that it does not cause any further repercussions. This failure of the Jewish revolutionary movement forces Misha to think seriously about his role in his people’s life. He is torn between his love for his cousin Meri and the feeling of indebtedness to his people. Eventually he decides to make use of his privileged social position and study in order to work for his people like Dr. Leyzerovitsh. Like Sholem Aleichem’s young protagonists, Misha and Meri go to the capital in the fall of 1904. While Meri is completely absorbed by her social life and her affair with the artist Kovalski, Misha becomes a witness to the revolution on a large scale. His unhappy love makes him see reality as a dream, and when the real revolutionary struggle unfolds before his eyes he is unable to relate to it adequately. He is dragged into the whirlpool but feels as if he is at a fremder khasene (strangers’ wedding), or as a sober man in the midst of a drunken crowd (p. 181). The pictures of the revolution in St. Petersburg in the novel resemble those from the “Moments.” For a moment the seeming victory of the revolution brings about the transfiguration of the usually dark and

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The Crisis of Revolution gloomy city: “One morning St. Petersburg woke up in festive dress. There was a holiday on the streets, the sun was shining, all stores were closed and people were walking freely around the broad streets in their best clothing. Ladies with red bands on their bosoms sang a song of victory. Gentlemen shook hands with police officers” (p. 183). And yet nobody among those people celebrating the October Manifesto can see the Angel of Death hovering over the festive crowd. For Misha this vision of the Angel of Death means awakening from the dream: as soon as he hears the first news about the pogroms in the south of Russia, he rushes home. He goes back to his town and joins the Jewish self-defense brigade. For the first time he feels that he really is part of the people. His family wants to flee to Germany, but he decides to stay with the Rov. The novel ends with the marriage of Misha to Dr. Leyzerovitsh’s daughter, Rachel, who has been raped during the pogrom. This marriage is charged with symbolism. Through the marriage, Misha fulfills his quest for complete reunification with his poor and devastated people. On the personal level, the marriage forges the link between Misha and his spiritual predecessor, Dr. Leyzerovitsh. This does not mean that Misha shares all the views of his father-in-law; the difference between the two generations becomes visible when Misha insists on having a religious wedding ceremony in a beys-medresh (little synagogue) in the Rov—an act that the freethinking Dr. Leyzerovitsh refuses to accept. The spiritual evolution that Misha has undergone during the revolutionary year changes his worldview. The revolution becomes in his eyes inseparably linked with the pogroms, and together they form yet another link in the endless chain of suffering that filled Jewish history: “Today is just one day in Jewish history: yesterday this thing occurred in Alexandria, in Caesarea, in Rome, in Madrid, in Frankfurt, in Krakow—today it occurs in Kishinev, in Kiev—and this no longer scared him. Everything will pass, . . . and the ship will sail further on” (p. 197). In his astute critical analysis of the book Max Erik suggests that it can be split into two different novels, the first one being a “Bohemian novel” rooted in decadent aesthetics with the focus on the love intrigue between Kovalski and Meri, the other one being a “pogrom novel” created around the traditional Jewish motif of kiddush-hashem.79 This division accords well with the goals of the present analysis; in this section we shall therefore deal only with the “pogrom novel,” leaving the “Bohemian” one for Chapter 4. Erik interprets the entire oeuvre of Asch between 1903 and 1914 as a series of responses to the revolutionary development. He divides it into three periods, according to the general Soviet Marxist scheme of earlytwentieth-century Russian culture. Before 1905, some of Asch’s works con-

The Crisis of Revolution tained social criticism that reflected the comprehensive crisis in Russia (his first collection, In Bad Times [In shlekhte tsaytn, 1903]); during the period of 1905–7, Asch’s art became a mirror of the perplexity and indecisiveness of the Jewish petite bourgeoisie and middle class terrified by the violent development of the revolution. After the final defeat of the revolution in 1907, the writer’s artistic and ideological position became openly counterrevolutionary. Driven by deep despair and fear, he advocated individualistic escapism and return to religion. At this stage, Asch’s creativity objectively served the interests of the new urban bourgeoisie, which sided with the counterrevolution (p. 91). According to this scheme, the character of Asch’s literary work is objectively determined by the maneuvering of the bourgeoisie in the period between the two revolutions. The “Moments of the Days of Freedom” is a tender elegy to the victims of the revolution; it glorifies the revolutionary struggle but does not conceal the author’s personal reservations. For the revolutionaries, a human being is just a brick in the future edifice of happiness, for the author, an independent world of its own. Meri is a postmortem examination of the gains and losses of the revolution on a larger scale. Erik believes that even in that ambitious novel Asch remains within the limitations of the “Procrustean bed of shtetl description” (p. 94). The author was incapable of creating a meaningful picture of the revolution outside the boundaries of the Jewish world and therefore had to show the events in St. Petersburg through the eyes of the inadequate observer Misha. Asch needs to send his characters from the capital back to the Pale of Settlement, where the revolution is transformed into a pogrom and thus reduced to a stereotypical event of Jewish history. The ideological foundation beneath Asch’s artistic recreation of 1905 is the Socialist-Zionist concept of the absence of a sizeable Jewish proletariat. Therefore, there can be no class conflict in the Rov, which could be interpreted as a symbolic locus of the whole Jewish people in Russia (pp. 95–96). In Meri, class conflict is replaced with the conflict between nationalism and assimilation. Involvement in the revolution furthers the alienation of the Jewish intelligentsia from the people and creates an identity crisis. The revolution is a fantasy that brings no good to the people. Its only result for Jews is the pogroms, which are not caused so much by counterrevolutionary forces, but belong to the essential elements of Jewish history. Thus, concludes Erik, Asch transforms the theme of revolution into the theme of kiddush hashem and becomes the spokesman for the bourgeois-nationalist concept of Jewish history as Leiden und Lehren (Suffering and Scholarship), created by the German-Jewish intellectual tradition of Wissenschaft des Judentums (scientific study of Judaism) (p. 97). Shmuel Niger points to the fictive character of the representation of the

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The Crisis of Revolution revolutionary action in the Rov episode and provides a sociopsychological explanation.80 In his view, Asch’s grotesque depiction of the protest march is a sarcastic expression of his disdain for the contemporary Jewish radical intelligentsia. Although obviously capable of doing otherwise, he deliberately creates a weak caricature of the fighting Jewish proletariat in order to provide a psychological justification of Misha’s continuing affection for Meri and his eventual return to the people. Misha’s personality is such that he cannot embrace a cause halfheartedly; he would follow a powerful and attractive revolutionary if he met such a person in his town or in St. Petersburg. In this case he would be lost to his people’s cause. Having finally experienced disappointment with Meri, he can only turn back and discover his new role model in Dr. Leyzerovitsh.81 These complementary insights of two very different Yiddish critics help explain Asch’s manipulative treatment of the revolutionary theme. The writer uses a great historic cataclysm in order to expand his fictional space and go beyond the confines of the isolated realm of the shtetl. The revolution becomes an artistic device that puts the narrow Jewish world into the universal context. History provides Asch with a reference point in real time: 1905 becomes the beginning of the new historical calendar (in “Moments of the Days of Freedom”), which replaces the mythological cyclical time of A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged and enables him to write a novel instead of a rather loosely defined “poem” in prose. Asch does not follow the dominant conventions of the representation of revolution in Yiddish literature. Unlike most of the writers, he does not associate the liberated woman with the creative power of revolution; indeed, Meri’s egoism combined with her drive to self-destruction indirectly pushes Misha back to his true vocation. Asch consistently depicts revolutionary events from an estranged point of view, emphasizing the alien character of the Russian revolution for Jews. Through this technique, Asch stresses the separation between Jews and Gentiles even in the most elevating historic moments. The estrangement of Jews from the Gentiles, not only in moments of suffering, but also in moments of joy and celebration that always contain the seeds of the looming catastrophe, is a necessary element of the kiddush hashem scheme. From this perspective, a carnival in Renaissance Rome in The Witch of Castille is not very different from the revolution in 1905 Warsaw or St. Petersburg. This vision of revolution as a Jewish tragedy is an important element of Asch’s mythology of history, which, incidentally, is also constructed according to the previously discussed scheme of the mythology of the mundane. The unique experience of 1905 enables Asch to connect the Jewish existence in an abstract shtetl outside of history with the actuality of the moment. At the same time there is nothing unusual in the revolution: it is yet another tragic event long familiar to Jewish collective

The Crisis of Revolution memory, an element in the recurrent pattern of the history of Jewish suffering. With the revolution, Russian Jewry “jumped” onto the train of history, only to find itself in a familiar separate compartment that follows its own route and schedule different from those of other nations.

Conclusion: Revolution between Myth and Reality The events of 1905 not only expanded thematic and typological horizons of Yiddish literature, but also strongly affected the ways in which it represented reality. The main challenge for post-1905 Yiddish literature was how to adapt the familiar nineteenth-century representational models to the radically changing reality of the time. As we have seen, such concepts as fictional time and space, as well as the construction of character, underwent radical transformation in the direction of more openness to, and integration into, external reality. The manifestly closed Jewish time and space of the extended shtetl metaphor gave way to the open and universal timespace continuum where Jews had to live and function side by side with Gentiles. The new situation forced Jewish characters to search for their place in the rapidly changing world, and to reexamine constantly their individual and collective identity. For many young writers, the year 1905 marked the beginning of a new era that synchronized the movement of Jewish history with the universal historical process. Before 1905, the dominant pattern of time representation in Yiddish literature was a cyclical sequence of seasons and religious festivals that ruled the private and social aspects of life. The revolution, represented as a rapid and straightforward linear development, broke this established order. It introduced the sense of the historical moment: the St. Petersburg reality before January 9, 1905, was no longer the same as after that fateful day; October 17, 1905, became a significant mark in the previously timeless reality of the shtetl. There were two possible ways to deal with that situation in fiction: the revolutionary stream could either incorporate the old cyclical pattern and form, and create, if only for a moment, a new utopian configuration of time and space (Ansky), or else crush it together with the entire old order based on the cyclical concept of time (Weissenberg). In terms of fictional space, the reality of revolution forced Yiddish authors to acknowledge the powerful presence of non-Jewish territory. Contacts between centers and periphery, and movement of people in and out were an essential part of the new life. The pressure from the outside led to the restructuring of the traditional spatial hierarchy of the shtetl. Now the previously coherent, “organic” Jewish space became split into two con-

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The Crisis of Revolution trasting topoi: the prorevolutionary and the counterrevolutionary. On a small scale the contrast was represented through the division within the shtetl (birzhe vs. synagogue); in the broad context of the Russian Empire, the new division contrasted the shtetl and the capital. These structural changes had a profound impact on the characters of the new Yiddish fiction. Jewish men and women could not remain unaffected by the rapid transformation of the environment and were forced to undergo profound inner transformations. One of the most striking results of this development was the emergence of a new dynamic female character. The new woman (Bashe, Esther, Dinah, Tamara, Masha Bashevitsh) became the most poignant symbol of change and hope. This new role stood in stark contrast to the typical nineteenth-century female model, such as Sheyntse in The Headband or Rokhele in Stempehyu, associated with the idea of stability and discipline. The new female sensibility was part of the new structure of feeling created by the revolutionary fiction. It was characterized by the strong rejection of the old values in favor of the new collective identity. The experience of the revolution led the characters to a new proactive attitude toward life. The revolution introduced the idea of the future as something that should be radically different from the past, but could be realized only through the full devotion of the individual self to the cause. Thus the present gained extreme importance as the critical moment when the fate of the whole world is decided. The most optimistic and affirmative interpretation of the revolutionary moment (even though not the most convincing artistically) was provided by S. Ansky, who represented the revolution as a fulfillment of the old utopian dream of the Jewish people. Weissenberg, on the contrary, rejected any idealization of the revolutionary reality and chose to look at it with the critical eye of an objective observer. The unfolding of the revolutionary events of 1905 gave him an opportunity to develop a new representational pattern. The breakup of the traditional order made it possible to depict it from the outside, as a natural catastrophe. Unlike Ansky, Weissenberg was not interested in discovering a new community emerging from the ruins of the old order. He concentrated his attention on the process and not on its possible purpose, on the deconstruction and not on the reconstruction. For two major Yiddish novelists of the time, the Russian revolution of 1905 presented an opportunity to transgress the confines of the shtetl. Both Sholem Aleichem and Sholem Asch took their young heroes to the epicenter of the revolution, St. Petersburg, and then returned them to the shtetl. Both novels were built around the opposition between the Gentile capital and the Jewish province, the metropolitan and the parochial ways of life, the world of the children and that of the fathers. The revolution deter-

The Crisis of Revolution mined the sequence and the chronology of events in both works with the two key marks being Bloody Sunday of January 9, 1905, and the announcement of the Tsar’s Manifesto on October 17, 1905. The old shtetl order could not withstand the pressure of the revolutionary events and broke down. However, unlike the novella, the novel could not stop at this point and had to explore the broader implications of the revolutionary upheaval for the entire life of Russian Jewry. The new emerging universalistic order turned out to be hostile to the Jews, as was clearly demonstrated by the pogroms following the October Manifesto. In this critical situation the responsibility for the future of the people was removed from the old to the new generation. At the end of the novel, the young characters accept their new role and take the burden on their own shoulders. The final part was the most problematic for the revolutionary fiction. In order to create a meaningful ending for the extraordinary story, Sholem Asch and Sholem Aleichem had to assume the role of Jewish ideologues and to choose from among the wide variety of possible solutions offered by the Jewish political and social thinkers of the time. Sholem Aleichem preferred a vaguely Zionist ending, whereas Asch made his character the embodiment of the folkist ideal. Both conclusions reflected the rather uncertain feelings of the authors and their readers as to future developments and would be highly improbable in a work written after 1914, when the general mood became more pessimistic. Its tendency toward utopian and sentimental-idealistic endings notwithstanding, post-1905 Yiddish fiction laid the foundation for later representations of historical upheavals and transformations in Jewish literature. The radical opening of the traditional time-space continuum and the rapid character development synchronized with real historical time created new organizational patterns and produced new meanings. The upheaval of 1905 could not be ignored even by those writers who preferred the traditional models. The experience of revolution had freed the energy of personal liberation and created a powerful narrative pattern of linear development. The conservative authors had to come up with new mythological schemes that would neutralize the revolutionary ferment and incorporate it into a new cyclical pattern. Otherwise, the disappointment caused by the failure of the revolution would lead to frustration and exclude any possibility of a new beginning within the old conceptual framework. To avoid this pessimistic outcome, some writers concentrated on further exploration of the newly opened time and space and their impact on Jewish men and women. This way usually led out of reactionary, post-1905 Russia, to the golden land of freedom and opportunity, America.

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The Crisis of Immigration

Introduction: Migration and Change Migration was one of the most important features of Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. People moved between neighboring towns, from villages and small towns to bigger provincial centers and the capitals, and even left Russia altogether. “The origin of the mass migration which started in 1880s and lasted until 1914,” economic historian Arcadius Kahan tells us, “has to be sought in the demographic, economic, and political conditions of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Within the framework of early industrialization, a growing population was pressing against the existing economic resources.” Migration was accompanied by the shift in occupation, caused by the combination of economic development and political discrimination. Kahan continues: The essence of the shift was the movement away from trade and personal services, towards crafts and industrial factory employment. One of the most visible features of this process of shifting employment was the accompanying intensification of spatial mobility. This mobility was characterized by a rapidly growing urbanization and by three migration streams: one, intraregional, flowed from the rural to the urban areas; another was interregional, from the relatively depressed areas to industrializing areas; a third involved migration abroad, of which the most important component became the move to the United States.

The Crisis of Immigration According to Kahan’s estimate, about one-half of the six to seven million East European Jews was involved in the process of migration.1 Analyzing the phenomenon of Jewish migration inside and from Russia, the historian Shaul Stampfer comes to the following conclusions: “The proportion of migrants among Jews was far greater than that of migrants among non-Jews of the Russian empire,” and “Jewish migration was distinctive not only quantitatively but qualitatively as well.” The distinctiveness of the Jewish situation was especially evident in the case of international migration: “International Jewish migration was characterized by the larger proportion of women, children and older dependents among the migrants than was the case among most other migrant groups.”2 Stampfer discovers the interesting phenomenon of “double” motivation for emigration: A disproportionately large number of Jewish migrants to the United States came from the areas that were typified by economic depression along with a low level of anti-Semitic violence. This indicates that economic hardship constituted the main impetus for East European Jews to migrate abroad. In this respect Jewish immigrants to America were similar to immigrants of other nationalities. However, having made the decision to emigrate, Jews tended, as noted above, to bring over families more than other groups did. The reason for this seems to lie in their concern about possible anti-Semitism, which convinced them to make the decision to leave permanently, with their families, rather than to go on a temporary basis for the purposes of “making good.” (p. 37)

As we shall see, this double motivation for emigration formed the background for a variety of fictional representations of the experience of leaving one country and settling in another. The economic side of the story was usually shown through the artistic means of mimetic realism, whereas its political aspect evoked the symbolism associated with Jewish mythology, such as the motif of the Exodus. In this respect the representation of immigration in Yiddish fiction did not differ from the two themes discussed above, economy and revolution. Stampfer believes that the shock of emigration was in some respects less severe for Jews than it was for non-Jews, because for Jews “migration involved a change in setting and not in occupation.”3 Even though it could have been true only for a minority of immigrants, this feature of the Jewish migration helped to form a conceptual link between the Old and the New Worlds, which in turn forged a common, transcontinental Yiddish literary discourse. Despite the great political, cultural, and economic differences between America and Eastern Europe, Yiddish fiction about the immigration was relevant and accessible to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The situation of the mass immigration caused a profound crisis in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who were not able to retain their traditional way of life and social

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The Crisis of Immigration status. In his study of the Jewish immigrant life Irving Howe singles out three main components of this crisis: “first, a physical uprooting from the long-familiar setting of small-town life in eastern Europe to the wastes and possibilities of urban America; second, a severe rupture from and sometimes grave dispossession of the moral values and cultural supports of the Jewish tradition; and third, a radical shift in class composition, mostly as a sudden enforced proletarianization.”4 The last aspect may require some clarification because it seems to contradict Stampfer’s assertion about the continuity in the occupational pattern of Jewish immigrants. In fact, the shift from trade and personal services, traditional Jewish occupations, toward crafts and industrial factory employment was already under way in Eastern Europe. According to Kahan’s data, 64 percent of Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1899 and 1914 had been previously employed in manufacturing, and about 21 percent belonged to the group of laborers and servants. The percentage of those who participated in manufacturing prior to their immigration was higher among the Jewish immigrants than all other ethnic groups.5 This was the main reason for the relative success of the Jewish immigration in America. Nevertheless, the process of proletarianization was painful for those who had previously participated in commerce or belonged to the small group of professionals (5.5 and 1.3 percent, respectively). This conflict between expectations and reality, which might have been atypical for the majority of immigrants, played, as we shall see, an important role in the formation of the new realist style in AmericanYiddish literature. The Yiddish authors who wrote about immigration differed in their age, life experience, and ideological orientation. Naturally, the theme was more relevant for those Yiddish writers who underwent this process themselves, rather than for the ones who stayed behind in Eastern Europe and only considered it as a possibility. There was also a third group of writers, such as Sholem Asch and Sholem Aleichem, who could spend considerable periods of time in both Eastern Europe and America taking advantage of the freedom of movement before 1914. The presence and importance of the latter cosmopolitan group of writers who wrote for East European and American audiences was another indication of the essential unity of Yiddish literature at that time. This chapter will outline three different paradigms of representing the Jewish experience of immigration in the Yiddish fiction of the period. As with the other thematic clusters, such as those of economics and revolution, these representational paradigms reflected the variety of real experience and can be supported by substantial documental evidence. They can be related to the three aspects of the change formulated by Irving Howe, although it would be misleading to consider them mere illustrations

The Crisis of Immigration of those aspects. It is important to differentiate between fiction and historical sources that can provide factual information about the history of immigration. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, it was the aesthetic and ideological paradigms, and not the matter of fact reality, that determined the way in which the immigrant experience was portrayed in Yiddish fiction. The first paradigm can be called romantic-sentimentalist or past-oriented. Here the immigration is represented as a catastrophe both for the literary character and the entire traditional community. The sentimentalist approach puts the emphasis on the tragic aspects of the “grave dispossession of the moral values and cultural supports of the Jewish tradition” (Howe) and plays down the positive effects of immigration. Since the old shtetl-oriented organization of life as it had existed for centuries in Eastern Europe could not be transferred onto the American soil, the emigration inevitably destroys the “best” among the Jews, that is, those who personified the old system of values and the old social organization. Some writers, attentive to social reality, try to demonstrate how the emigration factor objectively works in cooperation with other destructive agents of change to obliterate the traditional shtetl as a way of life. More often, however, the sentimentalist writers tend to ignore the social transformations within the Jewish community and remain faithful to the idealized image of the shtetl, as it had taken shape in Yiddish literature by the end of the nineteenth century. This stereotype, which determines the personality of immigrant characters in fiction, is challenged by the harsh reality of America. This conflict leaves no room for compromise and can only be resolved through death or surrender. The sentimentalist paradigm allows the author to incorporate the new phenomenon of immigration into the endless chain of catastrophes that befell the Jewish people in the course of their history. Taken to the extreme, this paradigm represents the immigration as a new form of the old kiddush hashem motif in the same way it represents the revolution. The second mode of representation has its roots in the aesthetics and ideologies of mid- to late-nineteenth-century European social realism, and can be characterized as realist or present-oriented. Less sympathetic to the specifically Jewish aspects of the immigration, it treats this experience as part of the universal objective process of social change. From this point of view, the immigration is just one aspect of the social reality in which East European Jews find themselves at that particular moment in history. The writers’ attention is focused on the individual Jew’s struggle for survival and success, and his or her human transformations in the new conditions. From the optimistic perspective of the realist mode, the outcome of this struggle is more likely to be marriage than death. This closure implies the approval of the new order, regardless of its shortcomings and problems.

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The Crisis of Immigration The traditional Jewish lifestyle and value system is usually represented as merely a point of departure for the hero. In this paradigm, Yiddishkayt does not signify the supreme value, and its loss normally leads not to death or surrender, but to the radical transformation of personality, which is the main theme of the tale. The ups and downs of the immigrant experience provide ample material for the suspense, a necessary condition for a serialized newspaper publication. The focus shifts here from the static collective to the dynamic individual. The American-Yiddish critic Borukh Rivkin sees in this shift the main characteristic of American-Yiddish literature: “The first basic fact about Yiddish literature in America is the absence of the Community of Israel. A motley group of individuals, who had to run for their lives, but had yet to organize itself into a new Jewish community.”6 The third pattern, which can be defined as modernist or future-oriented, treats the immigration as the main force working toward the physical and spiritual regeneration of Jewish people in the new land. This pattern focuses on the new in the Jewish experience, but it does not always call for radical rejection of the past in a communist or anarchist fashion. Although there is no room in the new country for the shtetl as a way of life and system of values, the suggestion is often made that some of its elements—in the first place, of course, the Yiddish language itself—could and, indeed, should be incorporated into the future structure of Jewish life in order to retain its national character. Yiddish modernists are, more than other writers, sensitive to the physical aspects of the new environment and seek to endow them with spiritual significance. They draw their inspiration from many sources, including the aesthetics of European modernism, the metaphysics of Jewish messianism, and the imagination of Hasidism, as well as the ideology and ethics of Russian Populism, all of which are amalgamated and adapted to the Jewish situation. The future is associated with a spiritual renewal, which would harmonize productive work, preferably on the land, with a utopian communal organization of life in a new land. This vision of the future implies a radical break with the sentimental idealization of the shtetl past, as well as the rejection of the capitalist urbanization and industrialization of the present. Correspondingly, the modernist fiction of that period usually avoids closed endings such as death or marriage, offering a vague but open uncertainty instead. This pattern is by its nature more cosmopolitan; although its main proponents were young AmericanYiddish writers, its traces can be discerned in the Palestinian Yiddish novellas of Aharon Reuveyni and in some Soviet Yiddish fiction of the 1920s.

The Crisis of Immigration

Emigration as the End of Tradition: A Sentimentalist Vision It was almost a consensus among Jewish writers that the traditional Yiddishkayt in its Old World form of a comprehensive system of beliefs, customs, and sensitivities, which claimed for itself all aspects of life, was incompatible with the new reality. To quote the protagonist of Abraham Cahan’s English novel The Rise of David Levinsky, The Orthodox Jewish faith, as it is followed in the old Ghetto towns of Russia or Austria, has still to learn the art of trimming its sails to suit new winds. . . . It is absolutely inflexible. If you are a Jew of the type to which I belonged when I came to New York and you attempt to bend your religion to the spirit of your new surroundings, it breaks. It falls to pieces. The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate had a fatal effect on my religious habits.7

Therefore, those Yiddish writers who believed that Yiddish literature could draw its inspiration only from the shtetl and wanted to remain true to the East European tradition of Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Y. L. Peretz had little choice but to regard immigration as a curse. Yankev Dinezon’s popular style of writing, with its appeal to the sentiments of an unsophisticated audience with deep roots in the shtetl culture, can serve as a good example of the traditionalist approach, although one should be careful not to equate the intelligence of the author with that of his readers. Similar imagery, references, and plot constructions are widely used by those authors who want, seriously or mockingly, to represent the immigration as the collapse of the Old World. Recourse to the sentimentalist tradition does not so much betray an author’s personal attitude toward the immigration as a fact of life, but rather indicates his aesthetic and ideological position within the framework of the Yiddish literary system. Dinezonean references, easily accessible to an average reader, highlight the dramatic contrast between the Old and New Worlds. They attract the reader’s sympathy to the sentimental Old World characters who turn out to be powerless in the new life and are doomed to oblivion, giving way to the harsh and aggressive representatives of the New World. Dinezon himself remains too firmly rooted in Eastern Europe to write about America; he merely touches upon the problem of emigration in his novella Falik and His House (Falik un zayn hoyz, 1905), which depicts the decline of the traditional shtetl life under the impact of the new forces.8 The old house of a simple tailor, Falik, serves as the straightforward metaphor of the old order. Both the house and its owner are threatened by the changes that occur around them. The pressure comes from the inside as well as from outside the crumbling shtetl. The inside threat is personified by a rich new neighbor who wants to buy Falik’s house and then demolish

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The Crisis of Immigration it in order to get more space for his own new house. External reality is represented by Falik’s children, who left for America a long time ago and now urge him to sell the house and join them in the new country. Their way of life seems totally alien and incomprehensible to Falik, who is incapable of understanding why his children cannot continue the family tradition of working as tailors over there, and what the word fektori means. The most bizarre American image is Falik’s grandson working as a policeman. Besieged from all sides, Falik becomes obsessed with the idea of keeping his house in spite of everything. The house turns out to be the only thing in the world that can save his identity, and to sell it would spell the loss of his personality. But the house is in dire need of renovation. Falik himself has no money for a new roof and his children refuse to help because they want to force him to leave the Old Country. The story is resolved, as so often happens in Dinezon’s works, in a bitterly ironic way. In a dream that Falik has, an angel from heaven appears in the person of a rich merchant and lends him money to fix the house. Falik triumphantly describes the new roof in a letter to America, which he concludes with the final refusal to leave the old house. Dinezon ends the story in his usual ironic manner, stressing the irreconcilable conflict between reality and dream. An important quality of all of Dinezon’s characters is their stubborn will to remain true to themselves in changing circumstances. Their personality is often associated with a material object of high value, such as a house or a store (Abelman in The Crisis). Thus the object acquires a symbolic significance and becomes an inseparable element of the traditional way of life. Unable to cope with changing reality, the characters find refuge in their imagination, which gradually comes to dominate reality through dreams. The characters transfer their struggle into the realm of dreams and come out as winners in their imagination—though not in real life, as a perceptive reader is expected to realize.

A Child’s Sacrifice: To America by Sholem Asch Among the younger generation of writers, Sholem Asch is perhaps the most enthusiastic follower of the sentimentalist tradition. In his first novella about immigration, To America (Keyn Amerike, 1911), he presents the sad life story of a shtetl boy named Yosele, who immigrates to America with his family.9 The hero’s name refers the reader to the familiar hero of Dinezon’s popular novella Yosele (1891), a poor young orphan who falls victim to the brutal conditions of the adult Jewish life. Asch transforms this image of a suffering innocent Jewish child into a symbol of the Old World. Yosele in both novellas embodies a collection of traditional Jewish virtues—a meek, dreamy, passive boy, fully devoted to study. Whereas

The Crisis of Immigration Dinezon’s Yosele suffers from the inhumanity of the adult world that is dominated by male brutality, the hero of Asch’s novella is destroyed by the harsh conditions of life in America. At the end of the story he dies of the mortal combination of psychological depression and the New York summer heat—he stubbornly refuses to part with the traditional Jewish garb. The shtetl atmosphere protects the physically weak Yosele from the harmful effects of the outside world: “Yosele was the first to be infected by every illness which did the rounds in the shtetl. But he would always get over a scarlet fever or a typhus and be again a six-year-old Jewish child with his prepared lesson for heder and a spoon in his hand” (p. 4). There Yosele is in his element: the traditional way of life with the inseparable spiritual (lesson for heder) and material (spoon in hand) spheres keep him intact. Other children may be stronger and healthier, but not as intelligent and subtle as Yosele. Unfortunately, it is the insensible decision of his father to go to America that brings about Yosele’s death. The main reason is economical: the father can no longer support his family through his small shop. He leaves his wife and children behind and goes to New York to become a worker in a sweatshop. A devoted Hasid and respected small businessman in his old shtetl, the father feels degraded and alienated by this unexpected proletarianization. Away from his home, his rebbe, and his family, he endures the hardships of physical labor combined with the loss of social status. His only joy is the reports from home about his son’s progress in his studies and Yiddishkayt. When the family finally comes over to America, Yosele is found medically unfit (he has scabs on his head) and sent back home. He returns to the shtetl, where he again has a happy life with his aunt’s family, goes to heder, and enjoys Yiddishkayt. In the meantime, his disease, which would not respond to the efforts of the best Berlin doctors, is miraculously cured by a local bonesetter, so that he is able to join his family in New York. He finds his family deeply changed during his absence. His father is completely demoralized and no longer has any authority over the children, his brothers have become accomplished Gentiles, have stopped speaking Yiddish, and no longer go to heder. Yosele feels estranged from the New World, cannot study in a public school, and constantly longs for his heder and his shtetl. In his dreams, he continues to study Torah with his old teacher. Finally, he becomes so depressed and worn out that his organism loses its ability to resist illness. In his very last dream Yosele sees the Messiah coming and the dead resurrected. Yosele’s grave becomes the first family possession in America. Paradoxically, it is his death that forges the first unbreakable link between the family and the new country. Now that they have their own grave there, this land has become as much theirs as the Old Country was. The closing of the

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The Crisis of Immigration novella marks the end of the old era and hints at a possibility of reconciliation with the new land: “And it seemed to her [Yosele’s mother] that now she must remain here in this land—she already had a grave here” (p. 118). Through Yosele’s grave, his family, and by extension the entire Jewish people, reaffirms the endangered continuity of their collective existence. The story of Yosele and his death reverses the linear course of events that threatens to destroy the familiar cyclical pattern of Jewish historical mythology. Thanks to his martyrdom, the little Yosele fulfills the symbolic function of a founder of a new Jewish settlement in Exile, and his grave becomes a substitute of keyver-oves (ancestor’s grave) for his parents. Another symbolic meaning of Yosele’s death is the representation of the akedah (sacrifice of Isaac) motif in which the son is actually sacrificed at the altar, apparently to atone for the sins of the older generation. Max Erik interprets To America as an allegory of rejection of the American capitalist order from the idealized precapitalist perspective of the Old World: “America is shown from the point of view of the old manners as a bad dream, an implausible nightmare.”10 According to this interpretation, Yosele’s death signifies the end of life as it has been known for centuries. Erik’s sociological interpretation obviously ignores the mythological aspect of Asch’s novella. Taken as a realistic story, Yosele’s life is obviously a nightmare, but his death evokes powerful positive mythological connotations. The symbolism of his martyrdom projects a message that calls for the restoration of the Jewish continuity between the Old and New Worlds. The motif of suffering and death acquires the meaning of a link that connects the past and the present. The novella is a preliminary sketch that introduces the American theme into Asch’s fictional universe. The mature Asch fully elaborates on this theme in such popular novels as Uncle Moses, The Mother, and East River, in which he treats the new country more positively. Despite its manifestly traditionalist orientation, To America contains some elements of the future unorthodox religious ideas that would later provoke sharp criticism of Asch. It is possible to trace links between this novella and Asch’s major later novels Salvation (Der tilim-yid) and The Nazarene (Der man fun Natseres, 1942). In all these works, the main character eventually dies for other people’s sins. Yosele dies for his family, the righteous “Psalm-Jew” Yechiel dies for the Jewish community of his town, and Jesus, the Man of Nazareth, dies for the whole of mankind. Thus, Yosele becomes the first in Asch’s gallery of tsadikim, the saints who save the people through their death, an idea that comes close to the Christian concept of holiness. From this perspective, To America contains a potentially universalistic connotation, which was perhaps not so obvious to contemporary readers.

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A Happy Orphan: Motl the Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem as a Parody of Sentimentalism Sholem Aleichem’s series of stories Motl the Cantor’s Son (Motl Peyse dem khazns) (the newspaper publication began in 1907; the first part was published in book form in Russian in 1910, and in Yiddish in 1911) deals with a situation similar to that in To America, but represents it in a very different light.11 Sholem Aleichem started to publish the stories soon after his first arrival in America, almost simultaneously with the novel The Flood, and both works reflect his cautious optimism regarding the Jewish future in America. Motl represents a positive model of Jewish vitality that rejects the previous stereotype of a poor victimized Jewish child. And indeed, the cycle of stories about Motl can be read as a point-by-point rebuttal of To America. In the view of Dan Miron, Motl the Cantor’s Son is a negation of the traditionalist stereotypes of popular Yiddish fiction. Motl is a new type of character, unknown before in Yiddish literature, a surprisingly strong child capable of overcoming the problems that ruined so many adults. As Miron points out, the subtitle of the book, Writings of an Orphan Boy (Ksovin fun a yingl a yosem), already serves to “emphasize the parodic relationship between the Motl stories and the genre of sentimental orphan stories and novels in Yiddish literature,” such as Dinezon’s novellas Yosele and Hershele.12 The paradox of Motl is that he is a perfectly happy orphan. Moreover, Miron asserts, “he is happy because he is an orphan—and he gladly gives up not only the authoritative presence of a father, but also the shtetl, traditional Judaism, Europe, and everything that goes with the norms of the old life” (p. 148). The loss of the burden of tradition means freedom for Motl. Although for Yosele America is a death sentence, Motl adapts to the new life with amazing ease. He has left his East European heritage behind and looks into the future with great optimism. Miron concludes: “This happiness of a person, actually of a whole people, disencumbering itself from a culture which has become untenable, is the dominant mood of the work” (ibid.). Sholem Aleichem utilizes the same set of motifs and themes as the traditionalist Yiddish literature, but furnishes them with a radically different interpretation. Miron formulates this contrast in terms of an opposition between nature and culture: “this story about a Jewish boy in an Eastern European shtetl is told in the framework of nature myths. From the very beginning, it is the biological rather than the cultural order which establishes the norm and the law” (p. 154). This conceptual framework determines the cultural and historical meaning of the events in the story: “Motl is not only the symbolic reincarnation of spring, he is also the historical symbol of the final bankruptcy of traditional Jewish culture” (p. 156). The death of the

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The Crisis of Immigration father in combination with the death of a calf in the beginning of the cycle refers to the symbolism of the sacrifice of Isaac, which is interpreted here in a way radically different from the traditional one. This situation liberates Motl from the norms of the traditional culture, instead of facilitating his initiation into it, as would be the case with a traditional boy. This initial setup enables Motl not only to survive but also to succeed in the new conditions. Unlike Yosele, Motl is eager to emigrate as soon as he hears about the idea. He looks forward to success in the new country and is only too happy to get rid of the old baggage. According to Miron, “through him, Sholem Aleykhem could express his radical affirmation of a new and (at least temporarily) materialistic Jewish society” (p. 177). The potential danger looming in the American future is not physical destruction but a moral degradation. As an adult, this lively boy might easily turn into a “coarse and repulsive” (Miron) allrightnik. Even though Sholem Aleichem seems to be aware of this problem, he does not quite know how to tackle it. One possible solution is to make Motl an artist, so that the creative element of his nature would save him from corruption. This would place Motl in the gallery of artistic characters from Sholem Aleichem’s other novels. But this plan remains unrealized and Motl is left an eternal child, a Jewish Peter Pan, for whom time has stopped in the middle of summer. Even though Motl the Cantor’s Son and To America are opposite in almost every respect, they both attempt to represent a new situation with the help of the traditional set of motifs. In both cases the new experience of immigration is associated with the motif of premature death. For Motl, the death of his father severs his tie to the past and opens up the way to the future. Future life in America will go on according to a new system of values based on a new natural order coming to replace the dying traditional one. The same conflict between past and future, which provides energy for Motl, causes the death of Yosele. Here the symbolic function of the death motif is reversed. Yosele’s grave becomes a substitute for an ancestor’s grave, which secures continuity between past and future generations. It reconciles his family with their present situation and incorporates America into the familiar conceptual framework of the Jewish tradition. Yosele overcomes his physical inability to survive in the New World spiritually, establishing through his death the necessary link with the past, which saves the living community. These radically different representations of the same situation in two stories demarcate the boundaries for a variety of other interpretations, which can be found in more complex and ambivalent pieces of immigration fiction.

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Realism: The Novel as Mirror of Immigrant Society Whereas the sentimentalist approach reflects the frustration of immigration, the new realist style expresses the optimism based on the first successful experience of putting down roots in the New World. The time between 1900 and 1914 was one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the Jewish immigration to America. The political and economic upheavals in Russia caused massive new waves of immigration, which arrived in America at a time of economic growth. The most successful among the newcomers managed to achieve the coveted middle-class social status, but the average performance was also impressive: to quote the conclusion of Kahan’s study of the “Pilgrims’ Progress” of Jewish immigrants, “despite their initial disabilities of language and skills, each cohort of Jewish immigrants caught up in earnings with the native American workers of the same age and in similar occupations within 10–15 years.”13 The gradual adaptation of a large group of immigrants to American conditions supplied rich material for various forms of artistic creativity in Yiddish. Prior to the early 1900s, the life of Jewish immigrants in America was portrayed predominantly in short stories and sketches by the popular newspaper writers B. Gorin, Z. Libin, Tashrak, L. Kobrin, and others who drew their living from the daily Yiddish press, as well as in plays by Jacob Gordin, David Pinski, and Leon Kobrin. Both these artistic forms and their media—newspapers and theater—aimed to achieve an immediate audience response, and therefore eschewed the large synthetic portrait of the immigrant society. The genre of the novel was dominated by the works of shund. Such sensational titles as Tsvishn mentshnfresers (Among cannibals) or Der vampir (The vampire) obviously did not fit the criteria of literary realism.14 The relationship between the American and East European branches of Yiddish literature at that time was not an easy one. The American group, consisting mainly of Russian-Jewish intellectuals who immigrated to America in their teens or twenties and started their literary career in Yiddish in the new country, argued that their literature was an original product of American life and owed nothing to the culture of East European Jewry. They felt that American reality presented better and richer opportunities for creative writing. B. Gorin (Isaac Goydo, 1868–1925) wrote in 1902, comparing the situation of a Yiddish writer “there” (in Russia) and “here” (in America): “There a beginning author must be on the lookout for a fire in a bathhouse, an accident in the mikve [ritual bath], an argument in a synagogue—these were the usual themes of beginners there; but here a writer finds himself in a whirlpool of burning problems, important interests, comical scenes, and sad tragedies.”15

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The Crisis of Immigration One of the early champions of the concept of an independent AmericanYiddish literature was Leon Kobrin (1872–1946). He formulated his position in the preface to the monumental volume of his Collected Works (1910), which includes more than seventy short stories and novellas about Yiddish life in America: “Yiddish literature in America has its own history, its own genesis; it is neither a continuation of the old Yiddish literature in Russia nor has its development been affected by the newest Russian Yiddish literature.” Moreover, continues Kobrin, “It has been developing without a direct influence of any other literature.”16 Kobrin is quite categorical in his assessment of American literature in general: American-Yiddish writers could not possibly be influenced by the American literature in English, “because in their opinion, no genuine American literature yet exists in America” (p. ii). One of the factors that has affected American-Yiddish literature, according to Kobrin, is the translation of serious Russian and French writers published in Yiddish newspapers. Further on, Kobrin explains the difference in character between Jewish life in the Old Country and in America: “Writing about Jewish life in Russia, I always saw before myself a distinct and complete type with a definite worldview, a heritage of many generations. Whereas when I wrote about Jewish life here, I always had in my mind lost souls, unstable characters, a chaotic life” (p. vi). Despite the surrounding chaos, American-Yiddish literature has already surpassed its European sister, according to Kobrin: it was the first to present objective images of the Jewish worker, the Jewish revolutionary, and the modern Jewish woman. It has also formed its own canon, in which the honorary position of the zeyde, founding father, is occupied not by Mendele, but by Morris Winchevsky (p. iv). In the view of the young American journalist Hutchins Hapgood, one of the rare sympathetic outside observers of the Jewish Lower East Side scene, the Russian realist style dominated turn-of-the-century American Yiddish literature: The Russian Jews of the east side of New York are, in proportion as they are educated, as I have said, realists in literary faith. Is it natural? Is it true to life? They are inclined to ask of every piece of writing that comes under their eyes. . . . Their criteria of art are formed on the basis of the narrow but intense work of modern Russian fiction. They look up to Tolstoy and Chekhov, and reject all principles founded upon more romantic and more genial models. . . . The Russian Jew of culture when he comes to New York carries with him Russian ideals of literature. The best Yiddish work produced in America is Russian in principle.17

Hapgood singled out one Yiddish writer who was responsive to contemporary American literature: Abraham Cahan. From his first years in New York, Cahan was keen on mastering the Anglo-American idiom and com-

The Crisis of Immigration bining it with the Russian concept of critical realism. He was welcomed as “a new star of realism” by William Dean Howells, the main exponent of the Russian-style realism in American literature.18 Cahan’s indebtedness to the American realist tradition is evident from the title of his most famous novel, The Rise of David Levinsky (1913), which directly refers to Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). In this novel Cahan created a type of allrightnik, a successful immigrant who fulfilled his American dream at the price of Jewish ethical values. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, this character became popular with American Jewish writers.19 For their part, the East European Yiddish writers and critics were skeptical about the artistic achievements of American-Yiddish literature. Answering the questions sent to him by a journalist from the New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts in 1903, Y. L. Peretz expresses his opinion of Jacob Gordin’s plays: “not a single original Jewish moment”; Gordin’s characters are “foreign types in Jewish dress,” and his language is “The Yiddish of a [soldier] in Nicholas I’s army, someone who returned to Judaism in his old age.” Peretz also denies that Gordin’s characters represent the new Jewish youth: “No young Jewish man has ever passed by his mirror, neither has a young Jewish woman been reflected in it.”20 In a review of Kobrin’s retrospective volume, the prominent Russian Yiddish critic BalMakhshoves challenges the writer’s claim that American-Yiddish writers are ahead of their European colleagues in representing the new revolutionary, worker, and woman types: “I think this is an exaggeration. To begin with, Peretz was the first to enrich Yiddish literature with the problem of love. D. Pinski in Russia was the first to discover the worker for the Yiddish novella. And as far as the revolutionary and the modern woman—I have to admit, that I still have not found them, either in our or in American writings.”21 Despite their differences of opinion, both parties shared the assumption that American-Yiddish literature was not a natural continuation of the East European Yiddish cultural tradition. The non-Jewish literary traditions of European and Russian social realism, and later of modernism, played more prominent roles in its formation and development than the classical Yiddish literature of Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz. The cultural orientation of American-Yiddish writers toward Russia and Europe led to the acceptance of values that were different from those of traditional Jewish culture. One of the important effects was the reevaluation of the traditional system of relationships between the collective and the individual. It resulted in the formation of a new system of narrative structures and cultural codes, most of which were borrowed from the literary system of European realism and had no roots in the Jewish tradition. Thus, the spatial structure in the works of the American-Yiddish realists is determined by the domination of the city and not of the shtetl. The role

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The Crisis of Immigration of New York can be compared to that of Paris in the novels of Balzac and Zola or of St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky’s novels: it is a magnet that attracts people from the provinces, in our case from Eastern Europe, who stream into the New World metropolis in search of security and opportunity. The powerful city crushes the old-fashioned provincial system of values and imposes the new urban code of moral and cultural norms. In the new fictional universe the impersonal city takes control of the individual fate—the shift from the notion of stability to that of change as the dominant factor in life is characteristic for realist fiction in general. From celebration of stable order and lamentation over its breaks in tradition-oriented modes of writing, the focus moves to the representation of transformations of characters and environment. As Fredric Jameson formulates it, echoing the ideas of Lukács, “realism is par excellence the moment of the discovery of changing time, of the generation-by-generation and year-by-year dynamics of a new kind of social history.”22 Leon Kobrin was not only a champion of the new American-Yiddish realism, but also one of its most prolific representatives. He arrived in the United States in 1892 as a young radical idealist, well versed in Russian literature but without any practical skills. Like many other young immigrant Russian Jews who were intellectually oriented, he realized very soon that he was unfit for manual labor in the sweatshop industry. The only other possibility open to him was a career as a professional Yiddish writer. This track also presented him with a problem, for at the time of his arrival he barely knew how to write Yiddish and was completely unaware of the existence of a literature in that language. Kobrin’s literary taste was formed by the great Russian and French realists: Turgenev, Chekhov, Kuprin, Zola, Maupassant, and Flaubert. It was the high quality of the Yiddish translations of Russian and French novels, which Kobrin discovered, to his great surprise, in the Yiddish newspapers, that convinced him of the possibility of writing in Yiddish. In the 1890s and 1900s he produced a large number of short stories, feuilletons, and reports for the American-Yiddish press, as well as many translations from French and Russian, which were published in book form. He built up his reputation as a popular Yiddish playwright by writing numerous melodramas, which were successfully performed on the Yiddish stage.23 According to Shmuel Niger, it was Kobrin who undertook “the first attempt in Yiddish literature to present a broad picture of American Jewish life in novel form.”24 The full title of this first novel is The Immigrants: A Novel From the Life of Russian Jews in America (Di imigrantn, a roman oys dem lebn fun rusishe yidn in Amerika). Originally published in installments in the New York daily Di varhayt in 1909, it appeared in book form in 1912. Niger’s opinion regarding the quality of this first American Yiddish novel,

The Crisis of Immigration however, was unequivocally negative: “the attempt was not successful.” And yet, despite the many flaws of this particular novel and general limitations of Kobrin’s literary talent, The Immigrants represents a breakthrough in the development of the American Yiddish novel. Its very weaknesses reveal the difficulties that the new American-Yiddish literature faced when it tried to represent reality on a large scale. Being a product of almost three decades of Yiddish literary activity in America, the novel also bears the stamp of Kobrin’s vision of American-Yiddish culture. Like Sholem Aleichem’s The Flood (published in the same newspaper two years earlier), The Immigrants is constructed according to the rules of serialized newspaper novels as a series of open-ended episodes with elements of suspense at the end of each in order to pique the audience’s interest until the next installment. Each scene is presented in a clear and detailed manner, so that even an uncultivated and inexperienced reader can easily visualize the action as if it were unfolding on stage, in a manner somewhat similar to today’s soap opera. With publication of The Immigrants, Kobrin aspires to open a new stage in Yiddish literature and to bring it closer to the great tradition of European realism. Like Paris in the novels of Balzac or Zola, Kobrin’s New York is a new, rapidly growing metropolis that offers Jewish immigrants enormous opportunities and exerts on them enormous pressures. New York City is not only the space of the novel but also, using Franco Moretti’s expression, a generator of the story. Our analysis of this novel will focus on the innovative portrayal of the situation of immigration, which, for the first time in Yiddish literature, is shown here not as the episode of an individual life, but within the broad sociohistorical context. The novel tells the story of the Etinberg family, which had immigrated to America from Kiev sixteen months earlier. Boris Etinberg, age forty-five, formerly a wealthy grain dealer, lost all his fortune as a result of the revolution and pogroms of 1905. Now he, his wife Anyuta, and their daughter Lyuba must eke out a living in a tiny tenement on the Lower East Side, supporting themselves by hard manual labor. However, even more painful for Boris is the change in his social status: his former employees, who had come to America ten years earlier, have by now established themselves as successful businessmen. Boris dreams about opening his own business and regaining his middle-class status, but in reality he is no longer capable of any achievement. The female members of the family are less ambitious and can, therefore, adjust better to the new reality. They try to do what they can in order to find their place in the new life. Lyuba gets a job in a sweatshop that belongs to Abe Meknek, formerly the young assistant salesman Abrasha in Etinberg’s store in Kiev. Abe falls in love with the daughter of his former employer and wants to marry her, apparently in order to boost his prestige

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The Crisis of Immigration and secure his newly achieved social status—a situation that seems to be borrowed from a nineteenth-century French realist novel about a rising ambitious bourgeois who wants to buy his way into society by marrying a daughter of an impoverished aristocrat. Lyuba does not like Abe at first, and is attracted to another former clerk of her father, Volodya, now Dr. Epstein, who better suits her idea of a member of the Russian intelligentsia. He introduces Lyuba to the literary and artistic society of the Lower East Side, which congregates around the literary café Kibitsarnye. Although the established professional Dr. Epstein despises these people as losers, he enjoys their company and occasionally plays the benefactor of Yiddish culture, a role that bolsters his self-esteem. In his heart, however, as the reader quickly learns, he is a cynical egoist, interested only in his own pleasure and well-being. The novel depicts New York Jewish immigrant society on the rise. There are many visible signs of success, in both the business and professional spheres. The earlier immigrants move up, using the opportunities that the relatively open American society offers them, while the steady influx of newcomers supplies them with cheap labor. Prosperity, however, comes at the price of moral degradation. The allrightniks, Abe Meknek and Dr. Epstein, are no longer bound by the moral and social norms of the Old Country, and exist in a moral vacuum of capitalist laissez-faire. The losers in the novel are those who try to stick to an old system of values. In the Old Country, they may have belonged to different social and cultural groups, but now they are united by their inability and unwillingness to accept the new American reality. This group includes traditionalist shtetl Jews, whose attitude is best formulated by Dr. Epstein’s father-in-law: “Everything is dead, everything: God, Yiddishkayt, parents, decency, justice, everything!” (p. 227). These characters reflect the severed ideology of the generation of the fathers. Their entire life is left behind, and now they are dependent on their children, with whom they have little in common. The former Russian radicals and revolutionaries belong to another cohort of losers. They reject the American spirit of pragmatism and individualism on the spot, as they rejected the unjust social order in the Old Country. “It seems to me that the whole of America is one big stomach, a stomach and a pair of big hands” (p. 211), says an old Bundist who has been in America for only a few weeks. These Old World dreamers socialize in Yiddish cafés where they discuss endless fantastic projects for the Jewish future in Russia and share complaints about their practical-minded children and the materialism of American life. Others, like Epstein’s intelligent and urbane wife Masha and her anarchist friend Lisa, are not old and backward, but are as detached from the American reality as the old shtetl Jews. Boris Etinberg is a product of Russia’s economic progress prior to the

The Crisis of Immigration Russo-Japanese War. In Kiev he belonged to the rising Jewish urban bourgeoisie, the milieu we encounter in the early works of David Bergelson. Etinberg enjoyed the pleasant and carefree life of a prosperous Jewish merchant and had an optimistic view of his future. This happiness was suddenly destroyed by the 1905 revolution and the ensuing pogroms. Boris lost everything and emigrated out of despair, but he has remained loyal to Russia, its language, and its culture, which in his eyes is still infinitely superior to America’s. He looks forward to the time when the new Duma will be “good to the Jews” so that he can return home. These dreams prevent him from understanding his present condition and seeking a way to improve it. By the end of the novel Boris is completely ruined. He has given up hope of establishing his own business in America, has lost his job at a cigar factory, and is unable to remain at any other job for more than a few weeks. His only prospect remains to save up enough money to go back to Russia, regardless of the difficulties that may await him there. In contrast to her father, Lyuba personifies a cautiously optimistic view. This intelligent and sensible young woman quickly realizes that her future is in America and tries to find her place in the new country. At first, following an Old Country stereotype, she prefers the intelligent and Russianeducated Dr. Epstein to the rough, self-made American Abe Meknek because the former reminds her of those intelligenty who formed her circle in Russia, whereas the latter, as a new type, is rather appalling because of his rough manners and appearance. As the plot thickens, the reader, who, thanks to the narrator, is always better informed than the naive heroine, begins to realize that Dr. Epstein is nothing but a petty egoist in pursuit of his own pleasure, whereas the primitive but robust Abe is sincere and honest in his feelings for Lyuba. Dr. Epstein’s attempt to pursue his relationship with Lyuba precipitates a severe crisis in his own family life, and he is forced to give up. Abe, on the contrary, proposes marriage to Lyuba, something she is at first too proud to accept. In despair, she decides to leave the privileged position she held in his factory and tries to find another job. With her and her father unemployed, the situation of the family becomes critical. Now Lyuba is left with little choice but to accept Abe’s proposal with a reservation: “I must be open with you. I do not love you now, but if you’ll be good to my dad, maybe I’ll get to love you later” (p. 256). At this dramatic moment Kobrin leaves his heroes, with a vague promise to the reader: “Have their sufferings ended with that? Have their wounds, that merciless life inflicted upon their proud hearts, healed? This will be seen in their future life, to which I may return one day” (p. 256). An indication of Lyuba’s vitality and attentiveness to the new life is her interest in Yiddish literature and its creators, which she develops as she becomes more integrated into New York Jewish life. This change of cultural

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The Crisis of Immigration orientation greatly surprises and disappoints her father, for whom culture can be only Russian. A spokesman for Yiddish literature in the novel is the writer Alex Hudkin (whose name, with the characteristic Russian-Jewish ending -in, is apparently an allusion to the names of popular New York Yiddish authors of that time: Zevin, Kobrin, Gordin, Gorin, and Libin). Hudkin complains about the low status of Yiddish literature in the immigrant society, and dreams about worldwide fame. His fiancée adds a grain of salt to his dreams: “you will become famous, you will be translated into all languages, and maybe . . . maybe one day even you yourself will start to write in a living language” (p. 131). As a Yiddishist, Hudkin cannot agree with her: “The Yiddish language is as beautiful, as alive, as all other languages” (ibid.). Hudkin’s optimism notwithstanding, the overall picture of the Yiddish literary scene in the novel is not too bright. Most of the members of the Yiddish literary café society of the Lower East Side look like caricatures. They are presented as opportunists and cynics who try to squeeze as much as they can out of the limited resources that the Yiddish-speaking audience has to offer. A former anarchist decides to switch to opera criticism after he starts to feel that in the postrevolutionary situation his radical political writings are no longer profitable. Other litterateurs just want to kibbitz, no matter what the subject. The episodes in a literary café and in the house of a famous Yiddish actor, a vain egoist, reflect Kobrin’s bitterness regarding the contemporary state of Yiddish culture in America. The future in the novel belongs to the new types of Jewish entrepreneurs and professionals. Influenced by Zola’s social Darwinism, Kobrin stresses the elemental and animal aspects of these characters. In their behavior and instincts, they are different from the old-timers. Social and economic survival and success require physical energy and self-confidence and come at the price of a certain degree of dehumanization. With all their acquired manners and high standing in the new society, both Abe Meknek and Dr. Epstein are slaves to their acquisitive instincts. Their upward mobility is inseparable from their sexual drive, which determines their aggressive attitude toward women. This kind of behavior stands in obvious conflict with the system of values of the past. Accepting the conventions of European realism, Kobrin represents the conflict between different systems of values and cultural norms through the situation of a love triangle formed by Lyuba, Abe, and Dr. Epstein. Thus, the Jewish crisis of immigration is translated into a romantic code more common in European than in Jewish culture. The bittersweet melodramatic solution suggested by Kobrin in his novel later became popular with other authors as well. The marriage between a successful new American entrepreneur or professional and a pure Jewish girl from the Old Country can be interpreted as a symbolic reconciliation

The Crisis of Immigration between the old and the new, a new paradigm of representing the immigration. This paradigm will be used by Sholem Asch in his novel Uncle Moses, where a successful Jewish entrepreneur marries a girl who came from his old shtetl and works in his factory. This literary matchmaking has two symbolic aspects. On the one hand, it signifies the loss of Old World innocence, a compromise with reality, the acceptance of America as it is, which is the sole route to survival in the new reality. On the other hand, the union signifies the reestablishment of the continuity of American Jewry with its East European past, the moral rehabilitation of success and stabilization of the present condition. The idea of compromise belongs to the basic assumptions of American-Yiddish literature and forms the necessary connection between the past and the future, which also justifies the use of Yiddish as a language of literature in America. Without the symbolic marriage between the new and the old, the past and the future would fall apart forever, and Yiddish would remain limited to its Old World functions. The works of American-Jewish novelists writing in English, beginning with Abraham Cahan, show an interesting contrast to Yiddish novels. According to Sylvia Huberman Schkolnik, the American Jewish novelists of the 1920s and 1930s “dramatize the discontinuity between the traditional Jewish values and American business ethics in the life of the rising young businessman.”25 As a result, a happy marriage for these characters seems impossible, and the East European past appears already in a highly idealized form of the “Jewish ethic of love”: “It is no coincidence that these characters, who have abandoned the Jewish ethic of love for other people and have replaced it with a self-centered business ethic, fail to achieve the most significant and deepest of human relationships, the love between a man and a woman.”26 The paradigm of reconciliation with the old home through a negotiated marriage has its parallel in the marriage pattern in the Yiddish literature of the Haskalah. Such early modern Yiddish works as the plays by Wolfssohn and Etinger, and the novel The Headband by Aksenfeld, end with a marriage between a successful Jewish businessman of the new type, who comes back to his native town after a journey through the world of civilization, and a pure and naive daughter of a traditional family. This marriage signifies the union between the old and the new. Dan Miron interprets the symbolism of the marriage in The Headband in the following terms: “Two historical epochs, two economic systems meet in this strange and not fascinating love story. Sheyntse is a child of the past, while Mikhl is completely absorbed by the dream of the future.”27 In the American-Yiddish novel the situation is similar, but the gender roles are reversed. It is not the man who comes back, but the woman who goes to the new country. The marriage between Abe and Lyuba, as that between Mikhl and Sheyntse, signifies the reconciliation between the new and the old. In the American case, however, unlike in the Haskalah scheme,

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The Crisis of Immigration the new is not morally superior to the old. It is the new American system of values that needs to be legitimized by the authority of the old home, and this is what Lyuba contributes to the union. In the American situation it is the woman who is closer to the value system shared by the author and his audience, and not the man, as was the case in the novel of the Haskalah. However, in both cases the Yiddish novel seeks to restore the lost unity, which can be interpreted as an argument in favor of the continuity of Yiddish literary tradition. The next novel of Kobrin, Ore the Beard: A Novel from the Life of Jewish Immigrants Who Have Built a New Town in America, published in book form by the Forverts in 1918, bears the place and the date of conclusion: “Brooklyn, N.Y. 1913.”28 The novel continues the theme of the social success of Russian-Jewish immigrants in America on a larger scale. Ore the Beard was preceded by a play based on the same plot titled The Golden Stream (Der goldener shtrom), which was produced in 1910. In 1934, the novel was republished in Warsaw under the title In the Golden Stream (In goldenem shtrom). Ore the Beard presents a new stage in the settlement of East European Jewish immigrants in America. After making their first stop on the Lower East Side, they moved on to the suburbs, Brownsville in Brooklyn being one of them. At first this was a place where, according to a contemporaneous account of a certain Dr. M. Raisen, “Jews could live as in the old country, without any rush or excessive worries. Jews there didn’t work on the Sabbath, and they went to shul there three times a day.”29 This situation began to change rapidly around 1903, so that by 1905 there were already about fifty thousand Jews living in the Brownsville area. The reason was a real estate boom, caused by the building of a new railroad connecting Brownsville with New York City. For most of the immigrants this boom presented their first opportunity for success in America. Irving Howe summarizes the effects of the boom for the lucky Jews of Brownsville: “During the first four or five years of the century land values rose spectacularly, and immigrant Jews owning a few lots in Brownsville now became affluent realtors.” Howe quotes a 1903 account of that real estate boom published in the Yiddish Forverts: “Only yesterday everybody laughed when you mentioned Brownsville. But today business is booming. They are buying and selling real estate like mad. Lots are sold by the hundreds; houses are sold and resold every minute. You can buy a house for four thousand dollars with a down payment of eight hundred dollars. A few days later you can sell it and make a profit of a few hundred dollars.”30 Kobrin made the Brownsville boom the factual background of his second novel. The story begins approximately three weeks after Passover 1903, when Ore “the Beard,” a Brownsville Jewish peddler in his early fifties,

The Crisis of Immigration decides after some hesitation to follow the lead of his younger friends and to invest all his life savings, about five hundred dollars, in a land parcel. He takes into consideration two factors that forecast the good prospects for the investment in the real estate in Brownsville: the new railroad to New York City, and the expectation of a new wave of immigration from Russia caused by the anticipated war with Japan. The Kishinev pogrom, which took place on Easter 1903, is not mentioned directly, but the characters, the narrator, and the implied reader are aware of the possibility of anti-Semitic outbreaks in Russia. Kobrin’s exact choice of moment for the beginning of his novel coordinated in time with an economic boom in America, and with the rise of anti-Semitism and the beginning of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Ore takes the gamble and substantially increases his capital after the first few successful operations. The first money creates the appetite for other pleasures; now Ore wants to marry the young sweatshop worker Rachel, who rents a room in his house. Rachel, a recent immigrant from Vitebsk, is a typical working-class Jewish girl who spends her free time reading popular novels in the Yiddish newspapers and daydreaming about a beautiful prince whom she will meet one day. Her romantic dream becomes materialized in the person of Ore’s younger friend and senior partner in the real estate speculations, Samke, who works as a distributor of Singer sewing machines. One night Samke seduces Rachel. Now hate and love are mixed in her attitude toward him, for she realizes that he will never divorce his wife and marry her. In the meantime, Ore successfully continues his speculations in the company of Samke and another friend, and gradually amasses substantial capital to buy a new house. From now on his main concern is to marry off his younger daughter, so that he himself can marry Rachel without violating the Old World sensitivities. Once more, Samke helps Ore and arranges a marriage between the daughter in question and his friend from Odessa, a certain Dr. Hudkin (not to be confused with the writer Hudkin from The Immigrants) of Coney Island, who, in addition to Ore’s daughter, receives a ten-thousand-dollar dowry. Rachel gives up her dream of marrying Samke, and finally accepts Ore’s proposal. The novel ends with their wedding; Ore has satisfied all his desires and Samke has been able to use Ore’s naïveté to his own interest. The intrigue and theatrical effects in Ore the Beard are similar to those of The Immigrants. There are two men and one woman; one man is attractive but shallow, the other one primitive but solid. At first, the heroine is enchanted by the more attractive man, but then the circumstances, and to some extent her healthy instinct, move her to the safe marriage with the other one. This outcome secures a happy end and produces the melodramatic effect: the second man sincerely loves the heroine and happens to be a relatively decent person. This essentially the-

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The Crisis of Immigration atrical scheme became quite popular in the American-Yiddish novel; Asch’s Uncle Moses is perhaps the best-known example. Kobrin skillfully renders the unfolding of the conflict between the old and the new through the language of the novel. The opening paragraphs describe the old Brownsville before the real estate boom changed its face. The place is depicted as a rural landscape, evoking the familiar images of the East European village: “The wooden houses were small, mostly painted blue; the window frames were white; the streets, most of which were not paved, stretched a short distance until they hit, on the one side of Pitkin Avenue, large stretches of land, fields, marshes, and hills, which extended far away, until the forest blocked their way with its mighty dark chest” (pp. 5–6). The East European flavor of Brownsville is emphasized by words of Russian origin, such as tsiplyatkelakh (chickens), zhabes (toads), as well as grammatical Russianisms such as “[the lane] hot zikh aroysgekarabkevet (climbed) [on the hill]” (pp. 8–9). English words appear only in the context of the present time of the narration, and refer to the future of the narrated time; therefore, almost all of them are put in quotation marks, which underscores their estrangement from the preboom reality. The lifestyle of the Brownsville Jews before the boom is as old-fashioned as the landscape description. As in the old shtetl, their economic activity revolves around the marketplace, in this case Belmont Avenue. The vendors are waiting for clients all day long, and “when somebody showed up there, all Jewish men and women would immediately start to shout the names of their merchandise, and their voices would wake up the town from its dream” (p. 7). Ore is an organic part of that world. Although he has immigrated more than ten years ago, his life in America does not differ from that in the Old Country. He makes his living as a peddler in the Brownsville area selling a standard variety of goods to local farmers. His psychology, desires, and fears are the same as they were in the Old Country: he wants to find a husband for his younger daughter and is scared of dogs and Gentile teenagers. Ore’s mother reigns supreme in the household in the old style; his older daughter and her shlimazl (ne’er-do-well) husband are also typical shtetl characters. The representatives of the new life are the younger generation: the Odeser zhulik (Odessa crook) Samke and Ore’s boarder, Rachel. Their language is permeated with references to the new reality. Rachel is obsessed with popular newspaper novels and admires their characteristic daytshmerish (full of Germanisms) language. The young and articulate Samke is capable of mastering many linguistic idioms: he speaks fluent English and can also use Yiddishized versions of German and Russian when he wants to impress Rachel. Thanks to his artistic nature, he becomes transformed in her fantasies into a romantic hero from a newspaper novel, a noble baron ready to rescue the beautiful heroine from hands of a devilish marquis.

The Crisis of Immigration Ore the Beard demonstrates the inconsistency of Kobrin’s claim that American-Yiddish literature owes nothing to the East European Yiddish literary tradition. The author’s own ironic attitude to the popular newspaper novel and its language is an echo of Sholem Aleichem’s contempt of shund. Rachel can serve as an example of the harmful influence of that kind of literature on the character of a young Jewish woman. In this respect she is the opposite of Rokhele from Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu, whose main virtue was her unfamiliarity with shund. Rokhele was able to resist Stempenyu’s advances because his romantic language had no appeal for her and because she had seen from the example of her friend how destructive romantic fantasies could be. Rachel is no longer innocent in that sense; her language and her fantasies are no longer pure. Every day she is exposed to the atmosphere of the sweatshop with its lax morality. Her natural Old Country immunity to temptations has been weakened by the novels she reads and the stories she hears. She becomes an easy victim of Samke’s manipulative usage of the shund idiom combined with his American selfconfidence. Samke plays the role of a double tempter: he seduces both Rachel and Ore, the first with the fantasy of love, the latter with the fantasy of money. This type represents the new American character. The opposition between the serious and popular styles emphasizes the didactic nature of his novel in contrast to the purely entertaining newspaper fiction. Ore the Beard is supposed to be serious because its purpose is to present a “real” picture of life instead of creating another “dream.” The tacit assumption that Yiddish realist literature should have an educating mission is another link between Kobrin and the East European tradition rooted in Haskalah. However, Kobrin deliberately incorporates elements of the popular style in order to make his message easier to understand. This mixture creates a literary style that combines the codes and conventions of Yiddish popular fiction with those of European realism. Sex and money, two major powers in popular fiction, are the main driving forces of Kobrin’s novel. At first, Ore must conceal his lust and greed because these feelings are incompatible with the traditional Jewish ethos. Both these desires are satisfied by the end of the novel through the secret manipulation of Samke. Although Ore seems to triumph, the reader senses that the real victor in the novel is Samke. Despite the happy end, the story seems to be unfinished, and it is easy to see how some day in the future Samke will be able to drive Ore into bankruptcy and claim Rachel for himself. This is indeed what happens in the play. The majority of Yiddish critics agreed that Kobrin’s second novel was an achievement of American-Yiddish literature. In his review in the influential Yiddish magazine Di tsukunft the socialist critic Yoel Entin praised Ore the Beard for its “large format, broad scope, free and unimpeded depiction, sweeping aspiration, strong dramatic quality,” but criticized it for lack of

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The Crisis of Immigration sociological analysis.31 Kobrin failed, according to the critic, to show the actual process of “Jews building a new town in America,” as the subtitle of the novel suggested; Kobrin told the story instead of showing it.32 The more conservative Shmuel Niger saw the main virtue of the novel in the realistic psychological portrait of the main character as a folksmentsh. Unlike Entin, Niger thought that Kobrin was right in focusing on the individual characters instead of the social phenomena: “Our interest is awakened not by the social, but rather by the individual psychology of the characters.”33 In his survey of Yiddish literature in America, Borukh Rivkin emphasized the epic quality of the novel, which he believed was “the first Yiddish novel of great scope in America, a Yiddish epic.”34 According to Rivkin, the novel contained, in concentrated form, the entire experience of its author in America. Taken together, these critics appreciated Kobrin’s attempt to create a panoramic picture of Jewish life in America, but at the same time were not united as to what aspects of this life were the most essential, the individual or collective ones. Yet the critics failed to elaborate on the novelty of Kobrin’s treatment of economic and political motifs, which made Ore the Beard an important step forward in the development of American Yiddish fiction. These motifs have to do with the changing role of the notion of land in the collective imagination of American Jews. The panoramic quality of the novel cannot be appreciated without understanding the new attitude to land in America. Read as an epic, the novel presents the foundation myth of American Jewry, a Jewish version of the American theme of conquest of the land and expansion in space, which, as Irving Howe tells us, belongs to the very core of the American imagination: In American literature the urge to break past the limits of the human condition manifests itself through images of space. . . . The urge to transcendence appears as stories of men who move away, past frontiers and borders, into the “territory” . . . in order to preserve their images of possibility. . . . In America this new start is seen not so much in terms of an improvement or reordering of the social structure, but as a leap beyond society.35

Before the real estate boom, Brownsville is a typical frontier town surrounded by the wilderness (swamps, forest, sand) and enemies (dogs, Gentiles). As a result of the boom, it grows into a city with a Jewish population of more than two hundred thousand people. The story of Ore, Samke, and Rachel is a story of pioneers who conquer the new territory and become rich. The conquest motif distinctly links Ore the Beard to the American literary tradition. In the works of American Yiddish writers, the American acquisitive attitude toward land and space interestingly clashes with the principle of the sacredness of land, which belonged to the ideological luggage of some intellectual Russian-Jewish immigrants. This idea was first

The Crisis of Immigration introduced to America by William Frey, a radical political émigré from Russia (non-Jew), who tried to establish religious-communist agricultural colonies in Kansas in the 1870s.36 The organized Jewish movement for agrarian settlement began in the 1880s, when a number of activists of the utopian-socialist Am Olam movement arrived in the United States from Russia. In Russia, some of them had been connected with the radical revolutionary movement and shared the populist belief “that mere colonization was not sufficient and that the root of the evil lay in the system of private property.”37 They planned to establish in America collective agrarian settlements, modeled after the Russian obshchina (rural commune). Although the movement failed as a practical enterprise, it left its mark on the development of the socialist, union, and cultural movements in America, in which several members of Am Olam groups, most notably Abraham Cahan and Jacob Gordin, would later play prominent roles. One secondary character in Ore the Beard was close to Am Olam in the 1880s. Afterwards, he made a successful career as a lawyer, and at the time of the boom he is one of the shrewdest speculators. He pretends to retain his socialist convictions and preaches equality and the abolition of private property in accordance with the Am Olam doctrine. In this figure of an idealist turned businessman, Kobrin shows the collapse of the utopian ideology of the early radical immigrants under the influence of American capitalism. But the novel’s message is not limited to a satire of the radicals who betrayed their principles. The new capitalist attitude to land transforms the foundations of Jewish life. In Russia the law did not allow Jews to possess land, a restriction that was reinforced by the Talmudic prohibition to own land in the countries of exile. This was the deeply rooted attitude that the immigrants brought to America. Radical populist ideology, in addition, opposed the private ownership of land as a matter of principle. The novel demonstrates how the traditional occupations, such as trade or manual labor, as well as the attempt to live on the land by personal toil, cannot bring about any change in the economic situation of the Jews. Only new forms of economic activity, such as land speculation, can miraculously change everything almost overnight. In America, the land turns into the main source of wealth; it literally becomes a “golden land.” All individuals, regardless of their social status, education, or background, indulge in the activity that had been forbidden, despised, and unthinkable by Old World standards. Under the influence of the new concept of land the traditional shtetl landscape with its woods, marshes, and sandy hills is being transformed into a commodity of “lots” and “parcels.” Although this is an unfamiliar article for Jewish peddlers, they quickly learn how to deal in it. The life of the Jewish community is now ruled by a new universal power of financial interest, described by Fredric Jameson as the “power of commerce

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The Crisis of Immigration and then capitalism proper—which is to say, sheer number as such, number now shorn and divested of its magical heterogeneities and reduced to equivalencies—to seize upon landscape and flatten it out, reorganize it into a grid of identical parcels, and expose it to the dynamic of a market that now reorganizes space in terms of an identical value.”38 In his two novels Kobrin creates a new realist style of depicting the American reality. Despite its primitivism, eclecticism, sensationalism, melodramatic theatricality, and sometimes plain vulgarity, this style becomes dominant in the post–World War I American-Yiddish novel. In the stable political conditions of American democracy, combined with the growth of the capitalist economy, the new realism strikes deeper roots than either the superannuated sentimental style or the modernist style. After 1905, life definitely looks more promising in America than in Russia. Youth finds itself on the winning side of history, no matter how sad it might be for the older generation. Both of Kobrin’s novels are essentially optimistic comedies. Tomorrow in America belongs to Lyuba and Abe, Rachel and Samke, and the young characters are quite confident about their future. New reality triumphs over the old fantasies and beliefs.

Modernism: In Search of a New Myth If Leon Kobrin, the main representative of nineteenth-century realism in the American-Yiddish novel before 1914, thought that Yiddish writers in America had to look for inspiration to the works of the great European masters of that style, his younger colleagues believed that only an authentic blend of Jewish tradition and American experience could become the basis of the new Yiddish culture. In his memoirs, poet Reuven Iceland describes how he and his friends turned to the forgotten popular genres such as tkhines (Yiddish prayers for women) in their search for the authentic but forgotten Yiddish voices. The young writers who formed the first American modernist group, the Yunge, were looking for “linguistic purity, tenderness, intimacy and euphony of language,” that is, qualities for which their predecessors in American Yiddish literature did not care much.39 No wonder poetry became the main form of expression for the Yiddish modernists. In Iceland’s critical opinion, contemporary Yiddish poetry in America lacked authenticity. It had only three styles, which corresponded to the three dominant themes: “grating-shouting-bombastic and melodeclamatory when it touched upon social themes, soaked with Jewishness with a smell of tsholnt (traditional Sabbath dish of meat, potatoes, and legumes) and mikve, when it dealt with national motifs, and decorated with poetic Germanic spangles when it wanted to express individual lyrical expe-

The Crisis of Immigration rience” (p. 8). The Yunge needed a new aesthetics to reflect the new worldview. America was for them not a station on the endless road of wandering of the Jewish people through the deserts of the exile, but the final destination. “Having ended, as they imagine, their own exile,” writes Ruth Wisse, “they shape their artistic ideals in the dream of a new nurturing security. The liberation of aesthetic values, to which Di Yunge are dedicated, is pronounced in the language of American freedom.”40 The creativity of the Yunge can be interpreted as a search for an authentic American-Yiddish idiom that would enable them to express the new ideas and sensitivities. The existing Yiddish literary discourse, they claimed, was dominated by Old World clichés, which made it incapable of representing the genuine experience of America. The decade between 1905 and 1914 was the springtime of hope and belief in the future of Yiddish in America. Beginning with World War I, however, “there was a surge of interest in the past, and the longer the writers remained in America, the more firmly they returned to the old world landscapes and themes.”41 According to Ruth Wisse, after World War I American-Yiddish writers once more changed their identity and returned to the old pattern of Galut: from immigrants they again became exiles.42 In prose, the new literary movement was represented by four writers: Joseph Opatoshu (1886–1954), Isaac Raboy (1882–1944), David Ignatov (1886–1954), and Morris Jonah Haimowitz (1881–1958). By 1914, all of them had published their first works on American themes. These novels were markedly different in their style and treatment of the material from the works of the older writers. The new literature concentrated on the intimate relationships between the hero and the new life around him. With the exception of Opatoshu, all writers modeled their central characters after themselves. America was no longer the end of the long journey; rather, it marked a new beginning in one’s personal experience. Neither Kobrin’s epigone realism nor Asch’s Old World sentimentalism could satisfy the need of authenticity and originality of the younger writers. For this purpose, new artistic means had to be created. As Ruth Wisse puts it, “The true writer had an obligation that could only be met if he discovered the personal language, style, form and content that revealed his experience.”43 The new movement was even more forceful than the realists of Kobrin’s brand in its rejection of the East European Yiddish. In his book Yung Amerika, Noyekh Shteynberg quotes the derogatory assessment of the contemporary state of Yiddish literature made by the leader of the Yunge, David Ignatov: “Our entire literature is still full of those Tevyes and those Shloyme Nogeds, with lame Fishkes and others of their ilk. And the result is that the healthy and active reader has left Yiddish literature altogether, because he is more likely to find the portrait of his life in the works of Gen-

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The Crisis of Immigration tile writers than to expect it in Yiddish literature.”44 This spirit of protest and rebellion against the Old World stereotypes found its expression in a variety of modernist representations of the new reality.

Joseph Opatoshu, From New York Ghetto Opatoshu began his literary career in America with two novels about life in the Old Country: Romance of a Horse Thief (1912) and Alone (Aleyn, 1913). Simultaneously, he approached the American theme in short stories and then in a novella, From New York Ghetto (Fun Nyu-Yorker geto, 1914).45 The novella continued the exploration of the life of the underclass, a theme that Opatoshu began in Romance of a Horse Thief. In From New York Ghetto Opatoshu depicted the lower strata of Jewish society in New York. In this American novella he utilized a rather conventional plot-constructing device of a double love intrigue, which allowed him to demonstrate the big gap between two generations of immigrants. Mrs. Rich, proprietor of a small paper business, considers the proposal of Mr. Polak, a saloonkeeper, while her boarder and employee, Sam, is in love with her daughter, Polly. This scheme highlights the problem of continuity and change in immigrant society. The old customs, defended by Mrs. Rich’s sister, Leah, are no longer applicable to the new conditions. When Mrs. Rich discusses a marriage proposal with her sister, Leah suggests Polly be the first “to have her head covered.” The practical Mrs. Rich responds: “In America nobody ‘covers the head’! And, poor girl, will she be happier if she marries a Jewish Italian like Sam?” (p. 45). This is not to say that Mrs. Rich is happy with her own way of life: “We live worse than animals! No Sabbath, no holidays; I needed this paper business like a hole in my head!” (p. 44). One hears the familiar lamentations of the older generation about America: “everything is upside down” (p. 53). The lack of respect for the old finds its expression even in American Yiddish, in which there is no ir (polite second person plural form of address), only du (singular second person) (p. 52). Money decides everything not only in business, but also even in religion. In order to become a president of a synagogue, one has to be “a decent fellow,” for whom “a dollar is not an issue,” that is, who can squander money in order to buy the position (p. 34). An American equivalent of religion is sport: “Just as a pious Jew will never miss kissing a mezuzah, an average good American will never pass by indifferently, when a ball is in the air” (p. 59). In America, one’s origin is transformed in a figment of the imagination: “In America, to be a litvak [Lithuanian Jew] exactly fits the mold. . . . It’s a business! A galitsianer never comes from Galicia, he comes from Austria!” (p. 53). The American reality is represented through the consistent use of satiri-

The Crisis of Immigration cal defamiliarization and desacralization. Deliberately mixing Jewish and Gentile cultural codes, Opatoshu makes a familiar and intimate situation look strange and even exotic. This device helps to stress the “vertical” separation between America and Europe, and at the same time to establish a “horizontal” similarity between different immigrant groups, regardless of their country of origin. Sam parodies a Chinese man who speaks a “genuine Chinese English” and praises the “holy Confucius,” “who had taken care of his ‘celestial children’ and bestowed upon the ‘unclean’ but noble Columbus the wisdom to discover America. Otherwise what would happen to so many poor ‘celestial children’?” (p. 68). This performance turns out to be a satire not on the Chinese, but on the Jews, who think of themselves as the chosen people, but in reality are just one of many immigrant groups in America. Another episode mocks the symbolism of the Jewish wedding: when Sam flirts with a Polish girl, she accidentally breaks a glass. The reaction of the young people around is quick: mazl-tov, mazl-tov, they congratulate Sam as if he were in the middle of the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony with this girl. The grotesque climax of the conventional love story is the marriage of Mrs. Rich and Mr. Polak. The wedding party is the last opportunity for the pathetic Old World characters to express their negative attitude toward the new order of life: Yes, all of you say “Holy!” for America, but I’m telling you, it’s a cursed land! Take, for example, a rich man in the old country! He lives like a king! Half a town revolves around him, they make their living from him, in other words, he makes himself known! And here? Here, he does not see day and night! After two years, who knows him? Of course, he lives in “rooms” with “steam-heat”, but who doesn’t have “steam-heat” in America? Ha-ha, even Mister “janitor” does—everybody’s a “Mister” here! (p. 102)

In the middle of the party an old servant of Mr. Polak comes in and calls him home as if nothing in his life has changed, an indication that he has completely lost his orientation. The contrast between America and the old home has more to do with one’s social-psychological disposition than with the material reality. It is only natural that soon after the wedding Mr. Polak becomes paralyzed, while Polly runs away with an Italian friend only to return later. The new in the novella is represented by the estrangement of the young generation from traditional Jewishness and its incorporation into the larger context of American life. The marriage solution as the sign of stabilization is not at all a guaranteed outcome in the new society. The destiny of the young characters is left open: Sam has to compete with an Italian man for Polly, a situation unheard of in the Old World context. The last sentence of the novella is a finely balanced combination of the author’s satirical attitude

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The Crisis of Immigration toward the illusions of his Old World characters with a serious concern for the insecure and unprotected future of the young heroes: “Mrs. Rich is getting fatter from one day to the next, quarrels with Sam, makes peace with him right after that, and intends to marry him shortly after her husband’s death” (p. 107). The standard ending of the conventional double-love plot, such as a double marriage of Mrs. Rich with Mr. Polak and Polly with Sam, which would turn the novella into a bourgeois melodrama, is not possible. Opatoshu leaves the novella open-ended, but excludes the conventional outcome, the marriage between Sam and Polly. The future belongs not to the collective but to an individual. America means the fragmentation of the Jewish community and the destruction of the old links that once held it together.

Isaac Raboy, Herr Goldenbarg Isaac Raboy has a reputation of being the most romantic novelist in American-Yiddish literature, a Yiddish Jack London whose main theme is, in Ruth Wisse’s words, “the elemental struggle for survival.” Wisse elaborates on Raboy’s main theme further: “In this raw encounter with the earth and the elements, the East European Jew has to come to a new understanding of himself, not in relation to history and to society, but to the call of the wild and the eternal cycle of nature.”46 Raboy begins where other Yiddish writers usually end: at the point a new character grows to maturity on American soil, gets married, and establishes his own life. He solves the problem of adaptation in a radical way, by removing the characters from the urban immigrant Jewish environment to the prairies of the American West or a New England farm. The prevalence of nature over culture is taken for granted by Raboy. American-Yiddish critic Isaac Elhonon Rontsh praises him as “the healthiest and the most American” writer in AmericanYiddish literature, the only one who can successfully get rid of the immigrant point of view on America.47 His characters are not the weak inhabitants of the Lower East Side, Brownsville, or the Bronx, but strong Jewish farmers in North Dakota or New England. Comparing Raboy and Asch, Rontsh notes: “Asch is interested in the transformation of the soul, in the process of transition. Raboy is different: he not just likes to write about land, but all his characters are as simple as land.”48 From Raboy’s first novel Herr Goldenbarg, the style of Raboy’s writing is marked by simplicity and clarity. A contemporary critic and enthusiast of the young literature, Noyekh Shteynberg, finds the novel Herr Goldenbarg easy and interesting from the first to the last page, the first novel of this kind in American-Yiddish literature.49 The protagonist presents a rather untypical figure of a “double” immigrant: the anti-Semitic oppression had

The Crisis of Immigration driven him out of Russia, but he could not find a place for himself in the urban world of New York, either. In contrast to the idealistic members of the utopian Am Olam movement, who fail to establish socialist agricultural communities in the new country, the more practical and determined Goldenbarg succeeds in his private enterprise in the world of Midwestern pioneers. In several years’ time he manages to build a solid North Dakota stud farm, which has all the qualities of a realized American dream. The prosperous and healthy Jewish farmer combines the moral quality of labor on the land with the opportunities offered by the growing market—his excellent stud horses are in great demand among farmers. The problem arises when Goldenbarg faces the next step in his relationships with the new country. According to local custom, he has to marry off his niece Dvoyre (he has no children of his own) to the son of his Norwegian neighbor and thus secure his full membership in the local farmers’ community, which is a miniature of the American melting pot. Yet in the symbolic system of Yiddish literature this outcome would mean the dissolution of Jews in America and imply the end of the Jewish tradition. The author feels that it would be rather difficult to present a convincing case for the continuity of Jewish farming and prefers instead to send Dvoyre away to Palestine with Goldenbarg’s young Jewish laborer, Isaac. Isaac represents the next generation of idealists, for whom farm work in America is preparation for their real pioneer mission of cultivating the Land of Israel. Critics welcomed Raboy’s simple and straightforward style as a healthy innovation. “There is something pristine in the way his characters sense the landscape and love,” pointed out Shteynberg (p. 76). He even went further and interpreted the novel as the celebration of the Jewish national character, that “stubborn willpower which will always separate us from other people and make us lead our own life” (p. 84). The turbulent experience of immigration finally produces a new type of Jewish hero free of the Diaspora complexes. Goldenbarg becomes a pathfinder for the new generation. He breaks not only with his past in the Old Country, but also with his present misery as an immigrant: “he ha[s] the power to free himself completely from the Galut traditions and to start anew” (p. 83). Herr Goldenbarg belongs to the variety of successful characters rare in Yiddish literature, and perhaps is the only one of them to achieve success without moral compromise. According to the prevalent Yiddish literary convention, Ruth Wisse reminds us, “success stories of ambitious young men are expected to turn on the inner failure that poisons the fruits of their achievement.”50 With some stretch of imagination one can apply to Raboy’s novel Ruth Wisse’s characterization of the autobiography of Norman Podhoretz, and call it arguably the first “unmaking of a schlemiel” in modern Yiddish literature. One could even develop this analogy a bit further. Like Podhoretz,

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The Crisis of Immigration Goldenbarg was accepted in and respected by an authentic American “family.”51 This fact already finds its expression in the title of the book: the solid bourgeois Herr Goldenbarg, like Podhoretz’s manifestly American Making It, sharply contrasts with such titles as a patronizing Ore the Beard, marginalizing From the New York Ghetto, or an alienating The Immigrants. The achievements of the Jewish farmer are recognized by other farmers in the area, and the role of a schlemiel goes to a non-Jew, the Norwegian neighbor, who is unable to shed customs of his old country. In life, however, Raboy was not as successful as in his imagination: after his failure to set up a farm in Connecticut, caused, among other factors, by the hostility of his neighbors, he was forced to return to the New York factories.52 Raboy deliberately avoids the suspense-creating devices and dramatic effects of the popular style. As Rontsh describes the effect of the novel, “Already from the first pages one knows that Isaac will love Dvoyre, and Dvoyre will love Isaac, but the short sentences and the quiet tone of narration urge you to read and not drop the book from your hands.”53 The message of this and other novels by Raboy is as clear for Rontsh as their style and plot: “Five million Jews [living both] in the country and the city are here to stay and to build.”54 The critic pointedly dismisses the possibility that the departure of Isaac and Dvoyre for Palestine could be interpreted as a sign of the potential insecurity of the Jewish future in America. And yet, even if one does not agree with this interpretation and reads the novel in the Zionist spirit of “negation of Diaspora,” there is no doubt that for Raboy the future of the Jewish people was on the land and not in the city. Goldenbarg served as a role model for Isaac, and, following this model, Isaac had to part with a past personified by Goldenbarg and move on in order to further the process of redemption of Jewish people, an evolution that vaguely followed the lines of a Socialist-Zionist concept of Jewish history.

David Ignatov, In Whirlpool Whereas Raboy creates a romantic fantasy of the Jewish future as return to nature and, optionally, to one’s ancient land of origin, David Ignatov expresses his modernist vision of the American condition through symbolic imagery. The existential problem of Jewish life in America is depicted in Ignatov’s first novel, In Whirlpool (In keslgrub, 1907–12), in terms of the cosmic struggle between the sun and the iron giant personified by New York City.55 This symbolic pair stands for the opposition between the hope for revival and the degeneration of urban society. The sun’s agent is the main character of the novel, a Yiddish writer and charismatic dreamer Borukh, who wants to change the entire way of life of Jewish immigrants

The Crisis of Immigration in America. He believes that instead of living in the voluntary slavery of the iron giant New York, Jews should go after the sun to the West and build “free villages,” where they can live and work in complete harmony with nature and themselves. This is how Borukh depicts his vision to his friend’s wife, Khana, with whom he is in love: And that night, Khana! The night over the wide steppes, the sky which is strewn with sparkling buds of golden dreams. Miles of wilderness, which become lost in the naive seriousness of a man in love. . . . And tomorrow there again appears the daughter of the sun. She appears on the East, with its newborn fresh morning, and the morning jumps off her hands, and she looks at him and smiles from the pleasure of being his mother, and he, the morning, grows before her eyes, plays in a golden brook, and laughs . . . and afterwards—a whole day of healthy hard work. The work of broad free movement. Khana, it’s not shop work, it’s the work where body’s movements are healthy and strong, and one breathes fresh and free air. And every dig one makes is important, every cut is necessary. (p. 18)

This vision of a life full of light and gold stood in sharp contrast with the reality in which the heroes lived. New York, and especially its Jewish part, was depicted as a dirty, unhealthy, and crowded place dominated by iron and stone: “The air is dense and gray from dust which is whipped up to the sky. Dark streets with piles of garbage stretch in the dust, the walls of the houses are close one to the other and look like large and high dirty boxes divided in several floors, which are covered with suspended ‘fire escapes’ as though with iron bars” (p. 21). The symbolic image of the iron giant holding in his hands steel reins that enmesh people, buildings, and streets dominates the everyday reality in the novel. It controls the urban landscape and executes its power over the people. In the city people lose control over themselves and become slaves of their needs; the means—food, clothes, housing—become ends. To satisfy their needs, people have to work for the giant. The city not only dehumanizes the life of its dwellers, but also corrupts the Jewish identity of the immigrants. It produces a new Jewish type, who “puts on tales [tallit] and tfiln every Sabbath—and takes a siddur in his hands” (p. 11). The bitter irony of this ritual of putting on tefillin on the Sabbath (Jews are supposed to do it only on weekdays) indicates the spiritual emptiness of the immigrant community where religion has become a meaningless automatic ritual. The American Jew, who is almost unable to read the prayers, continues to perform this ritual only because he believes that “children ought to know that they belong to a ‘certain nation’ ” (p. 11). In the original Yiddish, the alienation of Jews from their heritage is further stressed by the use of an English slogan and euphemism, a certain nation, instead of an indigenous Yiddish word. And yet the children who were born in the Jewish ghetto hate and despise their past, which, for them, is

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The Crisis of Immigration personified in the figure of an old Jew: “Here is a little Jew with a Jewish beard pushing his pushcart along. The wind tears at his beard, and children laugh out loud: ‘look at that sheeny, look at that sheeny’ ” (p. 102). The only power capable of resisting the iron giant’s domination is nature. Every day the sun rises to fight the giant, but people are too preoccupied with their petty business to join the struggle. Borukh wants them to realize that to liberate themselves from exploitation and the oppression of the city they need to escape to the free countryside, settle in the “free villages,” and live there in accord with nature. The goal of their life will become happiness and not prosperity, and free labor will become the way to its fulfillment. The solar symbolism connects Ignatov’s novel with the works of Russian symbolists, such as Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Andrei Bely (1880–1934), and Fiodor Sologub (1863–1927), who, in their poetry and prose, elaborated on the representation of the sun as the power that can regenerate and rejuvenate exhausted humanity. Borukh aspires to the role of the leader of a new movement, which combines an elitist symbolist aestheticism with the populist ideology of return to the land. American Jewish youths, however, turn out to be difficult material for such a movement. In their cynicism and materialism they reject not only the traditional Yiddishkayt, but also the revolutionary idealism of their past. Borukh rebukes one of his female admirers: “And do you know why a girl like you, who ‘at home’ probably was, like other girls like you, a committed revolutionary, whose eyes were shining with a holy fire—why you have immediately started to ‘have a life’ here?” And he himself comes up with an answer: “Isn’t it because you also have realized that the play here is for the devil? For the devil armored with steel and iron?” (p. 100). The loss of the Yiddish language is another aspect of the process of degeneration that goes on in America. In his imagination, Borukh argues with Khana about children’s education: “she does not care that children don’t speak Yiddish here. But Khana! Can’t you see how much is being lost with it? Can’t you understand that the strongest threads that connect the parents with the children, the threads which are spun from generation to generation, will perforce be torn, and the best and unique opportunities will be lost with this change” (p. 17). The language of the novel reflects this ideological message. The indicator of a character’s degradation in the novel is the proportion of English in his or her speech. The parts of the text that depict a purer reality, such as an outing on the mountain or snow in the city, contain very few English words. The elevated railroad is called oybershte shtot-ban, and even East River is translated into a mizrekh-taykh (pp. 94–95). In contrast, the descriptions of the regular, not transfigured, city landscape use common English words

The Crisis of Immigration such as fayer-eskeyp and the like. Borukh’s speech normally is free of English loanwords, but he uses them in order to convey his ironic attitude toward reality. The ordinary New York characters use English words in the normal proportion of colloquial American-Yiddish. The figure of Borukh is a product of the modernist search for the solution to the crisis of Jewish life after 1905. His formative years in the “old home” coincided with the revolutionary events. He recollects some important episodes and details of his previous life: a pogrom that made his mother insane, his life in a village among Gentiles, his friend Vassil, his studies in a Russian gymnasium. After the tragedy with his mother, Borukh broke with Vassil and with the entire Gentile world: “tomorrow, when you need it, you will do it [pogrom], because you are all dogs. Dog, get out of my house” (p. 137). The evidence of Borukh’s familiarity with the Russian revolutionary movement is his ability to use the revolutionary jargon and recognize the revolutionary manners. Another important aspect of the Old Country heritage is his purist attitude toward relationships between men and women, which is also an element of the revolutionary code of behavior, as we saw in the previous chapter. Borukh retains the ideal image of Khana as he remembers her from Russia: “You stood before me white and shining in your brown gymnasium dress with a blue wreath in your hand” (p. 131). Transformed from reality into memory, the ordinary details of Jewish life in Russia acquire a new symbolic quality. The pogrom loses its haphazardness and suddenness and becomes a natural result of historical development. Elements of Russian nature and landscape, especially snow, become symbols not merely of isolation and alienation, but also of purity. All this transforms the remembered Russia into a source of symbolist creativity. The path to the regeneration of the Jewish people leads through a return to the symbolic foundations that have been left behind. An unexpected snowfall in New York establishes for a moment a connection between that lost world and the new American dream: “Khana! Do you remember how we used to make snowballs? Big balls of snow. . . . And Borukh measures with his eyes the white field. . . . There appears a village, and together with the village—the [American] West with its wide prairies, which stretch under the endless far space. . . . Space and vistas, space . . . ” (p. 138). The snow in New York symbolically bridges the gap between the past and the future, Russia and the “free villages,” the gap formed by the repulsive present: “It seems that the snow falls upon Borukh: ‘Borukh! What you wanted to have, that which you disavowed, that has been taken from you, remains yours forever. It lives, grows, and blossoms for you ever better and more beautiful. Be faraway—be indifferent’ ” (p. 116). Borukh and Khana skating under the falling snow signify a new type of relationship

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The Crisis of Immigration between man and woman. The freedom of movement, the purity of the snow, and the equality of the partners belong to the future just and happy life. The motif of ice-skating has similar significance in two other works: Kabak’s “In Winter Storms” and Opatoshu’s Alone. The contrast to the skating party is the Zionist ball. This is the culmination of the evil power of the city, represented through the image of a whirlpool: “A circle of beautiful eyes, a circle of men and women in beautiful and expensive clothes, a circle of beautiful hands, a circle of beautifully dancing feet, and the dancing circle is stretching and turning like in a whirlpool” (p. 122). This is the world of the bustling movements of masses of people, separated from nature and pursuing their own egotistic goals. There is neither unity nor harmony in the crowd; people are separate despite the seeming closeness. Love loses its meaning and becomes a mere instrument of achieving material prosperity. In Borukh’s opinion, the ball is a macabre dance of the spiritually dead Jewish people, a hollow sign of Jewishness, which, in America, has replaced its living symbolism: And all those who are dancing at the ball often seem to me like ghosts of a vanished people, who for some reason have woken up in the middle of the night and started dancing. And it also seems to me that in the country where the Jews put on tales and tfiln on the Sabbath so as thereby to recount their roots, the Zionist balls with the Biblical pictures will remain the only memory of Jewishness. (p. 135)

The novel is an attempt to build a new modernist outlook, which would correspond to the new reality of America. Borukh retains the revolutionary zeal of rejection of the bourgeois order, but he has abandoned the cosmopolitan socialist ideal as no longer relevant after the pogroms. The current political ideologies in their American form, Zionism and socialism alike, are also unacceptable to Borukh, since they lost their creative energy and now belong to the domain of the “iron giant.” Instead he turns for inspiration to Hasidic folklore and puts his dreams in the form of tales (the form to be developed in Ignatov’s later works). Yet Borukh fails to come close to the realization of his dreams, and his influence on other people turns out to be destructive. Unintentionally, he gives Khana an abortion pill so that she loses her child by her husband Max. At the same time Borukh is unable to win Khana for himself: despite his attractiveness and seeming strength, he is incapable of establishing relationships with women. Borukh’s failures signify the impossibility of the genuine continuity and harmony of Jewish life in America. In the epilogue, the reader finds the hero as a recluse in a little cabin in New Jersey, across the river from the “iron giant” of New York City. He is immersed in the world of his dreams, envisioning Khana in various images. The end comes on a snowy winter’s day, when Borukh, apparently under the spell of his fantasies, pours

The Crisis of Immigration kerosene onto his house, and sets it on fire together with himself and Khana, whom he imagines to be inside.

Morris Jonah Haimowitz, On the Way The fourth representative of modernism in early American-Yiddish prose, M. J. Haimowitz, is perhaps the least known now, although he was, as Sol Liptzin notes, “far more prolific as a narrative writer than either Raboy or Ignatov.”56 Most of Haimowitz’s novels and stories were never published in book form. For many years he contributed regularly to major Yiddish publications: Der tog, Di varhayt, Fraye arbeter shtime, and others. Liptzin places Haimowitz within the Central European cultural tradition and links him with Viennese psychologism: “Under the influence of Schnitzler, Haimowitz tried to delve into the psychology of the modern woman and to unravel the subconscious layers of her soul. However, he lacked the light touch, the melancholy humor and the tolerant wisdom of the Viennese master. His emancipated characters were still plagued by a Jewish conscience.”57 The short novel On the Way (Oyfn veg) was published in the same 1914 issue of the almanac Naye heym as Opatoshu’s From New York Ghetto.58 Haimowitz was probably unique among Yiddish writers of that time because of his interest in the psychology of middle-class Jews who had already established themselves in America. Joe Levin, the hero of the novel, returns to New York after seven unsuccessful years in the West with the intention to make a fresh start. He gets involved with the divorced wife of his friend Dr. Gold, but the woman eventually commits suicide and her psychologically broken ex-husband turns to Buddhism for consolation. Levin tries to restore his relationship with his former wife, but she refuses to come back to him and admits that she has had relationships with two other men since they parted. Levin suffers from this loss but does not give up. He becomes the business partner of his brother-in-law and hopes for the best. The novel contains almost no information about the background and life of the characters before their immigration. All of them have been in America for a long time and feel at home in the new country. Levin’s personal past belongs not to the Old Country, but to America—the Lower East Side and the West. The story opens with the image of New York City appearing before Levin’s eyes as a proud giant confident in its indestructibility. In contrast to Ignatov, Haimowitz treats the city as a positive symbol; unlike Borukh, Levin has no quarrels with the giant New York and is determined to find a place for himself in it: “Levin was a real child of the twentieth century, a child of the city” (p. 15). All the characters of the novel

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The Crisis of Immigration live in the modern comfort of Bronx and Brooklyn neighborhoods. The “ghetto” of the Lower East Side is mentioned only once, and in the context of the past: “Doctor [Gold] gave a brief description of the whole East Side, which he now disliked. He ridiculed the socialist movement, made fun of anarchists, and spoke with disappointment about the national movement” (p. 19). These middle-class Jews do not frequent Lower East Side cafés and the Yiddish theater; they prefer fancy restaurants and the opera, or a stroll in Central Park. The existential situation of the characters in the novel is formulated by Levin’s brother-in-law: “everyone of us is always on the way somewhere. Being on the way, we sense time, sense the air, sense the good weather as well as the storm—we sense! . . . People from the other part, the one to which you belong, are not ‘on the way’, circle around themselves, around a little dot, around their ‘I’ which they have wonderfully developed” (p. 59). According to this man, “all those who’ve come here are torn in half ” (p. 60). The tragedy of Dr. Gold and his divorced wife is caused by their concentration on their own personalities and inability to establish meaningful relationships with reality. As almost everybody in the novel, Levin is also “on the brink of a spiritual and psychological crisis.” He comes to the conclusion that “there are three gates in front of him: the gate of sin, the gate of absolutely pure religion, and the gate of philistinism” (p. 98). He is torn between two desires, “to release the reins of his own life,” and to follow Dr. Gold’s self-negating path to religion. And yet, even having realized that the past, signified by his ex-wife, is lost to him forever, Levin does not lose his optimistic attitude toward life: “No, this is only a beginning. Here is the gate that he has chosen. He will go and knock: Life—here’s one of your children. Take him away” (p. 98). The novel is left open-ended: we do not know which one of the three gates Levin has chosen and what will come of his choice; perhaps nothing, and his decision is just to accept life as it is. On the Way goes a step or two farther than the three other modernist novels in the exploration of the American experience. Haimowitz no longer entertains the dream of a new beginning somewhere in the American West. His hero has successfully overcome the first stage of immigration and secured his status in America. One way or another, Levin has solved for himself the problems that had preoccupied Sam, Borukh, and Herr Goldenbarg. He is “twice removed” from his old home: his immediate past is no longer there, but already in America. Haimowitz’s characters manage to replace their East European memories with the memories of their experience as fresh immigrants. The aesthetic difference between Haimowitz and the three other writers is expressed by his affinity for contemporary Central European modernism, and not Russian literary models, as was the case with Opatoshu, Raboy, and Ignatov.

The Crisis of Immigration Culturally and psychologically, Levin is closer to the urban Jewish middle class of Central Europe than to East European shtetl Jewry. Yiddish as a language of expression or cultural discourse has no relevance for him. Haimowitz’s response to the challenge of America is to accept it as is, and not to entertain any illusions about special relationships and Jewish continuity. Levin, like other main characters in the early Yiddish modernist novels, has no children of his own. The only child in the novel is his nephew, who speaks only English and whose dream is to work out in order to build strong muscles and to become a “real” American. On the Way, clearer than other novels, demonstrates the limitations of Yiddish literature when it attempts to represent the American reality beyond the immediate immigrant experience. As later literary developments show, a successful Yiddish modernist work was possible only in a referential framework of the Old Country, such as Yankev Glatshteyn’s two-volume travelogue Ven Yash iz geforn (1938) and Ven Yash iz gekumen (1940). Even in the radically new political, economic, and cultural conditions of America, Yiddish literature could not liberate itself from the conceptual framework of the “negotiated return.”

Conclusions I have outlined three main patterns in the representation of the immigrant experience in Yiddish fiction between 1905 and 1914. The conservative, past-oriented pattern is constructed with the help of images and concepts of the Jewish tradition and shtetl-centered Jewish literature. It represents immigration as a mortal crisis, which inevitably leads to the death of a traditional hero who embodies Jewish tradition. His death is the price at which the continuity between the past and the future can be preserved. The religious motif of death as sanctification of God’s name can be represented in a more Westernized, and indeed Christianized form of the death of an innocent child, or in a more nationalistic form of the collective suffering from the pogroms in the Old World. The suffering justifies the transition and serves as the basis for the creation of a new foundation myth for the new community. Thus, the Russian pogroms become the foundation of the new American Jewish myth. This representation of history as a chain of sorrows incorporates the new American Jewish experience into the traditionalist concept of Jewish history. Perhaps the most powerful example of this trend in American-Yiddish literature is Sholem Asch’s novel Kiddush Hashem (1921). In addition, the American experience introduces a new style of social realism into Yiddish literature. This realistic approach is born out of close

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The Crisis of Immigration attention to the comprehensive social and cultural transformation, which was the experience of the entire immigrant community. Realism as the moment of discovery of changing time (Jameson) opens up new possibilities for Yiddish literature. It transforms the introverted fiction, which has concentrated on representations of inner phenomena and processes, into a cosmopolitan literature, aspiring to become the equal of other world literatures. The social success and Americanization of the immigrant community become the main theme of this trend in American-Yiddish literature. This new theme not only facilitates the development of realism, but also sets limitations for it, since the new reality quickly ceases to be suitable for representation in Yiddish through mimetic means, simply because social progress is inevitably accompanied by the loss of Yiddish. The problem of Americanization is perhaps not so crucial for the modernist approach, for it does not ascribe crucial importance to the mimetic truthfulness of representation. If we agree with Jameson that “all modernistic works are essentially simply cancelled realistic ones,” then modernism begins with abolishing the supremacy of mimetic representation.59 Early American-Yiddish modernist writers are more interested in creating their own reality through the combination of elements of the Jewish tradition with the ideas and images of Russian and European modernism. Their goal is to achieve a new synthesis, which would be artistically and ideologically more inspiring than dull bourgeois reality. These works put the emphasis on the personal, and not on the collective experience, and the characters are exceptional individuals, rather than average immigrant types. As a rule, the personal experience of the authors plays a more important role than social generalizations in modernist fiction. The difference between the three patterns can be detected in the linguistic orientation as well: 1. The traditionalist approach tends to ignore the new linguistic reality or treat it satirically. The main characters in this fiction speak a traditional folksy Yiddish, intermingled with some learned Hebrew words. The narrator uses a stylized nineteenth-century literary Yiddish, but makes it accessible for a not-too-well-educated audience. 2. The realistic narrative idiom is deliberately devoid of traditional flavor and imitates the impersonal language of Yiddish translations from the French and the Russian. The speech of main heroes is more Europeanized, whereas the traditionalist style is reserved for the representatives of the Old World. In accordance with the mimetic principle, the realistic dialogue includes a large proportion of Americanisms, which reflect the real spoken vernacular. 3. The modernist style, finally, is characterized by linguistic search and experiment. The main characters often speak an artificial, idiosyncratic language, which reflects their exceptional personality. The narrative style betrays a distinct flavor of the mixture of the old and the new.

The Crisis of Immigration Despite a broad variety of styles, American-Yiddish prose before 1914 was still incapable of creating a fully developed Yiddish novel of immigrant life. The material for the new Yiddish novel lay, as before, on the other side of the Atlantic, where, all its crises notwithstanding, the fabric of Jewish life was still dense and dynamic enough to produce original modern literary characters.

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Love and Destiny: The Crisis of Youth

Principles of Classification and Transformation in the Yiddish Novel This chapter approaches the problem of representation of crisis from a different perspective than the previous ones. The previous three chapters were devoted to the topical analysis of the most significant aspects of change and the new reality in their representations in Yiddish fiction of the period. Now the focus will shift to representations of crisis through the inner life and development of the personality of the literary character. Central to my analysis will be novels dealing with the problem of Jewish existence in the modern world. From the social point of view, this problem is the same as the central problem of progress in European literature of the nineteenth century, which Franco Moretti formulates in terms of break and continuity: In dismantling the continuity between generations, as is well known, the new and destabilizing forces of capitalism impose a hitherto unknown mobility. But it is also a yearning for exploration, since the selfsame process gives rise to unexpected hopes, thereby generating an interiority not only fuller than before but also . . . perennially dissatisfied and restless.1

Moretti singles out the two aspects of mobility and interiority as the characteristic features of the bildungsroman, in which he sees a “symbolic form” of modernity. The first three chapters of this study were devoted mostly to the aspect of mobility in its various forms: economic, political,

Love and Destiny and geographical. As a result, there were established several patterns of representation of mobility in Yiddish literature. The next step will be analysis of the relationships between the predominantly external aspect of mobility and the transformation of the inner world of the characters. In my Introduction, I outlined Yurii Lotman’s theoretical concept of two principles of organization of the plot. The cyclical principle has its origins in the mythological background of narrative. In this case, plot has little significance, since the characters represent not individual personalities, but rather different personae of essentially the same mythological hero. The alternative is the principle of linear development. This type of narrative organization emphasizes not the conformity to eternal recurrent patterns, but deviations from them. This principle is the basis of the anecdote—the central unit of historical narrative—whose goal is to tell about the emergence of the new. Moretti applies this concept of two alternative principles of narrative organization, which he refers to as classification (cyclical organization with emphasis on the general stability of the order of things) and transformation (linear organization that stresses the uniqueness of the described events), to the case of the European novel: “When classification is strongest . . . narrative transformations have meaning in so far as they lead to a particularly marked ending: one that establishes a classification different from the initial one, but nonetheless perfectly clear and stable.” In the alternative case, writes Moretti, “what makes a story meaningful is its narrativity, its being an open-ended process. Meaning is the result not of a fulfilled teleology, but rather . . . of the total rejection of such a solution” (p. 7). The development of the European novel can be represented in terms of the interaction between these two principles. The principle of classification dominates the English family romances of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, whereas the French realist novels of Honoré de Balzac and Stendhal are open-ended and based on the principle of transformation. European literary tradition, according to Moretti, constantly sought to reconcile the two alternative principles and to create a comprehensive synthesis. He regards Goethe’s Faust as an ambitious, but not quite successful, attempt to accomplish this synthesis. In comparison, the “collective enterprise” of bildungsroman presents a less pretentious, but more realistic project aimed at the achievement of a compromise between the two extremes (p. 9). Yiddish literature provides examples of texts built according to both principles. The nineteenth-century novel, beginning with Aksenfeld, was more interested in classification than in transformation. Abramovitsh began his literary career with the translation of a German book on natural history into Hebrew and retained a strong interest in classification throughout his “Mendele” period as well. Both as a character and a narrator, Mendele defies any personal development and is preoccupied with

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Love and Destiny classification. His role is to organize a text, to put events in order, to provide a closed ending, and to produce a didactic message. Mendele’s selfproclaimed “grandson,” Sholem Aleichem, also had clear normative ideas about Yiddish fiction: he saw its function as reflecting the life of the people and showing them the way to improve it. The endings of his early novels set up a new classification based on solid and organic principles of national life, as opposed to the backwardness of the old order on the one hand and the dangers of modernity on the other. The personalities of the three most famous characters of Sholem Aleichem’s fiction, Menakhem-Mendl, Tevye, and Motl, remain unaffected by the turbulent development of reality in which they lived. Instead, their tales present the reader with a variety of satirical, tragic, or melodramatic classifications of that reality, which led to creation of a new “mythology of the mundane.” Yitskhok Leybush Peretz had a more ambivalent attitude toward the new order that emerged in the endings of some of his stories, but all their famous ambiguity notwithstanding, these stories were structurally closed and the element of classification in them was strong enough. Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz worked each on his own life project of representing Jewish reality in its totality and authenticity, and their best achievements remain in the area of classification of this reality. It seems that the alternative principle was less popular in Yiddish literature. Transformation was the core of the stories of the famous Hasidic teacher Reb Nachman of Bratslav, and some of them had no ending and no new emerging order at all. The world of Reb Nachman was that of intensive transformation in preparation for the final messianic age, which alone could bring about a definite classification, but this final moment belonged to the realm outside the stories. Another example of this kind was Abramovitsh’s novel The Mare, which focused on the mental evolution of the main character from a positivist to a madman. The manifold and increasingly bizarre visions of reality, which were formed and then immediately destroyed in the course of this novel, were created by the protagonist’s agitated imagination and existed not as objective reality, but rather as fictive correlatives to his gradual mental deterioration. On a large scale, however, the principle of transformation became visible only in the first works of writers of the younger generation, who came to Yiddish literature during the first decade of the twentieth century. The first scholar who clearly described the principle of transformation in Yiddish literature and linked it with the representation of the new reality was Uriel Weinreich. In his exemplary analysis of Weissenberg’s novella A Shtetl, Weinreich demonstrated how the forces of linear development, brought into the shtetl by the revolution, destroyed the traditional order, which had been organized along the cycles of nature and religious obser-

Love and Destiny vance.2 Writers of the younger generation, to which Weissenberg also belonged, were more interested in registering the ongoing cultural, social, and political changes in Jewish society and in the world at large, and less concerned with the classification of these changes. They were more open than their predecessors to the conventional European literary forms and to the literary models produced by the European tradition. The young writers sought to translate contemporary Jewish experience into a literary idiom that was common to the whole of European civilization rather than to create a unique Jewish national literature. The outlined grouping of literary works according to the principle of their organization does not assume a strict separation between the two categories. In fact, as Lotman points out, almost every literary text contains elements of both types of organization, and the classical Yiddish literature was no exception. The seemingly stable narrator Mendele undergoes an unexpected transformation in the process of telling the story of Fishke the Lame, even though he tries to resist it.3 Each of Menakhem-Mendl’s letters or Tevye’s episodes taken separately reads as a story of a transformation, but on the whole the respective collections are dominated by the principle of classification. Peretz presents an even more complicated case: in his fiction, the principle of classification often forms a dissonance with the principle of transformation. In this discord lies the reason for different, sometimes opposite interpretations of those stories. Such famous stories as “Bontshe shvayg” or “Kabbalists” can be interpreted either in the neoromantic fashion as the revelation of a certain, potentially messianic, transformational pattern concealed in the Jewish psyche, which can bring about the renewal of the entire world, or as social satire, which destroys the old dreams and sets up a new objective classification based on a critical vision of reality. Sometimes, the very seemingly simplistic didacticism of the ending in comparison to the deep ambiguity of the story itself makes a modern reader wonder whether there might be something behind this primitive classification. Such is the case in Peretz’s popular tale “Three Gifts,” which can be read both as a celebration and as a satire of the Jewish martyrological ideal. Among the young writers of that period, Sholem Asch was perhaps the one most tempted to create a fiction of classification. This tendency becomes especially visible later in his big novels, such as Three Cities or East River, although it is already present in the “poems” A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged. The early works of David Bergelson, in contrast, are predominantly transformational. The principle of classification becomes strong only in his novels written after 1929. By and large, the principle of classification regains domination in Yiddish literature when it turns to the representation of the past, especially in the works created after the Holocaust and devoted to the

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Love and Destiny artistic restoration of the vanished world. The analysis in this chapter will concentrate on three novels with female main characters: Alone by Joseph Opatoshu, Meri by Sholem Asch, and When All Is Said and Done by David Bergelson. In order to underscore the contrast between these writers and their predecessors, we will look at three works by the Yiddish classic authors dealing with the impact of modernity on personal life and the process of personal growth and development: Tevye the Dairyman and From the Fair by Sholem Aleichem, and My Memoirs by Peretz. The comparison between Tevye and the novels of younger writers is especially indicative; the similarity of the depicted situations makes especially evident the difference in their representations. The autobiographies of Sholem Aleichem and Peretz, which chronologically close their canons, are interesting attempts at reconciling the narratives of personal transformation with the schemes of classification that both writers developed throughout their careers.

A New Jewish Woman and the Old Order Perhaps the most important innovation in the early-twentieth-century Yiddish novel is the emergence of a woman as the central character. Nineteenth-century Yiddish literature was unquestionably written by men, from the point of view of a man, and about men, even though its implied reader was often a woman. Women were allowed only the secondary roles of literary “footstools” to support the central male heroes. This attitude left for female characters only a limited number of passive roles such as mother, daughter, wife, or bride, all of which were defined through their relations to the dominant active male characters. With a very few exceptions, women in the works of Aksenfeld and Abramovitsh were one-dimensional signifiers of a particular virtue or vice. Sholem Aleichem introduced twodimensional female characters in his early yidishe romanen. Rokhele in Stempenyu and Esther in Yosele Solovey represented the conflict between passion and duty, which conveyed the main ideological and didactic message of the novel. They were instrumental in ushering in the new moral and social order by means of their “Jewish” virtues, but they possessed almost no personalities and were reduced to their traditional roles after this task had been completed. Of the three classical writers, Peretz was perhaps the most sympathetic and insightful in his depiction of women. Heroines of his stories were original and authentic, but because of the lack of inner development they were interesting photographs, rather than real characters. Tevye the Dairyman (1895–1916) contains one of the most developed and modern female characters within the classical Yiddish literary tradition. Tevye’s daughters (with a possible exception of the youngest one, Beylke) are new women who challenge the established authority of the patriarchic

Love and Destiny order. Ken Frieden sees in them heroic figures, “social reformers who take part in political upheaval by placing their own lives on the line.”4 The ongoing conflict between Tevye and his daughters can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of the conflict between tradition and modernity. The events in this saga unfold “on-line,” parallel to the real development of Jewish life in Russia in the years of writing and publication. Each episode presents a snapshot of the concrete social reality at the actual moment of its writing, while at a deeper level it is yet another manifestation of the same recurrent pattern that underlies Tevye’s philosophy. All episodes are constructed as monologues recited by Tevye before an audience personified by the implied listener Sholem Aleichem, who apparently wrote them down. Tevye’s authoritarian narrative voice tries to control all other voices in his tales. As a result, one can never be sure that he conveys other people’s speech adequately, and the reader is left to guess what exactly the other characters, especially the female ones, have to say. All events are represented through Tevye’s idiosyncratic speech. These monologues are a perfect illustration of the principle of classification. Michael Stern’s study of Tevye’s quotations demonstrates how, manipulating the wording of the quotation, Tevye always manages to reestablish a comfortable order in the world, which seems to be falling apart: “Tevye finds his world undergoing continuous changes, generally for the worse. He is powerless to stop these changes, and can only fight them in quotations and glosses that manifest the depth of his feelings.”5 Tevye’s constant verbal classification of reality through manipulative quotations is the only device with which he can defend his imaginary world from this reality. Most of the interpretations of this literary character recognize the resistance to all change as his main feature, whether they take him as an archetype of Jewish bitokhn (trust in God), as an ironic vision of the Yiddish folk ethos, or as an exponent of the “mythology of the mundane.”6 In all cases Tevye remains the embodiment of the cyclical organization of life, which does not acknowledge the reality of change. Tevye’s daughters represent the reality challenge to this classification. Each episode inevitably brings a new misfortune for Tevye, but it does not affect the principle of organization of his life. Leaving Tevye’s personality untouched, every episode dramatically changes the life of one of his daughters. The dramatic tension mounts from one story to the next. The eldest daughter, Tseytl, who marries a handsome young tailor instead of a boorish widower-butcher, defies the old custom of matchmaking but remains within the borders of traditional shtetl culture and even enriches it with the new concept of love imported from the outside. Hodl, the next in line, goes one step farther and enters the turbulent and dangerous new reality of political and social transformation by marrying a revolutionary. She ends up at the opposite end of the traditional Jewish space, in Siberia, where her

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Love and Destiny husband is exiled. The marriage of Chava to a Christian is tantamount to death in the traditional system of Tevye’s values, but is not the same as a physical death in reality, as the reader discovers in the last episode. The real death is the end of the story of Shprintse, seduced and abandoned by a rich Jewish playboy. And, finally, the story of Beylke, although not tragic on the surface, is perhaps the most subversive for Tevye’s stable world, for she is the only daughter who does what Tevye wants, and yet this obedience does not bring happiness. The daughters inhabit a very concrete, historical time and space, being fully aware of the rapid cultural, social, and political changes around them, while their father remains aloof to the ongoing transformations of reality. His seemingly authentic image of a yishuvnik, village Jew, who played an important role in the traditional Jewish economy, is in fact a fake, for in economic terms he belongs to the newly created dacha infrastructure of Yehupets (Kiev) nouveau riche Jews whom he supplies with fresh dairy products. When we first meet Tevye, he is on the verge of economic collapse, because the old system of the Jewish shtetl and village economy is nearly dead.7 Tevye finds comfort in his ignorance of the real development of the outside world. His daughters cannot afford this privilege and are forced to find their place in the new reality. All of them except Beylke are romantic characters who believe in the supreme value and power of love. They actively seek new experience, which can transform their condition and enable them to fulfill their dreams. They are not interested in establishing a new order of life as a result of this transformation, but in the process of change itself. Even when Sholem Aleichem finally decides to close the entire cycle once and forever in the epilogue Lekh-Lekho, the reader is left with a feeling that the daughters’ part of this saga has not been exhausted. The expulsion from the village spells the end only for Tevye, who is incapable of changing and adjusting to new conditions. Each daughter’s story is a separate episode that exists not on its own, but as part of the system. The events in each story are represented according to a certain scheme, with the focus on the increasing discrepancy between Tevye’s expectations and reality. From Tevye’s point of view, nothing is new and all episodes are mere repetitions of the same pattern determined by his fate. Tevye’s fate, as Dan Miron points out, is not dependent on his personality; it follows its own course regardless of his efforts.8 In this respect Tevye resembles another literary character, his more successful contemporary, Sherlock Holmes, who also always remains true to himself no matter what happens to people around him. A character of this kind sets up a pattern for the events that occur around him, but remains unchangeable and unaffected himself, like the eye of a cyclone. The structural pattern of the narrative of this type is usually recognizable, so that having read one or two

Love and Destiny of them, one can anticipate the outcome of the following ones. For a reader inattentive to social and historical details the order in which the episodes follow is not really important, yet anyone who is aware of the reality of the period can see the logic of the order. On the general level, Tevye the Dairyman is a cycle about “Jewish fate and faith” with no marked beginning and no end, a recurrent mythological pattern that repeats itself in various countries and under various historical circumstances.9 On the concrete level, this sequence of episodes is almost a documentary account of the critical changes that occurred in Russian-Jewish life during the twenty years preceding World War I, when the stories were written and published. The interplay between these two levels is what makes Tevye the Dairyman a great work of literature. The stories of Tevye’s daughters provide abundant material for a comprehensive literary reconstruction of the epoch, although this was apparently not Sholem Aleichem’s goal. The stories contain all the elements of change that we discussed in previous chapters: the transition from the patriarchal economic order based on natural production to the new capitalist system; the rise and fall of the revolution, and the creation of the new radical culture; and finally, the ironic depiction of emigration, with Tevye being sent away to the Land of Israel so that he does not embarrass his rich son-in-law. Each story has the potential of a novel, but remains only an episode. What makes the Tevye saga different from contemporary novels is not the material but the form, the organization and representation of this material. Even if we reject Miron’s definition of the book as “anti-roman,” as does Hillel Halkin in his preface to the English translation Tevye the Dairyman, we nevertheless have to admit that it is not a novel in the traditional European sense.10 If Tevye is a developing character, as Halkin sees him, then his development is passive and caused by external factors such as social change and the natural process of growing old. “Mobility and interiority” are the qualities of his daughters, not his. If Tevye the Dairyman is a novel, it belongs to the same experimental trend of the Yiddish novel as Abramovitsh’s Fishke the Lame and the early novels by Sholem Aleichem, a trend that sought to create an authentic Jewish variety of the novel, and that became almost extinct in Yiddish literature after World War I. The inability of the three founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature to create a modern novel of transformation is connected with their inability to imagine an independent and active female character. “Tevye is not a woman,” Sholem Aleichem’s hero keeps repeating, and this mantra implies an established social and moral hierarchy in which the woman belongs to a lower order, that of “mobility and interiority.” As such, she serves as a signifier of transformation and change, aspects of reality that have, in a traditional society, a lower status than stability and continuity. Younger writers

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Love and Destiny of the postclassical generation, being less affected by the inhibitions and constraints of their predecessors (in fact, their older contemporaries), were naturally more open to European influences. They could approach the problem of the novel from a new point of view that was less grounded in the shtetl tradition and more open to modern European sensitivity. The woman in the novels of Bergelson, Asch, and Opatoshu became a natural focus of the struggle between different forces that were tearing apart the fabric of traditional Jewish life. The painful conflict between tradition and modernity, Judaism and cosmopolitanism, passion and duty, self and collective, was far more noticeable in the sensitive and dynamic female characters than in the more static male ones. Jewish men were, to a large extent, formed by their past education and experience; they tried to put their response to the challenge of the present in a form that would satisfy both the old and the new requirements. The man as literary character had at his disposal almost his entire life, during which he had many opportunities to develop but more often nevertheless would remain the same, as was the case with such archetypal characters as Mendele, Tevye, Menakhem-Mendl, or Motl. This “male” form of time—a slow and repetitive flow of events within a relatively stable framework of shtetl life—dominated the Yiddish novel before the twentieth century. The “female” time was limited in that situation to an extremely short interval between the woman’s youth and maturity. She could actively participate in no more than one episode of that process, but was incapable of affecting it as a whole, which put her in a marginal, subordinated position. The reactions of women were more spontaneous and ingenuous, but also more desperate; they were more likely to choose a desperate revolt, and even risk the ensuing destruction, rather than to work at finding a compromise between the old principles and new reality. In extreme cases, the failure to find a solution could lead to self-destruction, but even in this situation the attitude of men and women would be different, a conclusion that Janet Hadda reaches in her study of suicidal characters in Yiddish literature: The men who ultimately commit suicide are chronically withdrawn or inert, a condition that renders them incapable of sustaining the demands of marriage or, in less traditional circumstances, of competing to win a desired woman. The women, for their part, are too willful to be tolerated by conventional standards. Most commonly, their intensity is directed towards pursuing an independent lifestyle, sometimes involving taboo sexual behavior.11

A new image of the Jewish woman occupied the central place in the new vision of reality that was being shaped in Yiddish literature of the earlytwentieth-century period. When it came to the representation of crisis, no

Love and Destiny other character could serve as a better example than a heroine who had grown up in a traditional atmosphere and on the verge of her maturity found herself in an open real world. Her thoughts and feelings became a mirror (often a distorting one) that reflected the changes around her. Revolution, immigration, and the economic crisis of the once stable framework destroyed the conventional division of labor between male and female characters. Now it was precisely this short-lived, fluid female character, rather than a stable and repetitive man, a traditional signifier of the old order, that corresponded to the new sense of reality as a unique historical and personal moment. The active woman brought into Yiddish literature awareness of the changing times and the uniqueness of the moment. Nineteenth-century Yiddish literature (with the notable exception of Aksenfeld’s The Headband) barely noticed concrete historical events. When historical reality appeared in a text, as in I. M. Dik’s The Panic (Di shtot Heres) of 1835 or Abramovitsh’s The Magic Ring and The Mare, it was transformed through a didactic or mythological prism and presented as a traditional recurrent pattern of Jewish suffering. The experience of historical reality as a concrete moment, a unique episode that never repeats again, was directly connected with the appearance of a new female character. The woman became a correlative of the concept of history as a series of changes, as opposed to the cyclical repetition associated with the man. The three characters to be analyzed in this chapter—Sorke from Alone by Joseph Opatoshu, Meri from Meri by Sholem Asch, and Mirl Hurvits from When All Is Said and Done by David Bergelson—represent this type of new Jewish woman. The fact that three major young novelists of the period decided to make a young contemporary woman the central character of their novels amounted to a programmatic statement proclaiming separation from the classical tradition. Despite their different psychological types and social background, these three heroines are remarkably similar in their sensitivity and attitude, which makes them a symbolic representation of the new period in Yiddish literature marked by the preference of Flaubert over Mendele. It is even more remarkable considering the differences in the artistic and ideological positions of the authors. These three central heroines bring to completion the trends toward modernity and involvement evident in such not yet fully developed characters as Khana in Ignatov’s In Whirlpool, Rachel in Opatoshu’s Romance of a Horse Thief, Lyuba in Kobrin’s The Immigrants, and the women revolutionaries in the stories of Ansky, Spektor, and Kabak. The new character is a woman in formation, and the dilemma that she faces can be described as a conflict “between the ideal of self-determination and the equally imperious demands of socialization,” which, according to Moretti, is “coterminous with modern bourgeois civilization.”12 The pressure of socialization usually

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Love and Destiny takes the form of traditional requirements of marriage and Yiddishkayt, whereas self-determination is connected with new ideas of universal freedom and revolution. On the psychological level, this conflict translates into the struggle between the tendency toward individuality and the opposing tendency toward “normality.”13 Deviations from the accepted social order are often perceived as a form of insanity. As in the previous chapter, our analysis of the characters will focus on the sociohistorical aspects of their personalities. Following the general direction of the development of realism, Yiddish literature in the first decade of the twentieth century entered the stage that can be described, in the words of Lydia Ginzburg, a leading Russian expert on psychological realism, as a moment when “history no longer merely set the mainsprings of classical passions into motion; it engendered in the contemporary man completely new historical qualities that entered into new and unprecedented relations with each other.”14 In the case of Yiddish literature, it would be perhaps more accurate to replace the “contemporary man” with the “contemporary woman.” Thus, the psychological organization of a character’s personality in fiction finally became a direct reflection of the dramatic historical transformation of society. The following analysis is guided by the explicitly historicist methodological approach formulated by Ginzburg as follows: The spiritual life of an individual in all its unity and dynamism is encompassed neither by a single typological formula, nor even by a combination of many formulas. The main thing is to view such formulas not as psychological reality but as conventional images, as models that reveal the individual’s functions or the dominant, key features of his personality and behavior. Such formulas are not representations of the individual, but merely frameworks for his identification.15

Sorke: The Escape into History Joseph Opatoshu’s novel Alone (Aleyn) (the text has the dates 1912–13) was published in the New York Yiddish magazine Di tsukunft in 1919 under the title A roman fun a vald-meydl (Romance of a forest girl) and in the same year appeared in book form.16 The title of the magazine publication probably implied that this novel about a woman was meant to be a counterpart to the author’s previous novel about a man, Romance of a Horse Thief, but later Opatoshu changed the title to Alone and made it the concluding third part of the historical trilogy about the Polish uprising of 1863. The novel, which belongs to the genre of the Entwicklungsroman (novel of development), tells a turbulent story of a young Jewish woman, Sorke, in the early 1900s. Her personality is being formed under the impact of the

Love and Destiny new social and cultural forces that affected traditional Jewish society: economic changes, political involvement, a new aesthetic sensitivity. Sorke represents a new vision of history and its influence on the personality. This vision would later be developed by Opatoshu in his two more famous novels, In Polish Woods (In poylishe velder, 1921) and 1863 (1926), the first two parts of the trilogy. At the same time, Alone can probably be better appreciated on its merits rather than as part of the later construction. The novel is permeated with the sense of crisis of modernity caused by a combination of historical and contemporary factors that became part of Jewish life in the early 1900s. The main forces that affect Sorke’s imagination are folklore and literature. The development of her character is represented as constant changes in her self-image, which occur each time she hears a new legend or reads a new story. This series of transformations leads her further away from the norms of traditional Jewish society into the dangerous, open space of modern life. At first we encounter Sorke in the forest, where she lives with her father, the manager of a large forest estate belonging to a Polish landowner. The forest is her home; she feels one with nature and understands the speech of trees and animals. She is also well aware of her special social status as the master’s daughter, a little princess of the forest. Her childhood’s view of the world is formed by her direct experience of nature mediated by Polish folklore. This mythology also has a tragic aspect for Sorke: long ago her mother had gone mad and drowned herself in the Vistula. Sorke believes that now her mother is living in the palace of Wanda, the mythological queen of the river, and even hears her mother luring her into the river: “come, my daughter, come to your mommy!” (p. 13). This motif of tragic fate that runs in the family relates to the dialectical nature of the irrational power that dominates Sorke’s personality. On the one hand, this power is a blind impulse that drives her into mad behavior, away from her family and the established order of life; on the other hand, it connects her with her dead mother, and through the mother with her historical roots. The image of the river works as a metaphor of Sorke’s personality: a combination of fluidity and constancy, tranquility and storm. It runs through the entire trilogy as a symbol combining continuity and change. The two aspects of the dialectic symbolism of the Vistula in the novel have their precursors in the imagery of the shtetl tales by Asch and Weissenberg. The majestic image of the Vistula in Asch’s “poem” A Shtetl, an objective correlative of the harmonious life of the imaginary shtetl idyll, is complemented by the dangerous and unruly Vistula, whose spring flood prefigures the destruction of the old order by the flood of the revolution, in Weissenberg’s novella of the same title. Opatoshu attempts to achieve a synthesis between the two aspects. His Vistula symbolizes both harmony

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Love and Destiny and danger. It is a far cry from Pyatognilovke and Teterevke of Mendele’s tales, parodic small and stagnant shtetl rivers full of filth, symbols of the misery of the Jewish condition in Russia. Bypassing the critical tradition of Yiddish classical literature, Opatoshu refers to the imagery of European romanticism, thus writing his Jews into a non-Jewish landscape and adopting the romantic tradition of linking history with nature through historical landscape. In doing this, Opatoshu reproduces the model of Heinrich Heine, who nearly eighty years earlier attempted to establish a similar romantic connection between the German Jews and the Rhine in his unfinished novel The Rabbi of Bacherach (1840). As in Heine’s fragment, the country’s main river, which is a trademark of its nation, becomes appropriated as a symbolic representation of the local Jewry as well.17 Mordkhe, Sorke’s father, was born in the old Lipover forest and inherited the position of his grandfather, who also worked there as the manager. But continuity and stability characterize only one side of Mordkhe’s personality; indications of the other side are rumors about his travel to Prussia and an affair with a German woman, as well as his sometimes strange behavior. The secret of Mordkhe’s life has to do with his involvement in the Polish uprising of 1863, which becomes the main theme of first two parts of the historical trilogy. The double-sided nature of Mordkhe is also connected with the nature of the great Polish river. Sorke has a double-sided vision of reality. She can often see something real, and, at the same time, imagine it as part of a dream. The peasants working in the forest are transformed in her imagination into a gang of robbers, her father becomes their leader, and the big oak, which they fell, is their victim. Sorke’s development is represented as a perpetual change of personae as she moves from reality to imagination, and then back to a newly recreated reality, constantly searching for a new identity. She is drawn to the irrational side of history and tries on new masks. Each story she hears or reads becomes a basis for a new self-image. Once, in the forest, her father tells her a story about the beautiful Jadwiga, who fell in love with Count Potocki and married him instead of Wanda’s son, Tadeusz. In revenge, Wanda sent a beautiful Jewish girl, Shulamis, to seduce their son, the young Count Potocki. Out of love, the young count converted to Judaism and was sentenced to death by the Polish Sejm. Jadwiga and her husband died of despair, and the ghost of their son is still roaming around Polish fields looking for his beloved Shulamis. This story gives a strong impulse to Sorke’s imagination and makes her see herself as a central figure of the Polish national drama. She craves to leave her marginal social position, to which she has been doomed by her Jewish origin and her father’s decision to live in the forest, and to jump back into the whirlpool of history. In her search for a role to play in this drama, Sorke begins with the

Love and Destiny imagery of legends and folklore and gradually moves toward more sophisticated contemporary models, but the driving impulse remains the same: the childish desire to be a queen. On her way to the realization of her dream, Sorke passes through several stages. At first she turns to the sentimental stereotype of Dinezon’s Yosele. She reads the novella with tears in her eyes, but then almost immediately rejects it as a way for herself. She reacts to the story with protest: “Daddy, why is the rebbe so bad? What did he want from Yosele? Why didn’t he beat the rich children? O, I would scratch this rebbe’s eyes out!” (p. 43). Her father does not like her reading Dinezon either, but for another reason: “Silly child, you want to make a tishebov [a day of sorrow] here? A writer makes up a story, and she takes it so to heart!” (ibid.). The catharsis, which Sorke experiences at the end of the reading, leads to the creation of her own version of the story: “Had I made up a story like this, I would have made Yosele a hero, his father would recuperate and his good mother would not die. . . . And afterwards Yosele would take revenge on everybody!” (pp. 44–45). The story also intensifies her feeling of loss for her mother: “Daddy, you see, Yosele’s mother came to him in his dream—and my mommy never comes to me!” (p. 45). In response to the traditional mythological image of Yosele, Sorke creates her own new personal mythology and wants to live in it, in contrast to her experienced father, who wants to withdraw from any mythos altogether. The next stage in Sorke’s development is formed by her encounter with Polish and French cultures. Again, this encounter has two aspects. During her French lessons, she recalls a family legend about her great-grandmother, who once met Napoleon and conversed with him in French. The legend stirs Sorke’s imagination: “Sorke was proud of her great-grandmother and liked to have a golden snuff box with Napoleon’s picture, which her greatgrandmother received from him as present. Sorke often dreamt that when she became older, she would go to Paris, she felt that she had a connection with this city and was sure that the snuff box will open all the doors for her” (p. 46). The snuff box with Napoleon’s portrait becomes a magic link between the past and the future, a sign of hope that Sorke will one day also become part of history. This brings to her mind a real story of her friend Tseshke Kronenberg, who lives in a pension in Paris. Sorke feels sorry for Tseshke because her friend’s parents are not religious, and, at the same time, she envies her life in Paris. Then Sorke’s fantasy shifts to Tseshke’s older brother, who has been involved in the Polish revolt. Now he is under arrest and about to be executed. France, in this context, signifies the new idea of historical progress, of which Paris is the center. Through this play of Sorke’s imagination Opatoshu builds up a link between the Polish forest, symbol of stability and backwardness, and Paris, symbol of revolution and liberty.

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Love and Destiny As in revolutionary fiction, the woman becomes the embodiment of this link, and this motif evokes the whole complex of the revolutionary woman. Sorke’s formal education is carried out under the influence of positivism. Her Polish governess stresses the importance of mathematics and social history, but Sorke is not interested in abstract problems of how long it will take to fill a cauldron with water through two faucets, or the position of women in fifteenth-century Polish society. Instead, she wants to know something that she can relate to: “Is it true that [king] Kazimierz had a Jewish wife?” This interest leads her to read the historical romance The King of Peasants, by one of the most popular and prolific Polish writers, Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–87). The exposure to Polish romantic culture changes Sorke’s view about love and marriage: “And I believe that if a girl cannot marry the man she wants, she has to sit and wait,” she says to her governess (p. 55). Thus, two newly discovered aspects of reality, the dramas of history and love, become connected in Sorke’s imagination with French and Polish cultures. In the next episode Sorke is about fifteen years old and ready for marriage, according to the traditional standards. Again she feels the call from Wanda and her mother from under the water. Now, the young Count Potocki from Wanda’s underwater palace becomes the hero of her daydreams. In her imagination, Potocki merges with the young Kronenberg, and this combined heroic character spreads happiness around himself wherever he goes. This romantic dream contradicts her father’s intention to marry her to her cousin Borukh, “the best young man in town”: “She did not know what to do with herself, felt she was superfluous, did not want to think that she would spend her entire life in this house. She hoped that somebody would come and take her away from here by force” (p. 72). Sorke’s immediate reaction to this predicament reflects her confused state, torn between different cultures. First, she takes Kraszewski’s novel and reads the episode where Esther, alone, in the middle of the night, waits for her beloved king Kazimierz. This nurtures the romantic, “European” side of her personality. But then she does something very different: she steals a Korbn minkhe, a Yiddish prayer-book for women, from the old family servant Brayne and starts reading the section Maayan-tohoyr, which deals with women’s ritual purity. The Polish novel serves her as a protection: “At the smallest rustle she hid the prayer-book in hay, pretending she was reading The King of Peasants” (p. 73). The traditional prayer book becomes a source of forbidden factual knowledge about sexual matters, a subject that was obviously taboo in romantic culture. All this culminates in another dream about Kronenberg-Potocki: he comes to her, dresses her in men’s clothes, and together they walk in his forest where Wanda meets them and leads them to her palace.

Love and Destiny Sorke’s complex and contradictory personality is contrasted by two traditional older women, her Aunt Gitl, Borukh’s mother, and the servant Brayne. These are one-dimensional female types familiar from nineteenthcentury literature. Brayne sees the cause of present problems in the wrong choice of a wife for Mordkhe, the mistake that has caused the unfortunate chain of events. Now the two women and her father try to arrange the marriage between Borukh and Sorke in order to avert the dangerous future. Sorke strongly resists this plan, and, for the first time, feels that she hates her father. At this point, Sorke is forced to make a real decision, which will determine the course of her life. In this turbulent state of mind she goes to the forest to seek solace, and the Black Rock on the bank of the Vistula reminds her of a Jewish legend connected with that place. Once upon a time, there was a Jewish settlement on the banks of the Vistula. Chmielnicky’s army besieged the settlement and demanded that the Jews convert to Christianity in the course of three days. The rabbi decided to wait until the last moment, in the hope that God would rescue his people, and then die for kiddush hashem. On the last day, the rabbi sent his son, whose wedding was planned for that week, to see his bride for the last time. The rabbi’s son and his bride went to the banks of the Vistula accompanied by a maid, because, according to custom, a bride and a bridegroom were not allowed to be together alone. The bride asked the bridegroom to go with her, and together they walked into the river and drowned. The maid rushed to the river, screaming and stretching out her arms to hold them—and turned to stone. Since then, she stands there as the Black Rock, a female figure with outstretched arms and open mouth. For a moment, the impressionable Sorke identifies with the story, imagining herself as the bride, Borukh as the rabbi’s son, and old Brayne as the maid. But then she immediately dissociates herself from this vision, and this moment brings another turn in her story. In the dusk she sees a boat with a student and “all at once feels the joy coming to her from across the meadows, from the forest, from the river” (p. 98–99). She immediately forgets about everything, because “here is the prince, he is rushing along the Vistula, he is coming for her” (p. 99). This student-prince turns out to be young Jewish man with the Polish name Wladek, the son of their neighbor, who has come home from Warsaw to vacation. This encounter opens before Sorke a new luring world of urban life, university, and student community. The new friend makes her familiar with another book, Stanislaw Przybyszewsky’s (1868–1927) novel Homo Sapiens.18 The book calls forth another transformation of Sorke’s image of herself; this time, the romantic heroine is replaced by a sensual modern woman. Again Sorke plays the old trick of substituting one book for another. When her father asks her what she is reading, she lies: Pan

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Love and Destiny Tadeusz.19 She knows that her father would not object to her reading the romantic poem that glorifies old Polish heroism and Polish-Jewish coexistence, but he would definitely be against the dangerous, decadent novel. As earlier with Yosele, her father’s reaction is characteristic of his skeptical attitude toward any fantasy: “In his [Mickiewicz’s] poem Jews put tzitzit [fringes of the tallit] on their head, not tfiln. . . . True, it’s a small detail, but for me personally it is enough to make me lose my confidence in the author” (p. 106). The old romantic code of Mickiewicz’s poem is still shared by the cashier, a young man who is a proud reader of the Zionist Hebrew newspaper Hatsefirah. But Sorke has already become an adept of the new style of decadence: “She believed that she was the heroine of Homo Sapiens . . . she is about to leave with Falk, she is packing up her things. Someone knocks at the door, she opens. Her fiancé, the lame artist, comes in. The artist looks exactly like Borukh, but he limps on one leg” (p. 109). This identification causes another conflict in Sorke’s soul. In accordance with the new paradigm of decadence, she is inclined to run away with Wladek, as befits a heroine of Homo Sapiens, but the old romantic ideal of faithfulness and pride is still alive, and it does not allow her to deceive poor Borukh. When Sorke learns that Borukh has told Wladek about their engagement, she makes up her mind not to betray her fiancé and tells off Wladek. As a reward, she forces Borukh to come to her through the window the same night, which he does, losing control over himself for the first time. Sorke demonstrates to herself and to Borukh that she is the boss and creates a situation resembling a decadent novel in which the woman dominates the man. The inner conflict of Sorke’s new personality reaches its climax on the wedding night. During the wedding ceremony and the celebration that follows, she feels simultaneously indifferent and excited: “For the first time in her life Sorke felt how everybody was waiting for her glance. She became more capricious and pretty, she felt how she was rising over all heads, she was growing, and at any moment she could play the role of Sabbatai Tsvi’s Sarah who with her eyes and hair seduced a myriad of learned Jews” (p. 135). When Borukh comes to the bedroom, she coldly refuses to let him sleep with her. In the morning she tells him that he has married a meshugene vayb (mad woman). Now, finally, Sorke’s behavior reaches the stage that is perceived by others to be abnormal. Borukh’s pattern of behavior differs from that of Sorke. He conforms to the traditional male role model because he does not know any new fictional models. His imagination is plain and limited to everyday shtetl concepts. Therefore, he lacks the resources with which to confront Sorke’s abnormality. He spends the whole night sitting in the corner. In his dream he is ready to yield to her the role of leader: “She took him—as if he were a ‘lady’ and

Love and Destiny she, a ‘gentleman’—made the first step of a waltz: you know, Borukh, it would fit me so well to be a boy!” (p. 144). In this dream, Sorke leads him through the window into the forest, where they meet Wladek. Wladek takes Sorke and runs away with her, but Borukh throws a tree at him, takes Sorke in his arms, and runs uphill. He gets tired, can no longer hold Sorke, and suddenly flies up to the sky. The dream demonstrates that Borukh has no independent concepts with which to construct his vision of reality. He can live only with borrowed images, mediated by women. Before he met Sorke, he was controlled by his mother; now Sorke has to take the lead. The real conflict in this marriage is not between Borukh and Sorke, but between Sorke and Gitl. After the wedding night, Gitl comes to the bedroom to make sure that everything is in order. She immediately senses the deviant behavior, and from that moment on Sorke’s problem is no longer psychological, but social. After the wedding, Sorke becomes passive and uninterested in home affairs. She spends all her time reading and daydreaming. The new dream eventually takes the form of intensive expectation for a “free man,” “someone who was absolutely not similar to anybody she knew” (p. 157). This new man materializes in the person of Kronenberg, whom she meets in the winter skating on the ice of the Vistula. As in Ignatov’s In Whirlpool, the motif of ice-skating signifies active youth, new liberty, spiritual excitement, and the beginning of an adventure. This episode reiterates the contrast between Borukh, who is helpless and scared on the ice, and Sorke, who is invigorated by the new freedom brought by a new man, the young Kronenberg. He looks “like an Englishman” and has a reputation of being a radical revolutionary: “he does not pray anymore, does not like the Russian emperor, and he can find no better person than the peasant” (p. 161). Kronenberg explains his principles to Sorke, and they sound familiar to her: “and it seemed to her as if she did not hear it from him but was reading it out of a book, an old and familiar book that she had already read before” (p. 165). Sorke feels ready to join him wherever he leads her. Kronenberg thereafter becomes a frequent visitor in her home. He disappears only for a short period when Sorke gives birth to a child (evidence that she has eventually submitted to the pressure of her mother-in-law, and entered into marital relations with her husband). One night he returns to Sorke, and she elopes with him, leaving the child behind. Sorke disappears from the novel once and for all. No one knows her whereabouts, but nobody seems to be concerned: “Is it true that Sorke is in America?” enquires a curious visitor, “and if not in America? It’s a punishment from God,” replies Brayne (p. 206). Mordkhe does not even want to hear Sorke’s name mentioned anymore: “So his only daughter has run away from him, left him with a grandchild. That’s how the wheel of

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Love and Destiny fortune turns. The same story that happened to him is now repeated with his daughter” (p. 207). The cycle repeats itself, but this is perhaps the last time in history. At the end of the story the author draws his historiosophical conclusion, using the image introduced by Peretz: the old Jewish chain, spun from God, Torah, and Israel, has become rusty and is coming apart. Mordkhe is the last link in this chain. The last episode in the novel reinforces this symbolism. A Polish peasant comes to Mordkhe to tell him that he found a piece of a Jewish tombstone on his land. The peasant is afraid to plow on this spot and wants to give it to Mordkhe. The piece of the tombstone has only one legible word on it: “p.n. Avraham . . . ” (here lies Avraham . . . ). This name refers to one of the legends about the foundation of Polish Jewry, a story about the proposed election of a Jew, Avraham Prochownik, as prince of Poland.20 The cycle is completed, the first and the last links have met, and history is closed. The story of Sorke shows how a new, complex, multidimensional image of the Jewish woman is constructed. It is formed with the help of several layers of cultural identities. Sorke consequently identifies herself with a heroine of a folkloristic, sentimental, romantic, and, finally, decadent code. Each time, she imagines herself in a situation constructed according to the rules of a newly acquired code, and acts accordingly. This pattern becomes a constant centrifugal force, which drives her farther away from the protective cyclical order. Having started, Sorke can never stop; she needs to find new identities for herself time and again. This force drives her toward the mainstream of history, which will eventually destroy her. The objects of her desire keep changing, and she can never satisfy herself, in contrast to the heroines of Sholem Aleichem’s early novels, who were content with their modest positions as a respected wife or mother in the new reformed social structure. As Sholem Aleichem reiterates, these Jewish daughters preserved their virtues precisely because they had enough inner strength to resist the harmful influence of romances, whereas Sorke falls under the spell of every new book she reads. She constantly reinvents herself according to book models, and the correspondence of a life situation with fiction is, for her, the criterion of truth. The mediators change, but the driving force remains the same—the desire to become part of history and the universe. Opatoshu’s Sorke has her literary predecessor in Sorele, the heroine of the story A Forest Girl (A valdmeydl), by I. M. Weissenberg.21 The parallels between the two tales only underscore the innovative approach of Opatoshu to the traditionalist scheme. Sorele, like Sorke, is the only daughter of a Jewish widower, who has spent all his life working in the forest. She is in love with Leon, the son of a merchant from a big city. Half of the story is devoted to the depiction of her anticipation of their meeting. But Leon’s visit to the forest turns out to be devastating for Sorele. Leon

Love and Destiny explains to her that she will never fit into city society: “You are beautiful, Sorele, you are beautiful . . . but it would be a shame for me to live with you . . . people will call you a ‘country girl’, and I’ll hear it and will have to be silent” (p. 49). The ending of Weissenberg’s story is tragic: Sorele drinks a whole bottle of sleeping draught and dies. The narrator presents her suicide not as a sin or weakness, but almost as an act of religious heroism: “and she poured out her holy soul in the four corners of her room, as a righteous woman” (p. 55). Before Leon’s coming to the forest, Sorele goes to a Gypsy fortuneteller, who foretells the coming misfortune. This episode sets up the conceptual framework for the interpretation of the forthcoming events. Sorele’s behavior is determined by the neoromantic code, with its preference for nature over culture, sense over reason, a heroic death over an ordinary life. In this system of values Sorele is a holy martyr because she dies for her ideal. This is a rather primitive attempt to incorporate a new type of behavior into the old conceptual system of Judaism, presenting a popular motif of suicide out of rejected love as a new version of the kiddush hashem. Opatoshu takes the situation of A Forest Girl as his point of departure and transforms it into a new open-ended construction. Sorke does not let herself be enclosed in one conceptual system: every time she comes to a critical point in one cycle, she breaks one code and accepts another. The cycle, instead of being completed, is replaced by a new, more dynamic one. This spiral scheme of Alone corresponds to the pattern of development of Sorke’s personality. She disappears at the very moment she should become forever bound to the most powerful natural cycle of birth, marriage, and death. Instead, she leaves Mordkhe alone to manage her newborn daughter and take care of the newly found grave of the founding father, Avraham. The three agents of change that were adumbrated in the first three chapters play important roles in the unfolding of the plot. Economically, Mordkhe seems to be quite stable: he is, appropriately, a dealer in timber, an old and established article of Jewish trade in Poland. As we have seen, this commodity belongs to the “natural range” associated with the old, pre-Russian, independent Poland. As the reader will see from the first and second parts of the trilogy, Mordkhe’s personality has been formed by his participation in the struggle for Polish independence during the January uprising of 1863. This kind of person belongs to the old Polish economic order, like Asch’s Reb Shloyme Noged or Reb Yekhezkl Gombiner. However, as the last chapter of the novel hints, Mordkhe’s economic stability is in danger. The forest is being senselessly felled, and Mordkhe knows that “with so much felling, the forest will last for no more than five or six years” (p. 207). Obviously, he does not understand the economic reasons for such extensive deforestation, but an informed reader can see that the “natural” basis of the

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Love and Destiny Jewish economy in Poland is also coming to an end, and is being replaced by the new Russian industrial capitalism that devours the forest. The second motif of the revolutionary involvement of the young is more pronounced in the novel. Sorke herself is very far from possessing a revolutionary consciousness. The motif of revolution serves as a mediator of her desire, because it is the air of revolutionary mystique that makes Kronenberg so attractive to her. In contrast to the romantic student Wladek, her first object of desire, Kronenberg is a man of action, not a dreamer. Thus, indirectly, the revolutionary ethos supplies a model, according to which Sorke shapes her own behavior. Her elopement with Kronenberg and abandonment of her child are radical acts of defiance of the old order represented by her father Mordkhe, her nanny Brayne, and her oldfashioned husband, Borukh. The presence of the revolution in the atmosphere of the time helps her to realize her dream, which in other circumstances would remain in the imaginary realm of folk legends and romantic fantasies. And finally, America is also mentioned in the novel, although it is already beyond the scope of the story. America signifies the future point on the line of development, which starts in the Polish forest, and is shaped by the French and Polish past and the Russian present. America would be a natural setting for a continuation of this novel. When considered as a novel in its own right, Alone is an open-ended story about Sorke; but as the concluding part of the historical trilogy, it becomes a closure of the story of her father, Mordkhe. The fact that Opatoshu in his next two historical novels about the Polish uprising, which deal with events preceding those depicted in Alone, decided to unfold the past-oriented line of this double story and not to continue the story into the future is indicative of the change of mood in Yiddish literature after World War I, when it became increasingly past-oriented. This change of perspective turns Alone from a modernist novel of transformation into a concluding part of a larger construction presenting a classification of Polish-Jewish history. And yet, the conclusion of the novel leaves hope for some continuity, if not on the cultural then on the biological level. Despite her radical rejection of tradition and old social order, Sorke is closer to her father and the “golden chain” than she herself is aware. Opatoshu repeatedly stresses the psychological and physical affinity between Sorke and her ancestors. In her conduct she unconsciously follows the behavioral pattern of her parents. If this tendency were to continue, she might one day come back to tradition and family, and thus add a new link to the old chain. Being a young Yiddish novelist in America, Opatoshu is obviously concerned with the problem of the continuity of his culture and people, and keen to see new opportunities that the new country has in store for them. In his early novels, dealing with the Old and the New Countries, he iden-

Love and Destiny tifies those aspects of Jewish existence that are inherent in the people and are not dependent on a particular environment. He is interested in Jewish vitality and the ability to provide an adequate and spontaneous response to changing circumstances. The behavior of Jews in history and their reaction to historical events become important themes in his later novels and stories. Alone represents forces of both change and continuity. The character of a young woman becomes a symbolic form of the new reality. Survival in this reality requires qualities that were not valued and cultivated by the old order: inventiveness, vitality, spontaneity, and the willingness to take risks. At the moment of crisis, youth becomes the main driving force of change. Looking back into history and life in the Old Country, Opatoshu tries to uncover these qualities behind the hard crust of traditional Yiddishkayt and to imagine the conflicts that took place in that society. This project of reinterpreting East European Jewish life is, in fact, oriented toward the need of the immigrant community to understand its place in the broad context of Jewish history.

Meri: The Fate of a Gypsy Child In Chapter 2, we examined Sholem Asch’s Meri, one of the central Yiddish novels of the post-1905 decade, within the context of the fiction of revolution. That analysis was undertaken from the sociohistorical perspective established by the two leading critics of Sholem Asch, Shmuel Niger and Max Erik, both of whom saw in the novel the representation of collective, rather than individual, experience. The two critics, so different in their worldviews, agreed that Meri had no independent value as a coherent character and was merely an illustration of various aspects of social reality. In this chapter, we shall attempt to overturn this perspective and to look at Meri as a character in the context of the Yiddish psychological novel of the period. In contrast to the previous analysis, we will now focus on the dynamic side, that is, on the formation of the literary character, rather than on the static aspects of representation of the community at a certain stage of its historical development. In Chapter 2, Meri was presented as a prototype of the “kiddush hashem novel” (Max Erik’s definition); this chapter will deal with the “Bohemian novel,” another aspect of Meri that it shares with When All Is Said and Done and Alone. The goal is to follow the stages of development of Meri as a character and to understand her central role in the representation of crisis in the novel. The novel begins when Meri comes back to her native shtetl after having graduated from the gymnasium in a big city. The time is the early autumn of 1904, as one can learn from subsequent events. Meri feels alienated from

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Love and Destiny the aesthetic “poverty” of her parents’ traditional Judaism, which is contrasted to the colors of the Ukrainian landscape and a picturesque village church. She has no emotions for her own tradition, which she does not know; instead, all her feelings are given over to Ukrainian peasants, nature, and landscape. She thinks about a novel that she began writing in school: “It was supposed to be a terrible story of a countess who is lying on her death-bed and implores her son to become a Catholic priest, but the son falls in love with a girl. And the conflict in him between the vow to his mother and the love to his chosen one—it all was supposed to be something heartbreaking” (p. 9). As Avraham Novershtern observes, Meri, like Bergelson’s characters, is from the very beginning situated on the cultural and topographical border of the traditional Jewish world.22 Meri is a passive and dreamy girl living in the atmosphere of romanticized medieval images—she identifies herself with a female portrait by Botticelli on her dressing table. Her imagination is shaped by neoromantic clichés: she likes to dress in silk and dark colors “in Rembrandtean light” (p. 26). The leitmotif of shimmer and Rembrandtean colors signifies instability and the elusive beauty of the heroine, those qualities that render her attractive to men. Correspondingly, she is inattentive and angry when she has to face the sharp colors of the outside world. To escape her unsophisticated family, she plans to go to study in the St. Petersburg women’s college, but is too absentminded to make the necessary preparations. Her dream is to get out of the shtetl: “I don’t want to remain stuck in this small shtetl, I’ll go mad” (p. 14). Being romantic, she is opposed to the practical approach to study, but has a vague idea about an alternative: “All Jews study only medicine. It’s not a science, it’s a profession, a career. I will take natural sciences, I like nature very much” (p. 14). In the beginning of the novel Meri is still a child who needs support and protection. She is tense with her parents, against whom she defends her own image of herself as it has been formed in the atmosphere of the gymnasium, whereas with her cousin Misha she is relaxed and natural. Meri asks Misha to go with her to St. Petersburg, but he is afraid that he will not be admitted to the university there. Her dreams about student life in the capital are full of romantic stereotypes: strolling on Nevsky Prospect, going to restaurants, living on the “Islands”—the elegant aristocratic-bohemian suburb near the seashore. Meri’s affection for Misha is based on shared experience and feelings; they belong to one family and seem to walk side by side into the unknown but exciting future. The fateful turn of the story occurs when Meri meets Misha’s friend, a painter introduced to her as Mikhail Abramovitsh Kowalski. Kowalski promptly protests against the Russian form of his name, thus expressing his loyalty to Poland: “In Poland, where I come from, they call me just Kowal-

Love and Destiny ski, or even better, as my friends call me, Pan Michal” (p. 26) (the markedly Polish form Michal replaces the Russian Mikhail and the Jewish Abramovitsh). Kowalski immediately senses Meri’s weakness, the desire to look picturesque. Meri is captured by his charm: “She spoke only three words with him—and she is already friends with him” (p. 28). Kowalski talks about his love for the Ukrainian landscape, which is for him “like a bride who goes to the wedding with a song on her lips” (p. 29). The rural simplicity, which Kowalski sees in Meri’s countenance and movements is for him her most valuable and attractive quality. Being a Jew, however, he is not allowed to live in a village close to his beloved Ukrainian nature. His ideal in art and role model in life is the famous Russian-Jewish landscape painter Isaac Levitan (1861–1900), who “has stolen into the Russian village as an apostle of art, and behind the back of the policeman preserved in his paintings the deepest secrets of the Russian land” (p. 30). Despite his demonstrated eloquence, Kowalski pretends to have poor command of all three languages, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish. He is a new type of Jew who values the image over the word, and Meri falls under his spell: “As if a quiet joy filled her little figure and, her eyes and her whole face radiated happiness. Her movements became lighter and more rhythmical” (p. 38). Kowalski provides the magic touch that brings harmony into her vision of herself. As is to be expected, Kowalski’s charm makes Misha unhappy. Kowalski’s interest in his cousin strengthens Misha’s desire for Meri and also his dissatisfaction with himself. Now Misha realizes that Meri has a “mystery.” The encounter with Kowalski forms Misha’s new idea of love as the epitome of maturity: “to be capable of deep love, one has to be a whole human being, a big official, a senior officer, or at least a famous doctor” (p. 54). This kind of mature love between a married woman and an aristocratic officer is depicted in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; but a young student like Misha is not yet able to experience such strong feelings. The break in the relationship between Meri and Misha comes in the winter. She becomes sick from the St. Petersburg climate and Misha takes her to a village resort in Finland. The surrounding landscape of snow and ice is in direct contrast to the Ukrainian nature in the first part of the novel. As in the autumn, Misha and Meri seem to be close to the realization that they love each other. As before, the unexpected appearance of Kowalski ruins their idyll, this time forever. Kowalski comes to Finland after his successful exhibition in St. Petersburg, where the newspapers praised him as a “second Levitan.” His art was especially welcomed by the critics who opposed the dominant decadent trends. However, being Jewish, Kowalski had not been allowed to stay in the city and decided to go to a village in nearby Finland. There he easily wins Meri back with his power of strong spontaneous passion: “I do what my heart tells me to and what I like. I do not know what will be with

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Love and Destiny me tomorrow, I am not responsible for a single minute of my life—because I cannot take it, but it takes me” (p. 143). When Misha retires from the scene, Meri and Kowalski visit the famous Imatra waterfall, a popular retreat among the St. Petersburg artists and poets. Asch’s use of nature imagery comes close to its symbolist interpretation in contemporary Russian literature: And it seemed as if the whole world has dissolved in the river and is throwing itself with full force and will into the abyss. The two of them looked like two chips of wood, and how easy it would be for them to leave everything behind there, at the big world-wedding—down there, where it was all boiling and screaming and whipping itself into a mist, in a cloud, sparkling and flashing with a thousand colors. (p. 154)

The winter waterfall, a distinctly new nature image in Yiddish literature, becomes a symbolic representation of the St. Petersburg life, with its magic mixture of reality and dream. Kowalski and Meri feel how this “worldwedding” pulls them into the middle of the whirlpool. The use of the image of frozen water in association with St. Petersburg can be found in the romantic poem “The Monument to Peter the Great” (1832) by Adam Mickiewicz, in which the rearing horse of the city’s founder is compared with a frozen waterfall that will one day melt and destroy the tsar’s own creation. This association evokes the double connotation of the river motif so familiar from Opatoshu’s novel. The majestic and beautiful Dnieper in the beginning of Meri, like the Vistula in Asch’s A Shtetl, is a correlative of traditional Jewish life. The frozen waterfall is the source of the flood, the metaphor of the future revolution. In Meri, Asch presents the contrast between the city and the shtetl through the contrast of the two images of moving water. The Imatra waterfall sets the tone of the St. Petersburg part of the novel. The second part of Meri is the first serious attempt in Yiddish literature to depict Jewish society in the Russian capital. Sholem Aleichem’s portrait of St. Petersburg in The Flood had to be tailored to the tastes of his American popular readers and therefore could not be too sophisticated. Asch apparently had a more ambitious task of settling a score with the acculturated Russian-Jewish elite of the time. He goes much further than Sholem Aleichem in his criticism and rejection of this variety of Jewish life. The Jews who populate Asch’s St. Petersburg are morally broken by the foreign and hypocritical life they have chosen. They can achieve success only at the price of moral surrender, by betraying their national identity. But even social success and recognition do not guarantee them security, because at any moment the police can humiliate and throw them out of the city. This instability creates a special atmosphere of moral and aesthetic permissiveness and lack of principle. The love of Kowalski and Meri is not viable at this “enchanted world wedding.” At first, their life in

Love and Destiny St. Petersburg seems a realization of Meri’s early dream: Kowalski has success and money, they rent a stylish flat on the “Islands,” and frequent artistic and bohemian circles. Kowalski’s art is promoted by the once influential art critic Osip Grigorievitsh Maksimovitsh, who tries to restore his weakening influence in society.23 Maksimovitsh represents an extreme type of Jewish assimilationist: He came from the Jewish Pale, had intended to convert to the Orthodox Church, but had had a small precondition: he wanted the Church to reject one of its dogmas which Maksimovitsh could not accept. He published a letter to the archbishop in the newspapers on this issue. But since the one hundred and fifty million Orthodox Christians did not want to renounce the dogma of their Church for the sake of Maksimovitsh, he had to remain a Jew. (p. 156–57)

This act of Maksimovitsh is an ironic replay of an episode from the history of the Berlin Haskalah. In 1799, David Friedländer, the leader of the Berlin Jewish community, “published a pamphlet, at first anonymously but later acknowledging its authorship, in which he suggested that the rich householders of Berlin might possibly convert to Christianity, on the condition that the Protestant authorities would omit the dogma of the trinity from the confession of faith to be pronounced in the act of baptism.”24 Friedländer’s offer, however, was not acceptable to the Protestant authorities. In this context, Maksimovitsh becomes a caricature of a Western-oriented type of Russian-Jewish liberal who wants to negotiate his place in Christian society and culture but has no understanding of the reality of Russia. Maksimovitsh is so naive and deluded by his fantasies that he believes Russian society is even more open and liberal than Prussia at the height of the Enlightenment. An elderly litvak (a negative characteristic in Asch’s system of values), Maksimovitsh has a weakness for young women, which drives him closer to Meri. He is helped by another Jewish semiapostate, the wife of a prosperous Jewish lawyer. Her salon, which Meri and Kowalski now frequent, is decorated in an eclectic mixture of styles: Empire, Rococo, decadence, orientalism, pseudoclassicism, and even Russian and Ukrainian primitivism. Her guests are also a mixture—of actors, artists, writers, intellectuals, and just social drinkers. Those people represent St. Petersburg’s whirlpool, which mixes up everything and everybody. Meri is fascinated by this exotic world of mixture and eclecticism: The light poured from open stores and filled everything with a golden-brown glow. The night came and wrapped it in its darkness, so that everything became mixed up: light, horses, people—and concealed everything in a cloud. It seemed to Meri that the city was a very big pot in which everything was boiling together, and she was also in the middle of this pot, a drop of that large life called Petersburg; and how happy she was about it! (p. 160)

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Love and Destiny Under the spell of the city, Meri begins to admire Maksimovitsh, the central figure in the salon. He embodies her dream of the elegant artistic life in the cosmopolitan capital, free from any national or cultural constraints. Now that she is so close to it, the city’s influence on her life is most destructive. In fact, Maksimovitsh himself suffers secretly from this pressure more than anybody else. His tiny room in a flat that he shares with his bohemian friends is his last asylum in the “hell” of the city. The room is full of bric-abrac—books from his once extensive library, pieces of art, which “share his exile here, among the Gentiles” (p. 178). One of the signs of this “exile” is a copy of the Septuagint, which he always keeps on his table. For Maksimovitsh, Meri becomes a source of freshness and vitality, which he needs so desperately. He takes her to the Hermitage and shows her his favorite painting, Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son. This painting represents for him the most basic human instinct, the desire to return home. The Hermitage is for him a gloomy monument of Russian imperialism, everything in this museum is looted from Polish palaces, Caucasian mosques, the sacred places of other peoples. All these treasures are kept here in captivity in the darkness of the hostile city and dream about return to their homeland. Maksimovitsh is suggesting that Meri is also one of these treasures, which has been uprooted from its natural place and brought to the suffocating atmosphere of the capital. In the meantime, the lawyer’s vampy wife is trying to seduce Kowalski. On the verge of his downfall, he realizes that he has become nothing better than a society Don Juan. He wants to go away from St. Petersburg, where he is wasting his talent, to be alone with his brush and easel somewhere in the mountains. He also wants to return to Meri, yearning “for a strong feeling of love that would overtake him completely” (p. 214). Kowalski rushes home thinking about Meri, and finds her with Maksimovitsh. Suddenly he realizes what has happened: “He has taken a girl from a good home who still needs a guardian, and brought her into a society of obsolete, satiated men who made a premature salon lady out of her” (p. 216). At this moment of despair Kowalski wants to restore the lost harmony and innocence, and he decides to send Meri back home. This change in his attitude indicates the beginning of the decline of their relationship. Meri admits to Maksimovitsh that she likes the way she lives in St. Petersburg and cannot imagine any other life for herself. Maksimovitsh calls her a tsigayner-kind (gypsy child), a type of person who has a subconscious inclination for the wandering lifestyle. Meri agrees: “Yes, I am a gypsy child, and my future is in a gypsy camp. Once I had a dream. Now I only have to find the right gypsy man” (p. 221). The reference to gypsies as an emblem of homelessness in the modern world reminds us of Rosa Spivak from Sholem Aleichem’s Wandering Stars, who also was called a gypsy by

Love and Destiny her teacher and friend, the actress Marcella. This comparison stresses the inner alienation of the young Jewish woman from a non-Jewish environment, to which she cannot belong despite her apparent social success. Kowalski feels responsible for Meri and wants to save her from the dangerous atmosphere of the city: “You are a Jewish ‘literary girl’. You ought to be taken away from that environment by force, if you yourself lack the sense to leave” (p. 229). For him, the notion of literature hides the dyed hair and wrinkled faces of lustful old men. Meri, in turn, accuses him of egotism, and Kowalski must admit that she is right. After their separation, both Kowalski and Meri feel empty and lonely in the world. Meri goes back to her shtetl, but is unable to stay there for long, and soon she leaves again for St. Petersburg. The novel can indeed be read as a melodramatic, popular romance on the verge of kitsch.25 It is clear, however, that Asch had in mind something more ambitious than just telling a sentimental, sensational story about a Jewish “Gypsy girl” lost in the whirlpool of the modern city. Meri is the first in a series of novels in which Asch carries out his life project of providing a panoramic representation of Jewish life in the past and present. It is also the first East European Yiddish novel with a big city as its main backdrop. The novel contains elements that will become main themes of Asch’s later major novels and establish his reputation as the most popular Yiddish novelist of the postclassical generation. Such best-sellers as Three Cities and East River show the assimilated metropolitan Jewry of Russia, Poland, and America, whose glamour would fascinate and annoy Asch all his life. Motke the Thief continues the naturalistic trend in the description of the lower classes, the theme that began with the description of the Rov in Meri. And, as Erik pointed out, the kiddush hashem motif, prominent in Asch’s writing of the 1920s, also appears first in Meri.26 The three main characters of the novel represent different types of contemporary Jewish youth. Meri, Kowalski, and Misha personify three ways that are open to the new generation. Kowalski is a Nietzschean type in egoistic pursuit of his personal calling; he has will and talent but no meaningful links with his people’s past and present apart from sharing the discomfort of anti-Semitic discrimination by the state. He takes his strength from nature, but cannot survive the cruelty of society. Ultimately, he fails because he is unable to maintain human relationships. Being a static character himself, he acts as a catalyst, awakening desires in Meri and Misha, who become active characters only after their encounter with Kowalski. Meri instinctively accepts him because he fits her vague idea of a romantic hero. For Misha, Kowalski’s presence is disturbing and challenging. In the first part of the narrative, Kowalski arouses Misha’s desire for Meri, but in the second part Kowalski sets Misha on the “way to himself ” (the title of

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Love and Destiny Asch’s second novel), which eventually leads Misha back to Rachel and the shtetl. Kowalski carries a new attitude to reality, based not on the traditional Jewish dichotomy between the idea and the image, but on a modernist principle of totality of art. Abstract ideas and concepts, the traditional spiritual nourishment of Jews, have no value for him, he seeks a direct unification of imagination and reality, of ideals and everyday life. As a representative of the challenge of modernity, Kowalski remains unchanged throughout the novel, whereas the two other characters undergo dramatic transformations. Meri is sensitive and romantic. She seeks comfort and personal happiness, dreams about love and beauty, but lacks a moral and spiritual foundation. Her union with Kowalski falls apart because both of them have no roots in their past, and, therefore, are unprotected from the destructive atmosphere of St. Petersburg. This relationship ceases to satisfy her when she realizes that for him she is an object of art and not a living soul. The unprotected and vulnerable Meri is broken by the poisonous atmosphere of St. Petersburg and is attracted to Maksimovitsh, another uprooted victim of this devilish city, who represents the failure of cultural assimilation. He forfeits his chance to return, as the prodigal son in his beloved painting, to his people, and, therefore, is doomed to be forgotten. Maksimovitsh goes out of fashion as an art critic because he fails to notice the revolution of 1905. At his suggestion, Meri accepts the persona of a Gypsy child, a parody of the romantic ideal of free and unrestricted life. Like Maksimovitsh, she rejects maturity and responsibility and willingly remains an eternal child seeking comfort among strangers. The emotional artistic and ideological failure of Meri, Kowalski, and Maksimovitsh proves that the new modernist attitude is an illusion that disguises one’s egoism. Shmuel Niger defines the Kowalski-Meri story as a psychological novel, although Erik rather contemptuously characterizes it as “bohemian.”27 Misha represents the ideological side of the novel, which we already have dealt with in the second chapter. He embodies the position of the author with respect to the Jewish future. In the course of the novel he, along with other characters, experiences a crisis, but, unlike them, comes out of this crisis with a new positive idea of his mission. The feeling of jealousy and inferiority caused by his encounter with Kowalski pushes Misha to search for his own place in life. This search leads him through the experience of revolution and pogrom, until, finally, he finds his place in the tradition represented by Dr. Leyzerovitsh. He learns the lesson that a Jew should not be lured by the illusions of the big world. In his cyclical development, Misha follows the same pattern of return as Dr. Leyzerovitsh a generation earlier. Rachel serves as a symbolic link between the two men. His disappointment in Meri and his marriage to Rachel correspond to his

Love and Destiny withdrawal from the large society, with its politics and violence, in order to serve his own people. His maturity comes with his marriage to Rachel, the victim of a pogrom. This marriage is a symbolic act of reunification with the abandoned and humiliated nation, of the return of the prodigal son. This plot line belongs to a social novel, according to Niger, and to the kiddush hashem novel, in Erik’s classification.28 Both critics were correct in pointing out the discrepancy of styles and genres within the novel. In his first novel, Asch was unable to fulfill the ambitious task of creating a comprehensive literary vision of modern Jewish life that would replace the classical representations of Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz. The psychological, social-critical and nationalromantic planes do not merge into one multidimensional picture. For the purpose of this discussion, however, the novel is interesting, first of all as an attempt to bring together different layers of reality, and as a search for its new symbolic representations. Asch introduces into Yiddish literature new kinds of personality, through which he attempts to demonstrate the new central conflict of Jewish existence. Unlike Opatoshu, Asch does not stress the importance of the natural and spontaneous aspects of the Jewish character. He believes in the return “to oneself ” via the complex process of following, and then rejecting, foreign models. This can be seen as the twostage process of the “negotiated return.”29 At first, a foreign model, or mediator, has to awaken a desire in a Jewish hero. This initial impulse can be a book (Anna Karenina), a painting (Return of the Prodigal Son), a personal encounter (Kowalski), or exposure to a historical experience (revolution). The next stage is to free oneself from this influence and find an ideal representing a Jewish value different from the mainstream values of the world. Misha finds this ideal in Rachel, who becomes attractive to him after she has been raped during the pogrom. This transforms her from an ordinary Jewish girl into a symbolic representation of the suffering soul of the Jewish people. The end of the novel is another version of the “double ending” construction that we have already seen in Tevye and Aleyn. It is a closed ending for a man and an open ending for a woman. Misha completes his development in the novel by his return and marriage to Rachel, and, in his way, repeats the pattern of Tevye and Mordkhe. The second part, The Road to the Self, does not add anything substantial to this model: he and Rachel repeat a journey once again and finally settle in a shtetl, where Misha becomes a teacher. This is a mere replica of the old paradigm. Meri follows the same track as Tevye’s daughters and Sorke. She defies the circular trajectory and leaves the Jewish province altogether. Her development is linear: any repetition would be unacceptable to her. Meri’s choice has a negative meaning for the author. Her story illustrates the danger of embracing

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Love and Destiny modernity. She follows the models that lead her away from the natural soil, which alone can provide her with nourishment. Misha’s search for a model ends in the same place as it began, in the Rov. In the beginning of the novel, he encounters two different types of modern Jews there, the revolutionary propagandists and the Jewish narodnik, Dr. Leyzerovitsh. In the end, Misha finds himself in the same position as his father-in-law. With all its artistic and thematic innovations, Meri remains confined to the limits of the old scheme of the opposition between return and escape, which makes it possible to interpret the new reality in a traditional sense.

Mirl: Individuality as a Transition Point David Bergelson’s novel When All Is Said and Done is an attempt to liberate the Yiddish novel from the domination of the return-escape model.30 The entire novel is organized around the main heroine, Mirl Hurvits, whose complex personality personifies all aspects of the crisis, and not just one particular dimension, as was the case in the novels previously discussed. Mirl, unlike Sorke or Meri, has no counterpart in the novel. She herself is an arena of conflicts between competing forces and is the object of all desires in the novel; all other characters exist inasmuch as they have a relation to her. Multiple conflict results in depression and paralysis, so that Mirl becomes unable to respond to the problems in a positive and constructive way. Not unlike Sorke and Meri, Mirl lives in the imaginary world mediated by people she meets and books she reads. As René Girard describes such a situation, “every mediation projects its mirage; the mirages follow one another like so many ‘truths’ which take the place of former truths by a veritable murdering of the living memory and which protect themselves from future truths by an implacable censure of daily experience.”31 Eventually, Mirl becomes a victim of the phenomenon of the “multiplication of mediators,” an increase of the number of models, in which René Girard sees the sign of modernity.32 Objectively, she is a victim of the process of the rapid modernization of traditional Jewish society, which is represented in the novel as her subjective failure to realize herself. This trauma of modernity stands behind the central meaning of the novel, which Susan Slotnik in her study of Bergelson’s novels formulates as “the search for some kind of order, in a world which is anything but orderly, with no tools but one’s personal feelings and intuitions.”33 Mirl represents the culmination and the deadlock of the development of female characters in Yiddish literature. After the one- and two-dimensional nineteenth-century female characters, the wholesome but rather shallow revolutionary women of Ansky and Spektor, the passionate Sorke and

Love and Destiny decadent Meri, we come to the last heroine, who is the most complex and subtle representation of the crisis of modernity. The artistic achievement of Bergelson’s first novel is summarized by Slotnik in the following terms: “The precision of construction; the economy of technique, in which every phrase and detail is significant in its initial appearance and its subsequent recurrence; the punctilious balancing of complex systems and of individual elements; all of this creates an artistic entity whose aesthetic elegance is the ultimate defiance of that irrationality in the world which it acknowledges.”34 Bergelson realizes this goal through the sophisticated three-level structure of the novel. On the psychological level it is a novel about the desires, feelings, and frustrations of a beautiful and sensitive woman who tries and fails to live her life according to her juvenile dream. The psychological subtlety is combined with acute social analysis of the Ukrainian Jewish middle-class milieu of the period around 1910. On the third, existential level, the novel addresses the problem of the meaning of human existence. This existential perspective provides organization and interpretation for the psychological and sociological planes. The events, feelings, and dreams become objective correlatives of the main existential question the heroine repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempts to answer. The novel brings a number of important innovations in Yiddish literature, one of them being the function of the implied author. Like most of the younger authors, Bergelson chooses the position of an objective narrator, rejecting the previous tradition of the personified narrator-as-character so powerfully introduced by Abramovitsh-Mendele. But unlike Asch or Opatoshu, Bergelson avoids direct judgments and explanations of events. His narrator carefully maintains the position of an estranged observer.35 In contrast to Asch’s didactic narrative voice in Meri, which often thrusts its interpretation upon the reader, Bergelson’s narrator always remains ironically detached and skeptical. Sometimes this irony is obvious, but quite often it is concealed under the mask of objective impartiality, which makes it even more subversive. The narrator provides the reader with an abundance of carefully chosen details, but does not bother to formulate his opinion. Irony helps the reader understand the text on the existential level. Irony creates a special relationship between the text and reality, and transforms small linguistic nuances, disguised comments, and allusions of the text into a metaphysical message. Social and psychological facts, presented through the prism of irony, become estranged from everyday routine, and thus acquire a metaphysical existence. The opposition between the social reality and the inner world of feelings, dreams, and desires becomes the ground of the existential conflict, which transcends the concrete social and psychological situation. Mirl makes her initial appearance in the novel indirectly, through the

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Love and Destiny mind of her rejected fiancé Velvl Burnes.36 After their breakup and the end of their engagement, Velvl’s desire for Mirl becomes so strong that it dominates his entire life. He fancies himself a landowner, a novel social position for a Jew, apparently possible as a result of Prime Minister Stolypin’s post1905 agrarian reforms, which were aimed at the capitalist transformation of feudal rural economy in Russia. Velvl lives in a rented farm of his father and is preoccupied with managing his own estate. His role model is a successful entrepreneur named Nokhem Tarabay, “who lived eighteen verst farther away at the rich sugar factory, there conducted a wealthy household like the landed aristocracy, and has his children studying somewhere in a large and distant city” (p. 16). Velvl dreams about his own estate, which will become a local economic center for grain dealers who will come to him “as they come properly and honorably to the gentile squires in the neighborhood” (p. 15). The irony of Velvl’s situation does not escape any reader familiar with the legal position of Jews in Russia: as a Jew, he can never become a real landowner because by law he is not allowed to own the land, only to rent it. Velvl’s familiarity with modern Russian culture does not exceed his ability to read a current stock exchange index in the Birzhevye vedomosti (Stock exchange journal), although he tries hard to acquire as much useful knowledge as he can. His self-confidence fades, however, in the shtetl, where the youngest layer of society is dominated by “new people,” such as the medical student Lipkis, with some exposure to Russian culture. The overheard fragments of a learned conversation confuse Velvl: “Well—and love? . . . Well, and every idea that passes over into ‘sensation’ ” (p. 14). The last word, oshchushchenie, is actually pronounced in Russian and refers to the modernist complex of ideas related to new trends in psychology, philosophy, and literature. The allusion to a higher culture is ironically played down by Bergelson; a Yiddish speaker would inevitably mispronounce the difficult Slavic sibilants in this word, as happens elsewhere in the novel. This touch of irony again points to the unbridgeable distance between the shtetl and modernity, a distance that grows into a metaphysical chasm. Mirl’s father, Reb Gedalye Hurvits, seems to represent the contrast to Velvl Burnes. Although an heir to a noble and wealthy family, he is now suffering a decline caused by his inability to adjust to the modern capitalist economy. At the beginning of the novel we already find him on the verge of bankruptcy, and his once stable network of friends and connections is suddenly starting to crumble. As a solution, Reb Gedalye decides to escape for some time to his sister abroad. In his letters home from this self-imposed “exile” he asks his family to send him books, the Kuzari and Abarbanel, that is, the twelfth-century philosophical tractate by Judah Halevi and the commentaries on the Bible by Don Isaac Abarbanel, the last head of Spanish Jewry, who went into exile after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.

Love and Destiny The irony of this detail is transparent: Reb Gedalye imagines himself as a successor of two of the most aristocratic and famous exiles in Jewish history, whose personal stories could be interpreted as a metaphor for the universal tragedy of Jewish people. Despite the obvious discrepancy between Velvl Burnes and Reb Gedalye Hurvits, their illusions have similar structures. Their models belong to nobility, be it the Russian-Polish landowners or the aristocratic Sephardi intellectuals. The narrator’s attitude to both characters is ironic, not just because they are slavish and imperfect in their imitations, but rather because their chosen models are in principle unattainable. Shtetl society belongs to a lower order than the aristocracy, and nothing in the world (of Bergelson’s novel) can change this nature of things. On the social level, the distance between Reb Gedalye and Velvl is obvious, as is the aspiration of the latter to bridge it through the marriage with the former’s daughter. Yet, from the metaphysical perspective, their situation is identical and nothing can change it. Mirl is aware of her dependency on her father and, through him, on the family past: “Her father also stems from an old Germanic family that intermarried among its own members for a long time and is, apparently, degenerating from age. Possibly because of this, she now feels such emptiness at times and is good for nothing” (p. 60). Her whole story can be interpreted as an attempt to escape this cycle of degeneration and free herself from the “golden chain.” But, like the other characters, she is doomed to repeat the same cyclical pattern in her life. She submits to fate when, out of sudden pity for her father, she agrees to marry the next suitor, Shmulik Zaydenovsky. She makes this decision at the eve of Purim, which is an ironic replay of the story of Queen Esther, who was prepared to suffer for her people. Later on, when Mirl feels that the end of her marriage with Shmulik is near, she suddenly leaves her home in the city to visit her parents in the shtetl. By doing so, she repeats her father’s reaction to his bankruptcy: they both prefer to withdraw from the unpleasant reality into their books, he into Kuzari and Abarbanel, she into Ivan Turgenev’s novel, and console themselves with their favorite models, noble Spanish exiles or the strong, suffering, aristocratic women of Turgenev. Again, Bergelson adds an ironic touch: Mirl’s model is Liza from A Nest of the Gentry (1859), a young woman who decides to become a nun.37 This obviously cannot be an option for Mirl; it is another metaphysical impossibility. The functional role of repetition in When All Is Said and Done was first noticed by Soviet critic Yekhezkl Dobrushin, who pointed out that the “unavoidable, almost fatal repetitions” are a formative force in the novel’s plot.38 Mirl’s second proposed groysshtotisher shidekh (big city match) is not different from the first kleynshtetldikn (small shtetl) one. Shmulik Zaydenovsky represents a socially more advanced type of urban bourgeois than the

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Love and Destiny “gentry-oriented” Velvl Burnes. But for Mirl there is no difference, and her feelings at the engagement with Shmulik are a déjà vu of what she has already experienced with Velvl. She has similar visions of her future after marriage, be it with Shmulik or with another man, Nosn Heler—it will be the same loneliness and sense of loss. The divorce does not change her sense of the future: “Well, she has divorced him. So what will she do now?” The repetition is part of the metaphysical order, which Mirl cannot change, and which, at the end, breaks her life. As Dobrushin puts it, using the Marxist idiom, “Bergelson’s novel clearly demonstrates how the conscientious personality bitterly struggles with the leveling power of the bourgeois life order, with the hopeless ‘as usual’ ” (p. 81). However, this struggle with fate is not only an expression of the plight of the individual personality in bourgeois society. The conflict between the force of cyclical repetition inherent in tradition and the linear force of the individual desire becomes a correlative of the existential situation of a human being in the world. Mirl occupies the central position in each character’s imagination. She at once becomes an object of desire for all the men who cross her path—Velvl, Shmulik, Lipkis, Herts, Heler, Monesh, Safyan. Dobrushin believes that the author “sublimates Mirl’s love feelings and admirably intertwines them with the general sociopsychological fabric of the action” (p. 84). Perhaps this insight should be taken one step further: the eroticism is not only “sublimated” into the sociopsychological fabric, but also serves as a vehicle for transmitting the existential message of the novel. Mirl is constantly preoccupied with the search for the meaning of life, the iker. This is the iker that can ibermakhn the world, change the order of things. The motif of search for a meaning that can change the world suggests a parallel with the famous symbolist play by Y. L. Peretz, A Night in the Old Marketplace (Bay nakht oyfn altn mark) (1907–14), in which ibermakhn is also a key word. The play’s central character, the Jester (Badkhn), proclaims at the outset his quest: “There has to be a word / For changing, for remaking everything. . . . ”39 According to Khone Shmeruk’s interpretation, through this symbolism Peretz “manifests his disbelief in all past and contemporary social and ideological solutions. The Jester wants to remake everything.”40 The Jester tries and rejects various solutions that other characters, most of whom appear in the play only once, offer him. The end of this vision comes with the dawn, when a rooster on the roof proclaims the new day. The final line of the play is the famous Jester’s call: in shul arayn (Jews, go to shul!) (p. 70). These words can be interpreted in many ways, but they definitely suggest a preference for return over escape. This “Jewish” closing of Peretz’s “vision of despair,” as Shmeruk calls it, which, at least on the surface, offers the possibility of a solution for the whole community, contrasts with such a blatantly non-Jewish solution as going to a convent, which the author places for a moment in Mirl’s fantasy.

Love and Destiny The structure of characters’ relationships in Bergelson’s novel has some similarity with that in Peretz’s play. As in A Night in the Old Marketplace, all the characters of When All Is Said and Done revolve around one central figure, who tries different solutions proposed by them and rejects them one after another. Mirl is the center of gravitation for all the male characters, and, in turn, becomes affected by the desires that she arouses in them. As Dobrushin points out, the motif of the shidekh (matchmaking), introduced already in the opening phrase, plays the role of a leading metaphor: “By putting the shidekh in the center of his artistic work, Bergelson has enabled himself to put the emphasis on the class interests of the parties as well as on the point where the contradictory personal interests encounter those of bourgeois society.”41 The shidekh not only represents the point where the psychological plane crosses the social-economical one, as Dobrushin points out, but also becomes a symbol of universal order, continuity, and subordination. Stories about various marriages, mostly broken, about eloped wives and unfaithful husbands, surround Mirl in Zaydenovsky’s household. “The younger female figures stand as warnings of Mirl’s possible fate,” notes Susan Slotnik.42 They all, like the crowd of secondary characters in Peretz’s play, suggest different exits from Mirl’s crisis, and, like the Jester, she rejects them all. There is, however, an important contrast between the structural preferences of Bergelson and Peretz, which is indicative of the different positions of the younger and older generation: the younger writer prefers open endings, which do not suggest any definite solution to the problem, whereas the classical writers tend to close their works, even if, like Peretz, they sometimes allow a little room for ambiguity of interpretation. Let us now look closer at the position of Mirl among the characters. At any particular moment she is caught between two men. Her situation is always determined by her break with one man and her awakening affection for another. In the first part we see her through the eyes of the rejected Burnes, and then the point of view moves toward the medical student Lipkis, her new attraction. Burnes represents the ambitious shtetl nouveau riche, whereas Lipkis, together with the midwife Shats and the assistant pharmacist Safyan, belong to the shtetl half-professional “medical” community. None of them is a proper doctor with real authority or power over patients. The narrator’s irony undermines their self-imposed superiority over Burnes, and puts all pretenders on one level. The sensitive Mirl is aware of this equality and reacts sharply against Lipkis’s criticism of Burnes. She is longing for a real and serious love, but such love, like other serious things, is impossible in the atmosphere of the shtetl, where everything belongs to the inferior reality. Passive and indifferent in life, she is passionate in her desperate attempt to establish a connection with other souls elsewhere suffering like her. With her power of suggestion, she projects her longing onto everything she encounters. Thus, trains and their

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Love and Destiny passengers become emblems of her metaphysical desire. She reads into them “real” tragedies suggested by Anna Karenina. The provincial student, Lipkis, is replaced by the more romantic figure of Hebrew poet Herts. Like Mirl, Herts appears in the novel at first indirectly. He is mentioned by the midwife Shats as her friend who spends summers in Switzerland and winters with his mother in a Lithuanian shtetl. This new character immediately captures Mirl’s imagination; she looks “with intensely interested eyes, into the midwife’s face and catches every word” about Herts (p. 51). Mirl visualizes Herts as he wanders alone somewhere in the Lithuanian countryside or in the Swiss mountains. For her, he represents another soul that is suffering in solitude, a new mediator of metaphysical desire that cannot be satisfied in the present world. Like Mirl, Herts lives in two worlds, and his Switzerland corresponds to her imaginary world of dreams and books. The suggestive power of Herts’s image is reinforced by his symbolist prose poem about a “dead town,” an obvious reference to Peretz’s writings. The inhabitants of the dead town have become frozen by death: “Rigid corpses lie everywhere on the beds and hold hard-pressed stones in their fists. Apparently, before their death they wanted to throw these stones at someone” (p. 53). This vision can be interpreted as a symbol of the failed attempt to rebel, which ended up in stagnation, a veiled suggestion of the revolution. Herts sees himself as a lonely “watchman of a dead city,” sitting at its gate through which nobody comes in or out (p. 54). Seth Wolitz sees Herts as “a voyeur and an aesthete whose use of modern Hebrew permits an aesthetic approach-avoidance of the Jewish past while constructing a future ‘weltanschauung’ in an updated past modality.”43 In this respect, Herts’s modernist project belongs to the same category of life-art constructions as the projects of such characters as Herr Goldenbarg and Borukh. Mirl, however, unlike the female characters of Raboy or Ignatov, is attracted only by the personality of the “voyeur” but not by his life-art project. Like all young male characters in the post-1905 literature, Herts retains some traces of his revolutionary past. Dobrushin finds an indication of this past in Herts’s habit of asking peasants about their life: “In these conversations one can certainly hear some echo of the questions which played such a great role in the years of the revolution.”44 In this context, Herts’s new enterprise of writing Hebrew poetry means a capitulation, a withdrawal from practical activity into the world of fantasy. Being aware of his failure to confront reality, Herts writes his poetry at night, because “at night everybody is less shameful.” Mirl has sympathy for Herts, who seems to suffer from the same disease as she does: “Somehow he lives without wanting to, and writes without wanting to” (p. 55). The image of the “dead town” and the figure of its guardian are close to her

Love and Destiny heart, but the next creation of Herts’s imagination, the spiritualization of the familiar shtetl landscape through the oncoming Sabbath, disgusts her. True to her melancholic worldview, she refuses to see in this picture of the transformed Sabbath reality anything except a “a tired gentile who was finishing plowing his field at dusk” (p. 157). This ironic allusion to Peretz’s story “Between Two Mountains” is meant to undermine the contemporary neoromantic Jewish myth. Mirl cannot understand whether Herts means it seriously or ironically. For her, Jewishness is connected with the past, and, therefore, with repetition, which has a purely negative meaning. The past is represented by the aristocratic legacy of her family, by the rabbi’s wife Libke—something she wants to escape from. Mirl’s relationships with young men—prospective lovers or husbands— are paralyzed at the early stage by her image of the future after marriage, which is always the same. This, again, means repetition that frightens her. Having imagined her life with them she is no longer able to have any interest in her relationships. The future that she pictures is all boredom, isolation, and hopelessness. Marriage is the closure of life for her, denial of any possible meaning. Mirl’s search is directed toward openness and the belief that “somewhere out there must be people who try to do something else.” As Dobrushin comments, this belief “connects her life path with the historical path of the advanced society.” The people she is looking for are the kind in whom “the fire of the revolution burns at their shoulders,” to use Dobrushin’s metaphoric expression.45 Her actual marriage to Shmulik is concluded on the condition that it will not be consummated, that is, it will remain an open option: “He should not expect to live with her as husband with wife, and she . . . she may leave him and his house forever whenever she wishes” (p. 146). In her reaction to marriage Mirl is similar to Sorke, who also refuses to sleep with her husband during their wedding night. Mirl tries to achieve the impossible: she wants to save her father from poverty and save herself from destruction in marriage. After the wedding, she begins another round of metaphysical struggle against the order of repetition. Again Bergelson’s irony suggests the unreal nature of this metaphysical dream: the whole shtetl has pity on Shmulik, who “could bring himself to live with Mirl forever like on the Day of Atonement” (p. 147). This radical rejection of sexuality brings in a whole complex of ideas that belong to the culture of Russian modernism and radicalism but have their roots in the monastic Christian ideal. Mirl feels surrounded by hostile strangers who try to impose on her their ideas of happiness, which can be summarized by the aphorism of the midwife Shats’s friend: “Happiness can now be found only among traveling salesmen” (p. 102). The most dangerous enemy is, however, not the self-

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Love and Destiny contented bourgeoisie, but a former revolutionary turned middle class. Revolution itself is not represented in the novel directly, but as a motif it plays an important causal role in Mirl’s story. The suffocating atmosphere of the postrevolutionary reaction has poisoned the previous revolutionary zeal. This motif is personified by a former revolutionary student, Miriam Lyuboshits. After her marriage and childbirth she began growing fat, which indicates her degeneration into the middle-class status. Filled with the passion of a disappointed revolutionary, Miriam becomes the guardian of the Zaydenovski family. She is Mirl’s double, who has chosen the option that Mirl is trying to avoid. They have in common more than just a name; both were once beautiful and idealistic, but Miriam betrayed her past by returning to the cycle of marriage and childbirth, which corrupted her physically and spiritually. Miriam has become the mouthpiece of the collective and is the first to pronounce the common judgment on Mirl: “What is there to think about her now? Certainly Mirl can no longer be considered a normal person” (p. 221). Normality becomes, in the context of the novel, the opposition to personal autonomy.46 Marriage is the only possibility of “normal” existence that society allows an individual. When Mirl’s illusion about the possibility of celibacy in marriage fails, she turns to her cousin Ida Shpolyanski, “the immoral female, a town character, who is extremely rich and unfaithful to her absent husband” (p. 168). Ida is an urban counterpart of the shtetl midwife, Shats. She offers Mirl an asylum where she can escape from the intolerable atmosphere at home. The irony of these relationships is suggested by the symbolic opposition between Shats’s and Ida’s functional roles: the former is a midwife, whereas the latter helps Mirl to arrange an abortion. As we have seen in Ignatov’s In Whirlpool, the motif of abortion signifies the ultimate attempt of a modern urban woman to liberate herself from the slavery of marriage without love. Through abortion, Mirl tries to start her life again, to turn back the cycle of “degeneration.” She tries to bring back the illusion with which she consoled herself before the marriage: that it would be only for a time, not forever. However, the second start will inevitably bring another repetition, and the circle is completed when she comes back to the same Velvl Burnes and writes him a short note in Russian: “Ty khoroshi” (p. 367) (You are a fine person) (p. 290). The motif of the new beginning, so widespread in the immigrant literature, is present also in all three novels about women in the Old Country: Sorke runs away from her orthodox shtetl husband with revolutionary hero Kronenberg to start a new life; Meri leaves the shtetl for the second time at the end of the novel, after she breaks up with Kowalski and realizes that she can no longer live at home. This need of a new beginning is a result of many dissatisfactions and frustrations. It could be caused by the failure of the revolution or

Love and Destiny economic decline, but no economic or social success can guarantee stability. The realization of the second start can take different forms, of which emigration is perhaps the most radical. Such options as escape and moving from the shtetl to a big city are less extreme, because they leave open the possibility of return and reconciliation, but are not different from emigration in principle. All attempts start from a new lead outside the traditional sphere of the shtetl. When All Is Said and Done leaves the reader uncertain not only about Mirl’s future, but also even about the nature of her personality. She can be interpreted either as a lonely hero fighting against the whole world for her independence (Yekhezkl Dobrushin), or, on the contrary, as “an eternal dream of chaos” (Nachman Mayzel), a projection of fantasies of other people who imagine her as their ideal woman—“everything happens to her without her knowledge, and often against her knowledge.”47 In her own imagination, Mirl is split into two personae, which, using the terminology of Renaissance neo-Platonism, can be called “Mirl the profane” and “Mirl the celestial.” This revelation comes to her one day: Once at dusk it already seemed to her that from there, from the red end of the sky, another fiery Mirl looks out at her and winks at her from a distance:—No one, she winks at her, knows for what reason Mirl Hurvits blunders about in the world. And I, Mirl, who burn in the fiery end of the sky on the horizon, have also once already blundered about and also did not know for what purpose. (p. 295)

The crisis leads Mirl to the understanding that she is only an ibergangspunkt, a transition point, and has no place of her own in the world. Mirl is an untraditional character for Yiddish literature, but she fits well into the general development of Russian modernism and radicalism of that time. Dobrushin, according to his “heroic” interpretation of Mirl, emphasizes the traces of the realist influence of Chekhov, Turgenev, and Maupassant. He plays down any similarity between Bergelson and Norwegian modernist Knut Hamsun, the link that was stressed by Mayzel. The association with Hamsun would put Bergelson in a decadent context that was not favored by Soviet social realist criticism. And yet, together with Sorke and Meri, Mirl obviously belongs to the tradition of modernism, especially in its Russian variety. Scholar of Russian modernism Alexander Etkind defines its essence in terms of shifting the boundaries between the fundamental spheres of nature and culture: The age of modernism shifts the very border between nature and culture. An individual’s natural and obvious manifestations seem imaginary and secondary. They conceal a deeper reality, which alone possesses a real significance. The main task of one’s life is perceived as the comprehension of this reality, which hides behind everyday life and is unknowable to an ordinary man; but it is upon this comprehension that his happiness and well-being depend.48

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Love and Destiny Sorke, Mirl, and, to a lesser extent, Meri all act according to these lines. They reject traditional culture for the sake of a future ideal, best symbolized by an abstract notion of the iker (essence, meaning) in Bergelson’s novel. Marriage is one of the pillars of the established order, and as such, is rejected by all three female characters. Mirl attempts to go further than the other two, and to defy sexual love altogether. This attitude has no roots in Jewish tradition and places Mirl within the Russian cultural context, a link that is suggested in the text by her reading Turgenev’s A Nest of the Gentry. In his study, Etkind provides extensive material on links between the radical sexual asceticism of certain Russian religious sects, the revolutionary movement of 1905–17, and the aesthetics of Russian modernism. Many of those ideas appear in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov and late writings of Leo Tolstoy. Thus, Solovyov writes in his influential essay “The Meaning of Love”: “Before a physiological copulation in the animal nature, which leads to death, and before a legal union in the social and moral order, which does not save one from death, there has to be a unification in God, which leads to immortality.”49 Therefore, according to Solovyov, even the marital relationship can be antinatural and humiliating if it does not involve the spiritual and mystical element in the couple. Solovyov’s essay, which was not approved by the religious orthodoxy, became a central cultural text of the next generation, the symbolists of the early 1900s. The Cult of the Lady, which figured so prominently in the poetry of Alexander Blok, the leading figure of Russian symbolism, and ideas of sexual abstinence in marriage played important roles in their creative and real lives. When All Is Said and Done defies any solution based on cyclical repetition. In other works, women characters usually served as correlatives of crisis, but the authors tried to offer solutions to this crisis. Usually there was a paradigm, leading to a positive outcome: emigration to America, the revolutionary transformation of reality, return to tradition, ironic resignation. In Bergelson’s novel all these solutions are not valid. It is an extreme form of the novel of transformation, in which no stable order based on a new classification emerges at the end. Mirl’s transformation, which is the most comprehensive of all other heroine’s, does not allow for any reordering because the entire reality has become part of her transitional personality, and nothing is left outside.

Closing the Canon: The Autobiographies of Peretz and Sholem Aleichem The literary autobiographies of all three Yiddish classical writers can serve as an interesting “male” counterpart to the three psychological novels dis-

Love and Destiny cussed above. These autobiographies, which, like the novels, focus on the development of the protagonist’s personality, offer examples of narrative organization dominated by the principle of classification. Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Y. L. Peretz present the narrator’s personal development from childhood to adulthood as a series of transformations, which eventually result in a new reality represented by its set of norms and customs, that is, a new classification. This classification grows with the narrator, developing childhood fantasies and fears into the mature and comprehensive worldview of a writer, who comes to occupy a prominent position in the world. The purpose of such a literary project is to show the reader, who is presumed to be familiar with the author’s literary persona and works, how the author has achieved his present status and authority. A project like this would be impossible without a corpus of writings that belongs to the cultural heritage shared by the entire community of Yiddish readers. One purpose of autobiography is to place the author in the center of the literary discourse of his time and to present his life as a model personal history, worth learning and, perhaps, imitating. The importance of this autobiography is implied by the very fact of the author’s prominence. In other words, it is the final classification that makes the story important, not the transformation that creates the plot of the story. The character is interesting because of what he has become, not because of what happened to him. This attitude of the classical writers, conscious of their privileged status, creates a situation where their autobiographies carry a polemical message. The autobiographies are meant to provide examples for younger writers, who are impelled to accept the classification of the classics. The younger generation is expected to learn from the experience of its predecessors and to carry on the literary tradition that it receives from its predecessors’ texts. The life story of an older and established writer also contains a warning against a wrong kind of writing, which is against the established tradition. Our analysis of the two autobiographies of the classics, My Memoirs (Mayne zikhroynes, 1913–14), by Y. L. Peretz, and From the Fair (Funem yarid, 1914–16), by Sholem Aleichem, will proceed from the same premises as the analysis of the novels by the younger writers.50 We shall look at the representation of the critical moments in the life of the protagonists, and then interpret these crises in the context of the authors’ development as personalities and artists. Although the analysis of the texts will presume their literary character, the interpretation will inevitably be informed by the ideological positions of the authors. Peretz begins his memoirs with an introductory chapter, “Foggy Years of the Childhood” (only partly translated into English), in which he expresses his opposition to an imaginary “modern” writer, “who parades his sinfulness, or invents it if he hasn’t got

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Love and Destiny as much as the market demands, fleshing out possibilities that didn’t have time to develop on their own” (p. 265). This introductory statement sets up the opposition: on the one side is Peretz, with his sense of harmony and taste, on the other, a certain “modernist,” eager to destroy the aesthetic system that Peretz has created. The autobiography can presumably serve as a weapon in this struggle. Peretz represents the world of his childhood as a sound, harmonically organized, and well-functioning structure, in which each element had its own place and role. This order was set by the city: “The city into which I was born, hemmed in by ramparts so that it would never change or grow in size” (p. 277). The population of the city was as immobile and stable as its fortifications: “Zamosc was a small, quiet place without any premonition of the wandering and emigration yet to come. Hardly anyone died, hardly anyone was born” (p. 278). Jews and Gentiles, men and women, children and adults, people and animals, culture and nature were clearly demarcated in that place. All those elements coexisted according to established and unchangeable rules, dating back to prehistorical times: “We were sure that when the Jews left Egypt they were also dressed in kapotes [long coats], and of the many miracles associated with that occasion, the greatest is that ‘not a dog whet his tongue against them’ ” (p. 280). In this world, the young Yitskhok Leybush occupied a special place. “I was, as everyone said, a prodigy,” Peretz begins his memoirs (p. 267). As a prodigy, he was expected to astonish the world by his ability to remember and understand the Scripture. When he was only three years of age, he performed his first miracle. Peretz’s first memory is of the celebration of the commencement of his Bible study: “I suddenly saw the chapter suspended before my eyes, word by word; I read off one letter after another, except for the name of God” (p. 268). This episode establishes the egocentric attitude of subsequent narration. Peretz locates himself at the top of the traditional Jewish hierarchy from the earliest possible age. This position also forms a paradigm of his relationship to the outside world. From early childhood, Peretz never relates directly to other people, events, or elements of nature. Everything has to go through the mediating prism of a text, be it the Bible, Hebrew or Yiddish maskilic literature, non-Jewish writings, or Peretz’s own literary creations. The place of Yitskhok Leybush among other children is also determined by his extraordinary ability to deal with texts. Even his childish pranks are based on text interpretation. The bright pupils like to make fun of their slightly dull teacher: “[S]ometimes on a Sabbath afternoon we would go to the study house and look up all the commentaries we could find on the topic for the week ahead. On Sunday morning we would pepper him with questions. He was round and fat, and as he sat there mute, squirming like a worm, his

Love and Destiny eyes flickering in panic, we burst out laughing. He resorted to his usual weapon” (p. 275). The behavior of the pupils and the corporal punishment they got from their teacher were part of the old tradition of growing up in Jewish society. The result of this process seemed to be predetermined: “Well, you’ll be a rabbi someday!” says the distressed teacher to Yitskhok Leybush. Yet this organized and predetermined structure of life by no means eliminates conflict. Peretz describes the nature of his conflict at the beginning of his memoirs, immediately after establishing his position as a prodigy: “I had a quick, logical mind and was very emotional. How are the two things connected? They aren’t. They don’t mix at all. A logical brain and a heart full of feeling are two litigating parties in the creature who the sages tell us was ‘born to die’ ” (p. 267). By referring in one short phrase to three different conceptual discourses, the ones of European romanticism (moyekh vs. gemit), of law (protses), and of Judaism (“born to die” is from the Talmudic tractate Pirkey Avot, 4: 29), Peretz sets up the three dimensions of his life in which this conflict will unfold in the future. He will become a European writer, a lawyer, and a Jewish national thinker—three roles that are hard to combine in one personality. The purpose of the memoirs is to present the formation of Peretz’s unique personality, in which these three dimensions could not only coexist but cooperate productively. The inner conflict that shapes the young Peretz’s personality has three aspects. It grows from the old controversy between rationalism and mysticism within Judaism: “I found my way on the one hand to the classic work of Jewish rationalism, Maimonides’ Guide of Perplexed . . . , and on the other hand to the classic of kabbalah, The Tree of Life, which might someday take me all the way to the Zohar itself ” (p. 277). As to the legal side of Peretz’s worldview, it also has roots in his childhood: “Sometimes I pulled down Oracles of the Prophets, that difficult tome which sharpened my wits like a whetstone” (p. 277).51 Thus, his Jewish education prefigures the later development. Education already contains the main controversy and disciplines the mind and the feelings of the young man, preparing him for his future life. As he is growing up, he sees different forms this conflict can take within the traditional framework: the struggle between misnagdim and Hasidim, between the Haskalah and traditional orthodoxy. The forms and expressions might be new, but the essence remains old. His future life, with its unexpected conflicts and problems, is, in fact, prefigured in the problems that Yitskhok Leybush experiences in his childhood. His development consists mostly of the acquisition of the traditional weltanschauung; even the games are an imitation of adult life within the tradition: Near our house was an overgrown ruin, probably a property under litigation [note the sharp eye of a future lawyer]. Quite often in the evening I used to play there

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Love and Destiny with little girls as bride and groom. I of the fiery eyes was the bridegroom, and the bride was my cousin, who wore long braids. When we got to the part of the game where the newlyweds quarrel and argue over the presents, I threw a stone, hitting her just under the eye, and leaving her with a scar that she carried to her real wedding (p. 276).

The game has all the elements of a real wedding, and the scar is proof of this connection. This episode is a prefiguration of the third, romantic aspect of the conflict. The climax of Peretz’s personal story is his decision not to leave home because of the love of his mother. As Ruth Wisse puts it, “Peretz presents himself as the forever loyal—or forever captive—son.”52 Perhaps this episode is the best example of the contrast between Peretz and the younger writers, all of whom made the conflict between generations a central driving force in the lives of their characters. It is impossible to imagine a young heroine—a Sorke, a Meri, or a Mirl—who does not leave her family and her environment. A Yiddish novel of transformation is impossible without some degree of discontinuity between the generations. For Peretz, the decision to stay home becomes the most important event in his early life, the one that, according to Wisse, formed his personality: “A passionate believer in the freedom of the human will, Peretz interpreted his decision not to leave home as the determining moral choice of his formative years, the decision that governed his life as a writer.” Wisse also sees in this episode the source of the deep inner conflict in Peretz’s life: “He had long since feared that his manhood could be gained only through an intolerable act of betrayal” (p. 75). The decision to stay home had not only psychological, but also social implications. The temptation to leave home and go study in a rabbinical seminary in Russia comes from a certain Shimon Khodok, the only Jew closely associated with Russia in Peretz’s memoirs. Because of his Lithuanian origin, Khodok (the surname in Russian means “interceder,” in this case mediator between the Jewish community and the authorities) occupies a marginal place in the Polish-Jewish society of Zamosc. He tries to seduce the young prodigy Yitskhok Leybush by his own example, since he is convinced that a bright young man has a future in Great Russia, not in its Polish backyard. He even pawns his gold chain in order to pay for Peretz’s expenses. If Peretz makes this choice, he will break with the parochial Jewish paradigm of his youth, and become involved with the big world of politics (which was, incidentally, the way chosen by another famous Jew from Zamosc, Rosa Luxemburg). Peretz’s decision to stay home closes any possibility of development in this direction once and for all. Writing about his life, Peretz filters his experience through the established conceptual matrix and sometimes leaves out those aspects of reality

Love and Destiny that do not fit. Thus, Rosa Luxemburg appears in My Memoirs merely as a hunchback daughter of the wealthy Avrom Luxemburg, “wandering through the garden picking flowers or reading a book” in solitude (p. 319). There is no indication of her prominent revolutionary future, an omission that is even more conspicuous since usually Peretz does not fail to celebrate the marks that people of Zamosc left on history. Rosa Luxemburg’s future role does not fit Peretz’s conceptual structure and is indeed even dangerous to mention because the very acknowledgment of such an option would threaten the whole mythology of Peretz’s Zamosc. Any present conflict in Peretz’s world ought to be representable through the traditional system of oppositions. It is a conflict within Jewish tradition and society, not outside of it. Any conflict must belong to the tradition of conflict that is part of Jewish tradition. In his analysis of Peretz’s memoirs, David Roskies establishes a connection between its central conflict, which is a dialectic relationship between the text and the heart of the poet, and the two different types of representation of reality. “The memoirs unfold not successively, but dialectically, around the inner tension between reason and emotion. In general, Peretz uses two different descriptive techniques: a mimetic episodic technique for the description of external reality . . . , and a symbolic technique for the description of inner reality.”53 As we shall see, Peretz uses this tension in order to cancel the conflict through the final victory of symbolism over mimetic realism. The final scene of the memoirs can be interpreted as the closure and the triumph of past over present. The epilogue takes the reader from the distant past of Peretz’s youth into the recent past of his old age. The author recalls an episode that happened in Switzerland, where he was recuperating from a serious heart attack. One evening he heard a shepherd whistle in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm, and the symbolic significance of this whistling underscored the final message of the whole book: “His whistling cut the darkness, the rain, and the thunder like a knife, and it kept growing bolder and clearer: ‘I’ll make you listen to me! You will have to hear me!’ ” (p. 359). The symbolic meaning of this final epiphany subordinates the possible mimetic meanings of the entire autobiographical story. Using a symbolic device, Peretz employs a popular Hasidic tale about an ignorant boy, who, with his spontaneous whistling on Yom Kippur, helped the tsaddik (a saintly man, in some versions the Baal Shem Tov himself ) in his prayer to overcome the forces of evil. This motif was popular with those Jewish writers who made use of Hasidic material. It can by found in the modern adaptations by Martin Buber and Pinhas Sadeh, as well as in Yiddish stories by Sholem Asch, Micha-Yosef Bin-Gorion (Berdyczewsky) and S. Ansky.54 But perhaps closest to Peretz in his treatment of the whistle motif is Ilya Ehren-

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Love and Destiny burg, who also employs it as a symbolic closure of the life story of his picaresque hero, Laizik Roitshvanets.55 As an artist, Peretz identifies himself with this whistling boy and, through him, with the rural pastoral tradition, be it Jewish or Swiss. The classification that he brings into the world is based on a symbolic reading of the tradition. Although modernist in its form, this classification seeks to establish another closed order that protects the artist’s world from disorderly reality. The whistle symbolizes for Peretz “the power of warding off everything that invades us unexpectedly, giving us time to shut our doors and gates to protect ourselves from strangers” (p. 358). One of the last chapters of Peretz’s memoirs describes how the people of Zamosc used to die in the old days. For example, Peretz tells the death story of one of the Zamosc heretics, Simon the Hatmaker: Just before he died, he asked his wife to buy him a half a pound of carp, cook it, and serve it to him in bed. He wanted to take leave of his worldly pleasures, of which carp was the foremost. He also wished to compare it to the feast of Leviathan in the next world. And to test out the old, world-famous joke, he ate a wormy plum for dessert, so that when he was whipped for his transgressions he would know when it came to this final punishment that he was about to taste of the heavenly feast. (p. 340)

As this story demonstrates, no one in the old Zamosc could escape the traditional Jewish paradigm of the life cycle. Even the most “non-Jewish Jews” remained genuinely Jewish in their freethinking and were ready to acknowledge this in the face of death. Jewish fate was stronger than human efforts, as it was once more proved by a retired soldier, a shabes goy, who died with Shma Yisroel (the prayer “Hear, O Israel!”) on his lips—and thus disclosed the secret of his Jewish descent (chap. 8). Peretz believed that fiction is truer than the represented reality because it is free of accidental elements. Selective memories of the past serve as the organizing force for the perception of the present. David Roskies formulates this principle of artistic organization in Peretz’s memoirs: “Just as memory animates and connects his present existence, so the memories animate and connect all his previous writings.”56 The selected facts of the past, the “main facts, general ones, or ideas and attitudes,” are the source of order and criterion of the truth in Mayne zikhroynes (Yiddish edition, p. 4); they organize the fragmented memories into a unity. The notion of truth as selected and organized reality informs Peretz’s concept of folklore: The fable is always truer than the fact, just as the invention of the folk is truer than what passes for reality. Man bends his will and hides his true face behind a mask of propriety. . . . Once the accidents and nonessentials have been forgotten—those

Love and Destiny things which were done out of economic necessity, or in anger, or for a momentary settling of account—the soul emerges in its nakedness. (p. 291)

Peretz represents reality through a set of selected oppositions, which provides a mechanism for incorporating any new phenomenon into the established pattern. The basic system of contrasts is formed by history, and the present can be written into it. This pattern contains what he believes is the most important, representative aspects of reality. The rest are protim, accidental facts not worth remembering. This is the basis of Peretz’s firm belief in the moral essence of his art: “Just as the legend is truer than the observed reality, so the abstract moral principle is the most permanent thing in life,” to cite the conclusion of Roskies (p. 275). Marriage marks the end of the story in Peretz’s memoirs. Having once rejected the option to leave home and start a new life, the protagonist is inevitably dragged into an arranged marriage. Unwilling to part with an illusion of a possible compromise between his creative personality and dull reality, he pins his hope on his future father-in-law, the poet and maskil Gavriel Yehuda Lichtenfeld: “I would ask him about everything, and he would be sure to know the answers” (p. 355). The self-obsessed young husband hardly notices his “newly acquired better half,” so much are his expectations directed to Lichtenfeld (p. 354). The quest, however, remains aborted: It was over and I hadn’t asked Gavriel Yehuda Lichtenfeld a single thing. I had gotten no answers; the questions had lost their vitality and their sharp tang. Like late crabgrass they shrank and wilted and gathered somewhere in a dark recess of my heart, where they were to lie for a long, long time until freshened by dew and light from the outside. But even when that time came, the questions were to remain unresolved, with no answers expected, with not even a lingering hope of response from anyone on earth or in heaven. (p. 356)

Peretz’s autobiographic hero eschews his chance to leave the structured universe of Jewishness and to try his luck in a new world of uncertainties. He prefers not to challenge the basic assumptions and chooses to leave the disturbing questions unresolved forever. All his fiction is, in a way, a result of this decision. Like no other Yiddish writer, Peretz is very good at asking the questions and suggesting different answers, but he usually avoids definite solutions. He always holds back before the last step, which could lead him beyond certainties. As our study shows, he is quite wise to do so: none of those younger writers who attempted to take this step really succeeded, but they all had to pay the price—the loss of the resounding depth of traditional Jewish discourse, for which they were never to be compensated by the newly acquired sense of belonging to European culture.

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Love and Destiny Sholem Aleichem’s autobiographical novel From the Fair, although in almost every respect different from Peretz’s memoirs, is another example of a closed work, based on the principle of classification. Sholem Aleichem wrote his last novel with the literary model of his mentor, S. Y. Abramovitsh, in mind: “Of many possible Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian models, the most influential was clearly Abramovitsh’s fictional memoir ‘Shloyme reb Khayims’. . . . From this work, Sholem Aleichem learned the need for separating the writer from his literary persona, and that by depicting the social and physical environment he could achieve several goals, not least of which was the shaping of the hero’s consciousness.”57 Following this model saved Sholem Aleichem the trouble of inventing an original plot, which was always a problem for him. Freed from this challenge (“Why novels, if life is a novel?” proclaims the epigraph), the author sets off to talk about himself in the third person. Sholem Aleichem the writer is going to tell “the true story of Sholem Aleichem the man, informally and without adornments and embellishments, as if an absolute stranger were talking, yet one who accompanied him everywhere” (p. 4). In fact, however, as Roskies has proved, the narrator’s claim for objectivity and factuality is deceiving. The plot of Sholem Aleichem’s life story “is governed by conventions borrowed from the bildungsroman and from Sholem Aleichem’s other novels; there is a linear progression of moves from one setting to another, while the hero’s life follows the cyclical, rise-and-fall pattern so characteristic of Sholem Aleichem’s work as a whole.”58 Having demonstrated that From the Fair is organized according to the cyclical scheme of the myth, with the hero completing the full circle at the end of the story when he finally arrives in Kiev, Roskies comes to the conclusion: “Despite the great distance he has traveled in his life, he proves nonetheless to be a true son of Kasrilevke” (p. 72). Thus, the linear development of the modern bildungsroman becomes subordinated to the mythological cycle that refers back to Jewish tradition. To explain this, Roskies points out the discrepancy between the persona of the author and that of the hero in Sholem Aleichem’s autobiographic novel: “the Jewish artist, whether he be named Stempenyu, Yosele Nightingale or Sholem Aleichem, is a sentimental hero prone to intense emotion but capable of limited growth. . . . As the one named Sholem Aleichem, however, he is also an archetype, and as such obeys the rise-and-fall pattern reserved for all characters of his ilk” (p. 76). In Roskies’s view, this attempt to combine a real developing character with an archetype, carrying in himself the inevitable rise-and-fall pattern, was not successful artistically. Sholem Aleichem’s real strength was in creating archetypes, such as Tevye, Menakhem-Mendl, and Motl, but his autobiographical character comes out less real in this role than the purely fictive creations. In other words, the

Love and Destiny principle of classification subordinates in Sholem Aleichem’s autobiography the principle of transformation, and does not allow the character to follow his personal track. Like Peretz’s memoirs, Sholem Aleichem’s autobiography contains an element of defensiveness. The pretended simplicity and naturalness of the author’s life story has to be understood in the context of the Yiddish literary development of the period. From this perspective, From the Fair can be seen as the final chapter of Sholem Aleichem’s life project of creating a folk literature. As he informs the reader in the preface to the book, the incentive to write an autobiography came to him from an admirer of Yiddish literature: “since I have lived through an entire epoch and have grown up, as it were, together with Yiddish folk literature,—why don’t I take upon myself the work of representation of that epoch in the form of a novel?” (Yiddish, pp. 9–10). Thus, the autobiography is not just a personal story of Sholem Aleichem the man and the writer, or a “key to his works,” as were Peretz’s memoirs, but a document of literary history. From the Fair is the final monument to the tradition of folksliteratur, a creation of Sholem Aleichem’s imagination and ambition. Both Aleichem’s and Peretz’s memoirs conclude the epoch of writers-asinstitutions, individuals who claimed to represent Yiddish literature in its entirety. The autobiographical projects were too important to allow the authors to be diverted from the idea of Yiddish literature, which they developed through their entire literary lives. These projects were meant to protect the respective classification that emerged as a result of these developments. Therefore, Sholem Aleichem, like Peretz, had to exclude from his autobiographical universe entire spheres of reality that did not fit into it. This is the reason why Voronko of Sholem Aleichem’s childhood was represented as a purely Jewish place, and why “the desire for money is transformed into the myth of the hidden treasure.”59 The actual economic and social reality were less important for Sholem Aleichem and Peretz than a mythological image, which they believed was a necessary part of the authentic Yiddish literature. Thus, the two classics end up in the category of literature, which can be described as “past-oriented,” “national-romantic,” and “sentimental,” a literature whose purpose is to provide a system of aesthetic classification that could comfortably reduce the unknown and dangerous future to the familiar patterns of past.

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Conclusion: Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity

The period between 1905 and 1914 was perhaps the most eventful and dynamic decade in the history of Yiddish literature. These years became the watershed, dividing nineteenth-century classical literature, which, in Ken Frieden’s words, “negotiated between oral intonations, Western literary forms, and Hebraic antecedents,” from the modern style of writing, which values the second component, Western literary tradition, over the other two.1 Most sensitive among the young Yiddish writers, David Bergelson, David Ignatov, and Joseph Opatoshu came to realize that under the pressure of modernization the authentic Yiddish “oral intonations” of the shtetl idiom were no longer adequate to Jewish reality on both sides of the Atlantic. It also became evident that, with the increase of ideological and cultural diversification within Jewish society, the “Hebraic antecedents” would lose their role as the common heritage that united the Jewish community and was shared by most of its members. The result of this development was the emergence of a Yiddish literary discourse similar to those of other European languages. Yiddish literature developed a polyphonic system of genres and styles, which was open to new forms and influences. All these changes were to a large extent caused by the manifold cultural and social transformations occurring within and outside the traditional geographic and cultural boundaries of East European Jewry in the aftermath of the revolution of 1905 in Russia. The events of 1905 stimulated the social and cultural processes—the awakening of political and ideological activity, accelerated capitalist modernization, cultural assimilation, and mass migration inside the country and abroad—

Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity which directly or indirectly affected the lives of the majority of Russian Jews. Responding to the challenges of this new reality, Yiddish literature more often than not followed the models of European realism and modernism. This change of orientation created a chasm between the classical tradition of Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz, and the aspirations of young Yiddish writers in Russia, Poland, and the United States. The young generation abandoned the search for authentic Yiddish forms, such as the yidisher roman (Yiddish/Jewish novel), which figured so prominently in the creativity of Mendele and Sholem Aleichem, and accepted the norms of contemporary European realism and modernism. The classical writers, for whom the decade of 1905–14 was the time of the final summation of their artistic life project, by and large resented this betrayal of tradition and expressed this disapproval of new tendencies in their final autobiographical accounts. Having solved one problem, that of actuality and relevance, young Yiddish literature had to address a new challenge, the problem of national authenticity. What was specifically Jewish in their works, and why should they have continued to write in Yiddish, if this language, as all young writers sensed and indicated in their works, was about to disappear from everyday and cultural usage of the post-1905 generation, to be replaced by Russian, Polish, German, French, and English? One of the possible responses, described in great detail by David Roskies, is “creative betrayal,” the dialectical pattern of rebellion-loss-and-retrieval that he traces through modern Jewish culture.2 This pattern enables a modern artist to abandon the native ground, go through the “apprenticeship” in a foreign cultural environment, and then “negotiate” his or her return to Yiddish on terms acceptable to both sides. This concept helps to restore the continuity between premodern Yiddish tradition, classical Yiddish literature, post–World War I Yiddish modernism, and post-Holocaust Yiddish literature without compromising the originality of each period. Each stage can be represented as a new variety of creative betrayal that incorporates contemporary European sensitivity into the “golden chain” of Yiddish tradition. As with any generalization, the concept of creative betrayal tends to emphasize certain aspects and overshadow others. Naturally, the final stage seems to be more interesting than the transitional second step, that of leaving the fold. However, considered from another perspective, the theme of rebellion and escape marking so many beginners’ works after 1905 was a necessary component of productive literary development, which should be appreciated on its own terms and cannot be relegated, with hindsight, to the subordinated status of the “sins of the youth.” A premature “negotiated return” can easily degenerate into kitsch, as is demonstrated by Sholem Asch’s prose poems A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged. Instead of lamenting or attempting to amend the broken continuity, the majority of young writ-

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Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity ers was only too eager to explore new opportunities offered by the manifold crises of their environment. Most often their vision of the future accepts the forms of a collective utopia or individualist anarchy, both of which are radically different from the past or present models. Young writers perceived the crisis of modernity as too overwhelming to be resolved through the means of conventional culture; for them, as for their Russian contemporaries, this crisis acquired new dimensions of natural and mythological order. We have examined the interrelations of the major trends in the development of the Yiddish novel during the decade preceding World War I. From the perspective rendered by Lotman’s concept of two types of textual organization—transformation and classification—the corpus of Yiddish novels and novellas can be divided into two main groups. To the first belong the texts, in which the plot leads to the emergence of a new order that replaces the old. The result of the story is a new organization of life based on a new classification: new values, new rules, new relationships, and the product of the new classification—new characters. The goal of any new classification is to incorporate the personal development of a character into the new order. A conservative solution would be to ignore or suppress the problem of modernization altogether and to attempt to create a crisis-proof character capable of remaining true to himself under the pressure of changing reality. This is the strategy chosen by Sholem Aleichem in those of his works that received canonical status: Tevye the Dairyman, Menakhem-Mendl, and Motl the Cantor’s Son. Even the most drastic changes in life do not affect the personality of the main heroes: in the turbulent epoch they stand firm as archetypes, representations of the deepest principles of Jewish existence, bitokhn (trust in God), shpil (play) (Y. Y. Trunk), and eternal youth (Miron). The characters of this type were very popular for the symbolic purpose of national representation. In time of crisis, they were readily accepted by critics and audiences as embodiments of the Jewish “essence” that brings solace and satisfaction. The respective texts received the high status of “national,” or “folk,” literature. If, nevertheless, a text constructed according to the principle of classification includes elements of psychological development of character, the result is the emergence of a “new” Jew. A protagonist develops in the course of the story from an unstable and unformed personality into a strong and definite character taking over the responsibility for the future of the whole community. This development often contains an ideological dimension, which sometimes reduces the character to a mere illustration of an ideological principle. This is the case in Ansky’s In Stream, Spektor’s Avrom Zilbertsvayg, Sholem Aleichem’s The Flood, and Sholem Asch’s Meri. The principle of classification is employed by the novel of social realism, as well. In his first two novels, Leon Kobrin meticulously depicts the process

Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity of formation of the new structure of relationships in the immigrant Jewish community in America. The novels convey a feeling of social optimism mixed with national and moral pessimism. The new American order offers unprecedented economic opportunities bordering on the realization of the age-old dream about treasure, a vestige of the feudal Polish past. On the other hand, America exerts an enormous moral and national pressure that kills the most sensitive among the immigrants and corrupts the others. The new order is dominated by young, aggressive, and egoistic people with no respect for the old values. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, this line was developed in the Anglo-American Jewish novel, while the focus in the AmericanYiddish novel of social realism of that period shifted toward nostalgic pessimism and individualism. The moral or physical destruction of the character under the pressure of changing reality represents of course the most unequivocal close ending. Abelman (Dinezon’s The Crisis), Yosele (Asch’s To America), Falik (Dinezon’s Falik and His House), Boris Etinberg (Kobrin’s The Immigrants)—all fall victim to the new order. The new classification, which emerges at the end of those tales, has no space for the people who had occupied respectable central positions in the old world before the fatal sequence of events brought about its end. The changes ruined them by eliminating the very possibility of those positions in the new order. Personal tragedy is often represented in these stories as a case study of a general national disaster, caused by the destruction of the shtetl order. This attitude reduces the national content to the nostalgic celebration of the good old days, when Jews lived in the shtetl protected by their social and cultural isolation from the challenges of modernity. This type of representation of Jewish life is obviously incompatible with such turbulent processes as capitalist development, revolution, immigration, and the ensuing transformation of family and gender relationships. Interesting in this respect are the attempts to defy the very notion of development and change in Jewish society undertaken by the young Sholem Asch from a neoromantic perspective. Reality in A Shtetl and Reb Shloyme Noged appears as a completely immobile structure existing beyond time. The shtetl order is endowed with the status of eternity, and the central characters are removed from the concrete sociohistorical situation into a timeless abstract locus governed by a predestined cyclical succession of seasons and holidays. The prevalence of the principle of classification in nineteenth-century Yiddish literature enabled those writers who wished to apply it to the literary representation of the reality of the twentieth century to draw from the repertoire of the established tradition. Members of the other group, those who sought to capture in their works the very process of transformation, not just its effects, faced the more complex challenge of representing new Jewish characters in the process of formation. Their task was to discover,

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Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity analyze, and depict what Raymond Williams calls a new structure of feeling, that is, a reflection of “a social experience which is still in process, often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idiosyncratic, and even isolating, but which in analysis . . . has its emergent, connecting, and dominant characteristics, indeed its specific hierarchies.”3 Since George Lukács’s The Theory of the Novel (1915), this type of discourse has stood at the center of attention of Western literary theory.4 And yet, with the possible exception of David Bergelson’s works, writings that focus on transformation have been less appreciated by students and critics of Yiddish literature. Perhaps the most insightful in this respect are Soviet critics and historians of Yiddish literature, but their ability to conceptualize is limited by compulsory ideological restrictions, which, in fact, represent another form of imposed classification: the eventual goal of their literary analysis has to be a demonstration of how all transformations will lead to the establishment of the ultimate system of classification, the socialist order. One reason for this lack of attention to the aspect of transformation in Yiddish literature lies in the always problematic relationships between the individual and community in the novel of transformation. It is almost a consensus among authors, readers, and critics that texts with the focus on the character’s transformation are less “Jewish” and more universal than the classificatory ones. The character is represented as an individual struggling for his or her integrity against decomposing forces coming from the outside. This struggle is represented in general, usually romantic or existential terms, rather than as part of a national effort to find a place for Jews in the new world. Yiddish literary criticism and scholarship were often too preoccupied with the “Jewish” content of Yiddish literature, and, therefore, unwilling to pay attention to other, general aspects of Yiddish literature. One of the purposes of this study has been to demonstrate that the separation between the Jewish and the general in Yiddish literature can be misleading, and, indeed, counterproductive. Yiddish novels and novellas of transformation, such as Bergelson’s When All Is Said and Done, Opatoshu’s Alone and From the New York Ghetto, Ignatov’s In Whirlpool, Haimowitz’s On the Way, and, to some extent, Sholem Asch’s Meri, draw extensively on non-Jewish literary referents and associations. Characteristically, the main active protagonists in novels of this type are predominantly women, a part of the population that was underrepresented in nineteenth-century Yiddish literature. It is only natural, therefore, that their role models were always Gentile—heroines of Russian, Polish, or French literature. The female characters’ transformations follow an outward direction, leading to liberation from shtetl norms and concepts and from the Jewish way of life associated with them. The result of these transformations is, as a rule, less important than the process itself, which leaves these novels open-ended and devoid of a powerful final classification.

Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity Attempts to invent a classification come out artistically weak and intellectually unconvincing (such as Borukh’s dream about “free villages” in In Whirlpool, or Misha’s return to the Rov in Meri), and only diminish the originality of the story. The novel of transformation introduces into Yiddish literature a new concept of personal freedom, which by and large remained out of concern for the classical writers (as one can see from their autobiographies). The Road into the Open, to borrow the title of the contemporaneous novel (1908) by Arthur Schnitzler, becomes the path of the young heroines and heroes of Yiddish literature in Russia, Poland, and America. The opposition between the principles of classification and transformation can serve as a useful conceptual device, but it does not provide a comprehensive interpretation of the development of Yiddish literature between 1905 and 1914. Almost every text requires a subtle analysis in order to establish the complex structure of relationships between the two opposing principles. Thus, American modernists combined their pioneering interest in the transformation of the individual psychology of an immigrant with a deep concern with the collective survival of Jews in the new country and the prospects of renewal of Yiddish as a cultural idiom adequate to the American reality, that is, with the possibility of a new classification of reality. This combination of interests stimulated their artistic search for new solutions that could harmonize the individual and the community. Similarly, Weissenberg’s novella A Shtetl focused on transformations of the shtetl order caused by the devastating effect of the 1905 revolution, which stands in sharp contrast to other contemporary depictions of the revolutionary events with their emphasis on classification, that is, the emergence of a new order out of the revolutionary upheaval. The focus on the transformation was connected with Weissenberg’s stylistic innovation, the introduction of naturalism into the description of Jewish social reality. The author’s discovery of a detached naturalist perspective became an important factor in the development of Yiddish literature. During the period under discussion it was used by Sholem Asch and Joseph Opatoshu. Asch turned naturalism into a satiric device, applying it to his grotesque depiction of the “Jewish” revolution, which became part of his reactionary classification. Opatoshu used the rebellious potential of Weissenberg’s work and developed it into a series of characters (Zanvl, Sorke, and Sam) who run away from the confines of the East European shtetl or New York “ghetto.” In Alone Opatoshu opened up the closed situation of Weissenberg’s A Forest Girl so that it became a foundation for his most famous historical trilogy. The works of David Bergelson offer perhaps the most elaborate samples of contemporary structures of feeling in Yiddish literature. Although Soviet critics of the 1920s–40s tended to emphasize the social aspect in his fiction and the impact of the social transformation of

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Yiddish Fiction Faces Modernity Russian Jewry in the aftermath of 1905 on the personality of the characters, more recent research by Israeli and American scholars concentrates on the psychological nuances and the artistic subtlety of Bergelson’s texts. The very possibility of such different interpretations indicates that those complex texts cannot be fully appreciated from only one perspective, whether sociological, psychological, or aesthetic. The solution to the problem of the interpretation of Bergelson’s works lies in finding the right balance among all approaches. The dialectical relationships between the principles of classification and transformation, which originated in the period of 1905–14, inform the later course of developments in Yiddish literature. The powerful changes in the political and social reality of Eastern Europe after 1914 produced enormous pressure on the Jewish community and individual Jews. Immediate responses to this situation in Yiddish prose varied from the expressionist novels Messiah, the Son of Efraim (1924) and Monday (1926), by Moyshe Kulbak, to the symbolist tales of Der Nister and the naturalist novels by Israel Rabon and Oyzer Varshavski. Again, as after 1905, the first literary responses to the cataclysm were dominated by the principle of transformation. But the principle of classification did not die. It surfaced once again in Yiddish realist prose in the 1930s. Such monumental novels as The Brothers Ashkenazi by I. J. Singer, Salvation by Sholem Asch, and At the Dnieper by David Bergelson represent different attempts to create a final classification in order to draw a final balance of the traditional pre–World War I East European Jewish life. In America, Yiddish literature faced another challenge, that of shrinking reality caused by the assimilation of the speakers of Yiddish into the English-speaking “melting pot.” Perhaps the most wideranging response to this process is Sholem Asch’s novel East River, an attempt to harmonize American reality with a traditionalist classification in a way reminiscent of Asch’s shtetl fantasies. Frank Kermode’s conclusion of his essay on the English novel around 1907 seems appropriate for this study as well, if, of course, one replaces “Englishmen” and “England” with “Jews” and “Jewish people”: “the new novel was still a little too hard for Englishmen of 1907; it was for them too modern a way of rephrasing a proposition they might, at heart, accept: that the critical condition of England was the critical condition of life, if one had the means to know it.”5 The prevalent impression one receives from reading pre-1914 Yiddish literature is that of its strong yearning for “normalization” of Jewish life, of a potentially open perspective, capable of incorporating different visions of the future, and of a rather optimistic belief that life might become better.

Notes

Introduction 1. Characterizing the early Marxist period in Bakhtin’s thought, Tzvetan Todorov stresses the ideological character of language: “In opposition to subjectivist linguistics and psychology, which proceed as if man were alone in the world, but also in opposition to the empiricist theories that are limited to knowledge of the observable products of human interactions, Bakhtin and his friends declare the primordial character of the social—language and thought, constitutive of mankind, are necessarily intersubjective.” Tzvetan Todorov, Literature and Its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-Century Criticism, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 82. 2. P. N. Medvedev, Formal’nyi metod v literaturovedenii (The formal method in literary scholarship) (Moscow: Labirint, 1993), p. 29. 3. On parallels between Bakhtin and Lukács see John Neubauer, “Bakhtin versus Lukács: Inscription of Homelessness in Theories of the Novel,” Poetics Today, vol. 17, no. 4 (1996), pp. 531–44. Especially interesting is Bakhtin’s redefinition of Lukács’s prehistoric culture as preheteroglossic and association of myth with authoritative monological discourse, pp. 540–41. I am thankful to David Roskies for directing me to this article. 4. Lukács, preface to The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), p. 17. 5. Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), p. 49. 6. Ibid., p.63. 7. Ibid., p. 55. 8. Yurii Lotman, “Proiskhozhdenie siuzheta v tipologicheskom osveshchenii”

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Notes to Pages 4–8 (Origins of the plot in the light of typology), in Izbrannye stat’i (Selected essays) (Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992), 1: 224. 9. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 30. 10. “The English Novel, circa 1907” (1971), in The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 33–51. 11. Ruth R. Wisse, “1935/6—A Year in the Life of Yiddish Literature,” in Keminhag Ashkenaz u-Polin: sefer yovel leH . one Shmeruk, eds. Israel Bartal, Khava Turnyanski, and Ezra Mendelson (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1993), pp. 83–103. 12. Sol Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature (New York: Jonathan David, 1985); Charles Madison, Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers (New York: Schocken, 1971). 13. Shmuel Niger, Dertseylers un romanistn (New York: CYCO, 1946). 14. Nachman Mayzel, “Di yidishe literatur in Amerike un Eyrope un zeyere kegnzaytike batsiungen” (Yiddish literature in America and Europe and their mutual relationships), in Tsurikblikn un perspektivn (Retrospectives and perspectives) (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Peretz-farlag, 1962), pp. 273–302; Nachman Mayzel, “Vegn di amerikaner yidishe ‘Yunge’ ” (On the American Yiddish group Di Yunge), ibid., pp. 303–53. 15. Nachman Mayzel, Yitskhok Leybush Peretz un zayn dor shraybers (Y. L. Peretz and the writers of his generation) (New York: IKUF, 1951); Shmuel Niger, Y. L. Peretz: zayn lebn, zayne firndike perzenlekhkayt (Y. L. Peretz: his life, his leading personality) (Buenos Aires: Argentiner opteyl fun alveltlekhn yidishn kultur-kongres, 1952); Shmuel Niger, Sholem Ash: zayn lebn un zayne verk (Sholem Asch: his life and work) (New York: Sh. Niger Bukh-komitet, 1960); Nachman Mayzel, Yoysef Opatoshu, lebn un shafn (Joseph Opatoshu, his life and his work) (Warsaw: Literarishe Bleter, 1937). 16. These essays are mostly collected in two books: Shmuel Niger, Vegn yidishe shrayber (On Yiddish writers), 2 vols. (Warsaw: Tsentral, 1914); Nachman Mayzel, Noente un vayte (The near and the distant ones), 2 vols. (Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1926). 17. Especially important for this study are the following works about Sholem Aleichem: Meir Wiener, “Di sotsyale vortslen fun Sholem Aleykhems humor” and “Vegn Sholem Aleykhems humor,” in his Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur in 19tn yorhundert, vol. 2 (New York: IKUF, 1946); Dan Miron, Shalom Aleikhem: pirkey masah (Ramat Gan: Agudat hasofrim, 1970); David G. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); Avraham Novershtern, “Menah.em Mendl leShalom Aleikhem; beyn toldot hatekst lemivne hayetsirah,” Tarbits, v. 54, no. 1 (1985), pp. 103–46; and two books by Y. Y. Trunk that are not academic but influential: Sholem Aleykhem, zayn vezn un zayne verk (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1937) and Tevye un Menakhem-Mendl in yidishn velt-goyrl (New York: CYCO, 1944). On Y. L. Peretz: Khone Shmeruk, Peretses yeush-vizye: interpretatsye fun Y. L. Peretses “Bay nakht oyfn altn markt” un kritishe oysgabe fun der drame (New York: Yivo, 1971); Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, and “A shlisl tsu Peretses zikhroynes,” in Vidervuks (New York: Yugntruf, 1989); Ruth Wisse, I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Seattle: Univer-

Notes to Pages 8–17 sity of Washington Press, 1991). For Bergelson, see Yekhezkl Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson (Moscow: Emes, 1947), as well as Avraham Novershtern, “Aspektim mivniim baproza shel David Bergelson mereshitah ad ‘midas ha-din,’ ” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1981; and Susan Ann Slotnik, “The Novel Form in the Works of David Bergelson,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978. 18. The best analytical study of Asch still remains Max Erik’s book Sholem Ash (1900–1930) (Minsk: Vaysrusishe visnshaft-akademye, 1931), which has become outdated in many respects primarily because of its simplistic Marxist approach. 19. Isaac Nusinov, “Sotsialisticheskii realizm i problema mirovozzreniia i metoda” (Socialist realism and the problem of worldview and method), Literaturnyi kritik, vol. 2 (1934), pp. 151, quoted in David Pike, German Writers in Soviet Exile, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 263. Pike’s book includes a detailed study of the debate among the leading Soviet critics on the social nature of artistic creativity, pp. 259–307. 20. Trunk, Sholem Aleykhem, pp. 155–57. 21. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 316. 22. Miron, Shalom Aleikhem; “Bouncing Back: Destruction and Recovery in Sholem Aleykhem’s Motl Peyse dem khazns,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. 17 (1978), pp. 119–84; Der imazh fun shtetl (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Peretz-farlag, 1981). 23. Dan Miron, “The Literary Image of the Shtetl,” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (1995), p. 13. 24. David Roskies, “Yiddish Culture at Century’s End,” La rassegna mensile di Israel, vol. 62, no. 1–2 (1996), p. 480. 25. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 34–37. 26. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 35.

Chapter 1 1. Arcadius Kahan, “The Impact of Industrialization in Tsarist Russia on the Socioeconomic Conditions of the Jewish Population,” in Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History, ed. Roger Weiss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 33. 2. Teodor Shanin, Russia, 1905–07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 2: 8. 3. Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), part 2. 4. Michael Riffaterre, Fictional Truth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 53. 5. Jacob Lestschinsky, Dos yidishe ekonomishe lebn in der yidisher literatur, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1921). 6. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin Milligan (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 139. 7. John Vernon, Money and Fiction (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 117.

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Notes to Pages 17–34 8. Dan Miron, Beyn h.azon la cemet (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1979), p. 199. 9. Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Schocken, 1973), p. 164. 10. Vernon, Money and Fiction, p. 18. 11. Ibid., p. 22. 12. Shmuel Niger, “Yankev Dinezons briv,” Di Tsukunft vol. 34, no. 9 (1929), p. 624. 13. Ibid., p. 623. 14. Nachman Mayzel, Noente un eygene: fun Yankev Dinezon biz Hirsh Glik (New York: IKUF, 1957), p. 19. 15. Bal-Makhshoves, “Yankev Dinezon,” in Geklibene shriftn, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Bikher-farlag, 1929), pp. 113–20. 16. Shmuel Niger, “Yankev Dinezon,” Literarishe bleter, no. 41 (1929), p. 799. 17. The quotations below are given according to the Musterverk edition: Yankev Dinezon, Yosele, Der krizis (Buenos-Aires: Kultur-kongres, 1959). 18. Kahan, “Impact of Industrialization,” p. 24. 19. “The Ethics of the Fathers” (2.5), from The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, trans. S. Singer (London: Kuperard, 1998), p. 486. 20. Yankev Dinezon, Zikhroynes un Bilder, in Ale Verk (Collected works)(Warsaw: Akhisefer, 1928), 6: 5. 21. Miron, “The Literary Image of the Shtetl,” p. 16. 22. Vernon, Money and Fiction, p. 120. 23. Miron, Der imazh fun shtetl, pp. 77–78. 24. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto (New York: Schocken, 1973), p. 20. 25. David Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 111–12. 26. Sholem Asch, A shtetl (New York: Forverts, 1911), p. 7. The English translation, slightly altered, is The Little Town, trans. Meyer Levin, in Tales of My People, ed. Meyer Levin (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948). 27. Mendele Moykher Sforim, Shloyme reb Khayims, in Ale verk, vol. 18 (Warsaw: Mendele, 1928), pp. 16–21. An English translation of the Hebrew version is in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse (New York: Behrman House, 1973). 28. Lestschinsky, Dos yidishe ekonomishe lebn, p. 15. 29. Shmuel Niger, “Sholem Ash,” in Vegn yidishe shrayber, 2: 9. 30. Nachman Mayzel, “Sholem Ash,” in Noente un vayte, 2: 45–46. 31. Bal-Makhshoves, “Dray shtetlekh,” in Geklibene verk (New York: CYCO, 1953), p. 273. 32. Ibid., p. 274. 33. Max Erik, Sholem Ash (1900–1930), p. 31. 34. Ibid., p. 35. 35. Ibid., p. 36. 36. Ibid., p. 30. 37. A nature-based economy and magical attitude to money can be regarded as

Notes to Pages 34–50 submetaphors within Dan Miron’s concept of the “single extended metaphor of the shtetl.” See Miron, “Literary Image of the Shtetl,” p. 12. 38. Sholem Asch, Reb Shloyme noged un andere dertseylungen (New York: Forverts, 1918), pp. 1–102. 39. Israel Aksenfeld, The Headband, in The Shtetl, trans. and ed. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Richard Marek, 1979), p. 83. 40. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 45. 41. Ibid., p. 295. 42. The chronology and periodization of Bergelson’s works, especially of the first two decades, are discussed in Novershtern, “Aspektim,” pp. 43–48. Novershtern especially stresses the stylistic and thematic unity of Begelson’s works between 1909 and 1920. Ibid., p. 43. 43. See Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk, p. 296; Mayzel, Noente un vayte, 1: 158; Mayzel, Forgeyer un mitsaytler (New York, IKUF, 1946), pp. 311, 312; Shmuel Niger, Shmuesn vegn bikher (New York: Farlag yidish, 1922), pp. 137–62; Niger, Yidishe shrayber in Sovet-Rusland (New York: Sh Niger Bukh-komitet, 1958), p. 319. 44. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 53. 45. Wisse, “Introduction to ‘At the Depot,’ ” in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, p. 81. The English translations from At the Depot are quoted from this edition. 46. Beynish belongs to the talush (dangling man) type of character that was popular in Hebrew and Yiddish literature during the first decade of this century. See Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 83. 47. Avraham Novershtern, “Der held un zayne handlungen in Dovid Bergelsons frie dertseylungen,” Di goldene keyt, vol. 94 (1977), p. 140. 48. Ibid., p. 138. 49. Yekhezkl Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson (Moscow: Emes, 1947), p. 36. 50. Mayzel, Forgeyer un mittsaytler, p. 307. 51. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 27. 52. David Bergelson, Geklibene verk, vol. 2 (Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1929). English translation: In a Backwoods Town, trans. Bernard G. Guerney, in A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, eds. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (New York: Viking, 1954), pp. 471–504. 53. Novershtern, “Der held un zayne handlungen,” p. 141. 54. David Bergelson, “In fartunkelte tsaytn,” Eygns, vol. 1 (1918), pp. 1–58; “Yoysef Shur,” Verk, vol. 3 (Berlin: Wostok, 1922), reprinted in A shpigl oyf a shteyn, 2d ed., ed. Khone Schmeruk (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1987), pp. 3–56; history of publication is summarized on p. 773. English translation: Joseph Schur, trans. Leonard Wolf, in Ashes Out of Hope, eds. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (New York: Schocken, 1977), pp. 29–73. 55. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 30. 56. Marc Shell, Money, Language, and Thought: Literary and Philosophic Economies from the Medieval to the Modern Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 46. 57. Miron, Beyn hazon la cemet, p. 212. 58. Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised, p. 113.

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Notes to Pages 50–60 59. Ibid., pp. 113–15. 60. Trunk, Sholem Aleykhem, p. 117. 61. Ibid., p. 157. 62. Dan Miron, Sholem Aleykhem: Person, Persona, Presence (New York: YIVO, 1972), p. 45. 63. Meir Wiener’s peculiar evolution from a mystically oriented expressionist German poet and Hebrew scholar into a leading Soviet Yiddish literary historian is described in Elias Shulman, “Meir Viner,” Portretn un etyudn (New York: Tsiko, 1979), pp. 58–116; and Mikhail Krutikov, “Between Mysticism and Marxism: Meir Wiener as Writer, Critic and Literary Historian,” Jews in Eastern Europe, no. 3 (1994). 64. Meir Wiener, Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur in 19tn yorhundert (New York: IKUF, 1946), 2: 345. 65. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 167. 66. Max Erik, “Menakhem-Mendl (A Marxist Critique),” trans. David G. Roskies, Prooftexts, vol. 6 (1986), p. 38. 67. Trunk, Sholem Aleykhem, p. 150. 68. Ibid., p. 153. 69. Erik, “Menakhem-Mendl,” p. 30. 70. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, pp. 147–90. 71. See the appendix to Miron, Shalom Aleikhem, pp. 198–210. I am grateful to David Roskies for referring me to this material. 72. Evreiskoe obozrenie (Jewish review), (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1884); reprinted in Sholom Aleichem, Sobranie sochinenii (Collected works) (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1971), 1: 535–56. 73. Odesskii listok (Odessa leaflet) (1892), reprinted in Sholom Aleichem, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 557–66. 74. Ken Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 144. 75. Miron, Shalom Aleikhem, pp. 57–80. 76. Ibid., p. 18; Trunk, Sholem Aleykhem, p. 75. 77. Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman, in Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schocken, 1987), p. 3. 78. Ruth R. Wisse, “Not the ‘Pintele Yid’ but the Full-Fledged Jew,” Prooftexts, vol. 15 (1995), pp. 46–47. 79. Erik, “Menakhem-Mendl,” p. 28. 80. Ibid., p. 29. 81. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 174. 82. Anita Norich, “Portraits of the Artist in Three Novels by Sholem Aleichem,” Prooftexts, vol. 4 (1984), p. 239. 83. Sholem Aleichem, Stempenyu: a yidisher roman, in Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem (New York: Folksfond, 1927), 21: 243. 84. Norich, “Portraits of the Artist,” p. 243. 85. Sholem Aleichem, Blondzhende shtern (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1922), 1: 59. 86. Dan Miron believes that there is some character development in this essentially picaresque novel (Shalom Aleikhem, p. 106). Perhaps this is true for Leybl-Leo

Notes to Pages 60–71 inasmuch as it was true for Yosele-Solovey. Leo’s decline is a result of his submission to the mythological paradigm that for some unexplained reason did not affect Rosa. Miron sees in this dichotomy between the unfaithfulness of men and the fidelity of women the influence of Ivan Turgenev. Ibid., p. 107. 87. Khone Shmeruk, “Sholem Aleichem and America,” trans. Beatrice Weinreich, YIVO Annual, vol. 20 (1991), p. 227. 88. Joseph Opatoshu, A roman fun a ferd-ganef (New York: Literarisher farlag, 1917); English translation Romance of a Horse Thief, trans. David G. Roskies, in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse. 89. Ruth R. Wisse, “Introduction to Romance of a Horse Thief,” in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse, p. 143. 90. Ibid., p. 145. 91. Shell, Money, Language, and Thought, p. 180–81.

Chapter 2 1. Dmitry A. Elyashevich, Pravitel’stvennaia politika i evreiskaia pechat’ v Rossii, 1797–1917 (Government policy and Jewish printing in Russia, 1797–1917) (St.Petersburg, Russia: Gesharim, 1999), p. 211. On the place of Yiddish in the ideology of Haskalah, see Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Schocken, 1973), pp. 4–5. 2. Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), p. 10. 3. Ibid., p. 16. 4. Israel Bartal, “The Porets and the Arendar: The Depiction of Poles in Jewish Literature,” Polish Review, vol. 32, no. 4 (1987), p. 363. 5. Michael Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 18. 6. Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), pp. 49–96. 7. Nokhem Oyslender, “Der yunger Sholem Aleykhem un zayn roman Stempenyu,” Shriftn, vol. 1 (1928), p. 42. 8. Yurii M. Lotman, Pushkin (St. Petersburg, Russia: Iskusstvo, 1995), p. 170. 9. Oyslender, “Der yunger Sholem Aleykhem,” p. 51. 10. Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Masoes Binyomin hashlishi, in Geklibene verk, vol. 2 (New York: IKUF, 1946), p. 252; English translation: The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third, trans. Hillel Halkin, in S. Y. Abramovitsh, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, eds. Dan Miron and Ken Frieden (New York: Schocken, 1996), p. 389. 11. Ken Frieden’s opinion that Ashemdai suggests the czar (the liberal Alexander II) seems to be an exaggeration because the political nightmare that Yisrolik sees in his vision takes place in Rumania, i.e., outside Russia. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, p. 78. 12. Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil? pp. 52–53. 13. Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992), p. 79.

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Notes to Pages 71–76 14. Shimon Markish, “Stoit li perechtyvat’ L’va Levandu?” (Is Lev Levanda worth rereading?), Vestnik evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve, no. 3 (1995), pp. 111–12. 15. Markish notes an ambivalence in the attitude of Sarin, the hero of the novel, to the rebels after their defeat: Sarin compares their exile to the exile of the Jews and calls them “fellow traveler,” a motif that will later reemerge in Opatoshu’s historical trilogy. Ibid., p. 112 16. Ibid, p. 111. 17. Bartal, “The Porets and the Arendar,” p. 364. 18. V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, A History of Russian Jewish Literature, trans. and ed. Arthur Levin (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1979), pp. 161–68. Yushkevich’s novella “Jews” and his play Hunger; Aizman’s story “Floating of Ice.” 19. S. V. Kastorskii, “Pisateli-znanievtsy v epokhu russkoi revoliutsii” (The writers of the Znanie in the epoch of the first Russian revolution), in Revoliutsiia 1905 goda i russkaia literatura (The revolution of 1905 and Russian literature), eds. V. A. Desnitskii and K. D. Muratova (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, 1956), pp. 76–77. 20. N. S. Nadiarnykh, “Nastraivaias’ na geroicheskii lad” (Tuning into the heroic tune), in Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 i literatura (The revolution of 1905–1907 and literature), ed. B. A. Bialik (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), p. 158. 21. David Roskies, “The Maskil as Folk Hero,” Prooftexts, vol. 10 (1990), p. 223–24. 22. S. Ansky, Gezamlte verk (Collected works), vols. 12, 13 (Vilna: Farlag An-ski, 1928). 23. Roskies, “The Maskil as Folk Hero,” p. 227. 24. On the impact of Chernyshevsky’s novel on the lifestyle see Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 25. The invention of the concrete Jewish folk was of special importance for Ansky, who in 1888 complained to his friend Chaim Zhitlovsky: “You can live, think, and feel in a more or less abstract way, you can find something definite and vital in notions like nationality or revival. . . . I cannot do it. Although I can understand it, it’s dead for me: I need a turf on which my every step would leave an imprint.” Mikhail Krutikov, “Briv fun Sh. An-ski tsu Khayim Zhitlovski,” YIVO Bleter, vol. 2 (1994), p. 288. 26. Roskies, “The Maskil as Folk Hero,” p. 227. 27. Oyslender, “Der yunger Sholem Aleykhem,” p. 43. 28. Quoted in Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, p. 134. 29. Ibid., p. 133. 30. Ibid., pp. 135–43. 31. The concept of literary fact was introduced by Yurii Tynianov in the essay “Literaturnyi fakt” (The literary fact, 1924), reprinted in Yurii Tynianov, Poetika, istoriia literatury, kino (Poetics, history of literature, cinema) (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), pp. 255–70. Tynianov sees literary development not as a continuous evolution but as a series of revolutionary changes of varied depth and scope. Each change brings the peripheral nonnormative phenomena (letters, essays, journalism, etc.) into the center of the literary discourse, replacing the previously dominant forms and styles. Thus the development of literature transforms “real facts” into “literary facts.”

Notes to Pages 76–91 32. The following quotes are from the edition Ale verk fun M. Spektor (Collected works of M. Spektor), vol. 2 (Warsaw: Tsentral, 1913). 33. On Spektor’s tendency to resolve conflicts in the melodramatic fashion, see Oyslender, “Der yunger Sholem Aleykhem,” p. 56. 34. Quoted in the following pages from the edition S. Ansky, Gezamlte verk, vol. 9 (Vilna: Farlag An-ski, 1928). 35. Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, Khleb i matsa (St.Petersburg, Russia: Maksima, 1994), p. 102. 36. Ezra Mendelson, Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Worker’s Movement in Tsarist Russia (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 153–54. 37. Translation from The Authorised Daily Prayer Book, p. 386. 38. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1968), p. 5. 39. A. A. Kabak, Sippurim (Stories) (Warsaw: Tushia, 1911), pp. 57–105. 40. Trans. Barbara Harshav, in Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 185. 41. Doris Y. Kadish, Politicizing Gender: Narrative Strategies in the Aftermath of the French Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 2. 42. Ibid., p. 3. 43. Note Lurye, Der step ruft (Moscow: Emes, 1932). 44. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 174. 45. Quotes in Yiddish are from the edition Itche-Meir Weissenberg, Geklibene shriftn, vol. 1 (Chicago: Zelechow Society of the World, 1959); the English translation by Ruth R. Wisse: A Shtetl, in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse, pp. 29–78. 46. Wisse, “Introduction to A Shtetl,” in A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, ed. Ruth R. Wisse, pp. 25–26. 47. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse, p. 113. 48. Ibid., p. 114. 49. Mendelson, Class Struggle in the Pale, p. 154. 50. Uriel Weinreich, “I. M. Vaysnbergs nit-dershatst Shtetl: vegn bafrayen a maysterverk fun zayn mekhabers biografye” (I. M. Weissenberg’s underrated Shtetl: about liberating a masterpiece from its author’s biography), Di goldene keyt, vol. 41 (1961), p. 137. 51. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse, p. 114. 52. Jameson, The Political Unconscious, p. 144. 53. Miron, Shalom Aleikhem, pp. 29–36. On the early novels of Sholem Aleichem and the relationship between the genres of feuilleton and novel, see pp. 22–27. 54. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 176. A chronicle of Sholem Aleichem’s personal experience in 1905 and a brief summary of his writings about the first Russian revolution can be found in Nachman Mayzel, Undzer Sholem Aleykhem (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1959), pp. 62–82. 55. Nina Warnke, “Of Plays and Politics: Sholem Aleichem’s First Visit to America,” YIVO Annual, vol. 20 (1991), pp. 239, 244. 56. Letter to Ernestine, Oct. 21, 1906, in I. D. Berkowitz, ed., Dos Sholem Aleykhem bukh, 2d ed. (New York: IKUF, 1958), p. 82.

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Notes to Pages 91–108 57. Warnke, “Of Plays and Politics,” p. 241. 58. Ibid., p. 257. 59. Sholem Aleichem outlines the plan of the play in his letter to Maurice Fishberg, Nov. 23, 1905. Berkowitz, Dos Sholem Aleykhem bukh, pp. 210–11. See also Warnke, “Of Plays and Politics,” p. 244. 60. See the editor’s note to the letter to Fishberg, Berkowitz, Dos Sholem Aleykhem bukh, p. 210. 61. The “Report of the Association of American Advertisers,” published in Di varhayt, Apr. 20, 1907, states that in April 1907 the gross circulation of the paper was sixty-one thousand and relates that “the paper now claims to have the largest circulation of all the Jewish newspapers.” 62. Di varhayt, Mar. 29, 1907. 63. Father Georgii Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest who led the workers’ demonstration on Bloody Sunday; he was widely believed to have been a police agent and was later sentenced to death and executed by the Party of SocialistRevolutionaries. 64. Yurii Lotman points out the characteristic feature of the self-representation of St. Petersburg in Russian culture: “[T]he awareness of ‘artificiality’ is a characteristic trait of the self-assessment of St. Petersburg culture, and only afterwards it passes across its borders, thus becoming part of the concepts that are alien to it. With this are connected such traits as illusoriness and theatricality, which are always emphasized in the St. Petersburg ‘picture of the world.’ ” Lotman, “Simvolika Peterburga,” 2: 15. 65. The report of Romanenko’s last hours follows almost verbatim the report of Kaliaev’s execution; see Ivan Platonovich Kaliaev (Geneva: Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, 1905), p. 46. 66. Ibid., pp. 45–46. 67. Truthfulness in the content of the novel is supported by the medium of its delivery to the audience: not only the title, but also the motto of the newspaper was Di varhayt. 68. Trunk, Sholem Aleykhem, p. 258. 69. Miron, Shalom Aleikhem, p. 110. 70. Sholom Aleichem, In Storm, trans. Aliza Shevrin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Shalom Aleichem, Hamabul, trans. Arye Aharoni (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat pocali, 1993). 71. Victor Erlich, Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 123. 72. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse, p. 172. 73. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 27. 74. Ibid., p. 36. 75. In Sholem Asch, “Momentn fun di frayhayts-teg” in Yugnt, tsveytes bukh (New York: Forverts, 1918), pp. 172–96. 76. Di shvue was a poem by S. Ansky that became the anthem of the Bund. 77. Sholem Asch, Meri (New York: Forverts, 1917).

Notes to Pages 109–29 78. Dubnova-Erlich, Khleb i matsa, p. 102. 79. Erik, Sholem Ash, p. 103. 80. Shmuel Niger writes about Meri in a number of essays that later were incorporated in his books: Dertseylers un romanistn (New York: CYCO, 1946); and Sholem Ash, zayn lebn un zayne verk (Sholem Asch: his life and work)(New York: Sh. Niger bukh-komitet, 1960). 81. Niger, Sholem Ash, pp. 113–14.

Chapter 3 1. Kahan, “Economic Opportunities and Some Pilgrims’ Progress: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in the United States, 1890–1914,” in Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History, ed. Roger Weiss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 102. 2. Shaul Stampfer, “Patterns of Internal Jewish Migration in the Russian Empire,” in Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Yaakov Roci (Ilford, Essex, Eng.: F. Cass, 1995), p. 37. I am grateful to Gennady Estraikh for referring me to this article. 3. Ibid., p. 42. The following observation of Arcadius Kahan supports the view that, objectively, Jewish immigrants were better off than their Gentile fellows: “The comparison of earning of Jewish immigrants with other immigrant groups indicates that the former were earning about the average for the total foreign-born workers in most of the industries for which we have data. Since ‘chronologically’ the Jewish immigrants belonged to the ‘younger’ immigration, the one from Eastern and Southern Europe, we can assume that they were earning somewhat more than the other groups in this immigration.” Kahan, “Economic Opportunities,” pp. 113–14. 4. Irving Howe, The World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (New York: Schocken, 1989), pp. 115–16. 5. Kahan, “Economic Opportunities,” p. 103. 6. Borukh Rivkin, Grunt-tendentsn fun der yidisher literatur in Amerike (New York: IKUF, 1948), pp. 286–87. 7. Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1917; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 110. 8. Yankev Dinezon, Ale verk (Collected works), vol. 4 (Warsaw: Akhisefer, 1929). 9. Sholem Ash, Keyn Amerike (New York: Forverts, 1911). 10. Erik, Sholem Ash, p. 74. 11. The most recent critical edition: Sholem Aleichem, Motl Peyse dem khazns, ed. Khone Shmeruk (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997). 12. Miron, “Bouncing Back,” p. 136. 13. Kahan, “Economic Opportunities,” p. 114. 14. Sergei [Israel] Tsinberg, “Zhargonnaia literatura i ee chitateli” (The jargon literature and its readers), Knizhki Voskhoda, no. 4 (1903), p. 40.

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Notes to Pages 129–45 15. Quoted by Nachman Mayzel in “Di yidishe literatur in Amerike un in Eyrope un zeyere kegnzaytike batsiungen” (Yiddish literatures in America and Europe and their mutual relationships), Tsurikblikn un perspektivn, p. 275. 16. Leon Kobrin, Gezamlte shriftn (Collected works) (New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1910), p. i. 17. Hutchins Hapgood, The Spirit of the Ghetto (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1902; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 199–200. 18. Quoted in Bernard G. Richards, introduction to Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York, by Abraham Cahan (New York: Dover, 1970), p. vii. 19. Sylvia Huberman Schkolnik, “Money versus Mitzvot: The Figure of the Businessman in Novels by American Jewish Writers,” Modern Jewish Studies Annual, vol. 6, no. 4 (1987), pp. 48–55. 20. Quoted in Mayzel, Tsurikblikn un perspektivn, pp. 280–81. Mayzel believes that these words reflect Peretz’s attitude toward American-Yiddish literature as a whole. 21. Bal-Makhshoves, “L. Kobrin,” Shriftn (Works) (Vilna: B. Kletskin, n.d.), 3: 108. 22. Fredric Jameson, “Beyond the Cave,” in The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971–1986 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 129. 23. Leon Kobrin, Mayne fuftsik yor in Amerike (New York: IKUF, 1966). 24. Niger, Shmuesn vegn bikher, p. 215. 25. Huberman Schkolnik, “Money versus Mitzvot,” p. 54. 26. Ibid., p. 53. 27. Dan Miron, Beyn h.azon la cemet (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1979), p. 213. 28. Leon Kobrin, Ore di bord, roman oys dem lebn fun yidishe imigrantn, vos hobn oyfgeboyt a naye shtot in Amerike (New York: Forverts, 1918). 29. Quoted in Howe, World of Our Fathers, pp. 131–32. 30. Ibid., p. 132. 31. Yoel Entin, “Leon Kobrins Ore di bord,” Di Tsukunft, vol. 24 (May 1919), p. 335. 32. Ibid., p. 336. 33. Niger, Dertseylers un romanistn, p. 239. 34. Rivkin, Grunt-tendentsn fun yidisher literatur, p. 83. 35. Irving Howe, “Anarchy and Authority in American Literature,” in Decline of the New (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), pp. 96–97. 36. Abraham Menes, “The Am Oylom Movement,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Sciences, vol. 4 (1949), p. 30. 37. Ibid., p. 12. 38. Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 25. 39. Reuven Ayzland, Fun undzer friling (From our spring) (New York: Indzl, 1954), p. 27. See also, Ruth R. Wisse, A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 1–20. 40. Ruth R. Wisse, “Di Yunge: Immigrants or Exiles?” Prooftexts, vol. 1 (1981), p. 44.

Notes to Pages 145–66 41. Ibid., p. 48. 42. Ibid., p. 46. 43. Wisse, Little Love in Big Manhattan, p. 12. 44. Noyekh Shteynberg, Yung Amerika (New York: Lebn, 1917), pp. 14–15. 45. First published in Naye heym, no. 1 (New York: Literarisher farlag, 1914). Quotations are from the edition: Joseph Opatoshu, Untervelt (Underworld) (Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1929). 46. Wisse, “Di Yunge: Immigrants or Exiles?” p. 45. 47. Yitskhok Elkhonon Rontsh, Amerike in der yidisher literatur (America in Yiddish literature) (New York: Y. E. Rontsh bukh-komitet, 1945), p. 22. 48. Ibid., p. 30. 49. Shteynberg, Yung Amerika, p. 74. 50. Ruth R. Wisse, The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 121. 51. This analogy draws upon Wisse’s interpretation of Podhoretz’s achievement: “The ‘family’ into which Podhoretz is accepted and the kingdom he comes to rule may easily be dismissed as lilliputian, yet the tendency to measure all achievement by mythical standards of greatness is just another way of belittling or avoiding the recognition of any achievement whatever, another legacy of the failure cult.” Ibid., p. 122. 52. Liptzin, History of Yiddish Literature, p. 163. 53. Rontsh, Amerike in der yidisher literatur, pp. 35–36. 54. Ibid., p. 37. 55. David Ignatov, In keslgrub (New York: Indzl, 1918). 56. Liptzin, History of Yiddish Literature, p. 165. 57. Ibid. 58. Morris Jonah Haimowitz, Oyfn veg, in Naye heym, no. 1 (New York: Literarisher farlag, 1914). 59. Jameson, “Beyond the Cave,” p. 129.

Chapter 4 1. Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (London: Verso, 1987), p. 4. 2. See Chapter 2 of this study. 3. Dan Miron calls this transformation of the character-narrator “the sentimental education of Mendele.” See his book Harofe hamdumeh (Le médecin imaginaire: c studies in classical Jewish fiction) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbuts hame uh.ad, 1995), pp. 21–102. 4. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, p. 159. 5. Michael Stern, “Tevye’s Art of Quotation,” Prooftexts, vol. 6 (1987), p. 93. 6. Y. Y. Trunk, Tevye un Menakhem-Mendl in yidishn velt-goyrl (Tevye and Menakhem-Mendl in the universal Jewish Fate) (New York: CYCO, 1944), p. 11; Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 107; Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 160. 7. One of the main reasons for the decline of the Jewish rural economy was the

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Notes to Pages 166–89 decree of 1882, which prohibited Jewish residence in villages in fifteen districts of the Pale. See Kahan, “Impact of Industrialization,” p. 35. 8. Miron, Shalom Aleykhem, p. 81. 9. The quote comes from Y. Y. Trunk, Tevye un Menakhem-Mendl, p. 11. 10. Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schocken, 1987), p. xxi. 11. Janet Hadda, Passionate Women, Passive Men: Suicide in Yiddish Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 3. 12. Moretti, Way of the World, p. 15. 13. Ibid., p. 16. 14. Lydia Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, trans. and ed. Judson Rosengrant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 233. 15. Ibid., p. 14. 16. Joseph Opatoshu, Aleyn (New York: Naye tsayt, 1919). 17. The close relationship between Jews and the local nature, especially rivers and forests, was recently again “rediscovered” by Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory (London: Fontana Press, 1995), pp. 26–27. Schama uses Polish literary sources extensively, but seems to be unaware of the Yiddish literary tradition of representation of nature. 18. An early German novel (1898) of the influential Polish modernist writer. 19. A romantic historical poem (1834) by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855). 20. “According to popular account, the Poles assembled in Kruszewitz, following the death of Prince Popiel in the 9th century, in order to elect a new prince. They argued for a long time, but still could not unanimously agree. Then the assembly is supposed to have decreed that the first to enter the city in the morning would become prince. As it happened, this person turned out to be a Jew, Avraham Prochovnik, . . . and he was indeed proclaimed prince. But the Jew refused, and insisted that the honor be accorded to the wise Pole, Piast, who became the ancestor of the Piast dynasty.” Simon Dubnov, History of the Jews, trans. Moshe Spiegel (South Brunswick, N.J.: Thomas Yoseloff, 1968), 2: 661. 21. Itche-Meir Weissenberg, Shriftn (Warsaw: Velt-bibliotek, 1909), pp. 5–55. 22. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 180. 23. According to Russian literature scholar Chaim Elena Tolstaya, the prototype of Maksimovitsh was Akim Volynsky (pseud. of Chaim Flekser, 1863–1926), an influential literary and theater critic and one of the earliest champions of symbolism in Russia. Volynsky began his literary career in the Russian-Jewish press but then drifted toward aesthetic criticism deploring the involvement of literature with politics. Elena Tolstaya, communication with author, June 23, 1997. 24. Jacob Katz, Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), p. 42. 25. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 181. 26. Erik, Sholem Ash, p. 103. 27. Niger, Dertseylers un romanistn, p. 366; Erik, Sholem Ash, p. 103. 28. Niger, Dertseylers un romanistn, p. 366. 29. On the dialectic of return in modern Jewish culture and the concept of

Notes to Pages 190–203 “negotiated return,” see David Roskies, “S. Ansky and the Paradigm of Return,” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 243–60. 30. The Yiddish text is quoted from David Bergelson, Ale verk (Collected works), vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: ICUF, 1961). The English translation: David Bergelson, When All Is Said and Done, trans. Bernard Martin (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977). 31. René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), p. 90. 32. Ibid., p. 92. 33. Slotnik, “Works of David Bergelson,” p. 171. 34. Ibid. 35. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 183. 36. Slotnik, “Works of David Bergelson,” p. 170. 37. Novershtern, “Aspektim,” p. 180. 38. Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson, p. 83. 39. English translation by Hillel Halkin, “A Night in the Old Marketplace,” Prooftexts, vol. 12 (1992), p. 14. 40. Shmeruk, Peretses yeush-vizye, p. 73. 41. Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson, p. 91. 42. Slotnik, “Works of David Bergelson,” p. 166. 43. Seth Wolitz, “Language as Ideology in Nokh alemen,” Yiddish, vol. 5, no. 1 (1982), p. 60. 44. Dobrushin, Dovid Bergelson, p. 127. 45. Ibid., p. 126. 46. Franco Moretti sees the central conflict of the bildungsroman in terms of the opposition between “normality” and “individuality”: “How can the tendency towards individuality, which is the necessary fruit of a culture of self-determination, be made to coexist with the opposing tendency to normality, the offspring, equally inevitable, of the mechanism of socialization?” The solution must not just be “legal”; “it must also appear symbolically legitimate. It must draw its inspiration from values recognized by society as fundamental, reflect them and encourage them. Or it must at least seem to do so.” Moretti, Way of the World, p. 16. 47. Mayzel, Noente un vayte, 1: 120. 48. Alexander Etkind, Sodom i Psikheia: ocherki intellektual’noi istorii Serebrianogo veka (Sodom and Psyche: essays on the intellectual history of the Silver Age) (Moscow: ITS-Garant, 1996), p. 215. 49. Vladimir Solovyov, Sochineniia (Works), vol. 2 (Moscow: Mysl’, 1990), p. 527. 50. Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Ale verk, vol. 13 (New York: Yidish, 1920) (second pagination); English translation by Seymour Levitan in The I. L. Peretz Reader, ed. Ruth R. Wisse (New York, Schocken, 1990). Sholem Aleichem, Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem, vols. 15, 16 (New York: Folksfond, 1927); English translation, From the Fair (New York: Penguin, 1986), edited and translated into English by Curt Leviant. 51. Guide of the Perplexed, a philosophical book by Moses ben Maimon (Mai-

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Notes to Pages 204–16 monides, 1135–1204); The Tree of Life (Ets Hayim), an exposition of the kabbalistic system by Hayim Vital Calabrese (1542–1620); Oracles of the Prophets (Urim vetumin), a legal work by Jonathan Eybeschuetz (ca. 1690–1764). 52. Wisse, I. L. Peretz, p. 73. 53. Dovid-Hirsh Roskies, “A shlisl tsu Peretses zikhroynes” (A key to Peretz’s memoirs), Vidervuks (New York: Yugntruf, 1989), p. 298. 54. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters (New York Schocken, 1961), pp. 69–70; Pinhas Sadeh, Sippurey haBesht (Jerusalem: Karta, 1987), p. 209; Sholem Asch, “A dorfs tsadik,” in Gezamlte shriftn (Collected works) (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1925), 2: 67–72; Micha-Yosef Berdyczewsky, “Dos fayfele,” in Yidishe ksovim (Yiddish works) (New York: IKUF, 1948), pp. 94–97; S. Ansky, “Oyf der vakh,” in Gezamlte verk (Collected works), vol. 1 (Vilna: Farlag S. An-ski, 1928) pp. 125–46. 55. Ilya Ehrenburg, Burnaia zhizn’ Laizika Roitshvanetsa (The stormy life of Laizik Roitshvanets) (Paris, 1928; reprint, Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1991). 56. Roskies, “A shlisl tsu Peretses zikhroynes,” p. 262. 57. David G. Roskies, “Unfinished Business: Sholem Aleichem’s From the Fair,” Prooftexts, vol. 6 (1986), pp. 66–67. 58. Ibid., p. 68. 59. Miron, “Literary Image of the Shtetl,” pp. 2–4; Roskies, “Unfinished Business,” p. 69.

Conclusion 1. Frieden, Classic Yiddish Fiction, p. 316. 2. Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, p. 17. 3. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 132. 4. Lukács’s idea of the novel as a biographical form that objectifies the “fluctuation between a conceptual system which can never completely capture life and a life complex which can never attain completeness,” Theory of the Novel, p. 77, is almost equivalent to Lotman-Moretti’s concept of the novel of transformation that defies completeness and emphasizes the open ending. 5. Frank Kermode, The Art of Telling, p. 50.

Bibliography

Primary Sources: Yiddish Literature Ansky, S. In strom. In Gezamlte verk. Vol. 9. Vilna: Farlag An-ski, 1928. ———. “Oyf der vakh.” In Gezamlte verk. Vol. 1. Vilna: Farlag S. An-ski, 1928. ———. Pionern. In Gezamlte verk. Vols. 12, 13. Vilna: Farlag S. An-ski, 1928. Asch, Sholem. “A dorfs tsadik.” In Gezamlte shriftn. Vol. 2. Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1925. ———. Keyn Amerike. New York: Forverts, 1911. ———. Meri. New York: Forverts, 1917. ———. “Momentn fun di frayhayt-teg.” In Yugnt, tsveytes bukh. New York: Forverts, 1918. ———. Reb Shloyme noged un andere dertseylungen. New York: Forverts, 1918. ———. A shtetl. New York: Forverts, 1911. Translated as The Little Town. Trans. Meyer Levin. In Tales of My People, edited by Meyer Levin. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948. Askenfeld, Israel. Dos shterntikhl. Buenos Aires: Literatur-gezelsheft baym IWO, 1971. Translated as The Headband. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. In The Shtetl, edited by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Richard Marek, 1979. Berdyczewsky, Micha-Yosef. “Dos fayfele.” In Yidishe ksovim. Vol. 1. New York: IKUF, 1948. Bergelson, David. Arum vokzal. In Ale verk. Vol. 1. Buenos Aires: ICUF, 1961. Translated as At the Depot. Trans. Ruth R. Wisse. In A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, edited by Ruth R. Wisse. New York: Behrman House, 1973. ———. In a fargrebter shtot. In Geklibene verk. Vol. 2. Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1929. Translated as In a Backwoods Town. Trans. Bernard G. Guerney. In A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg. New York: Viking, 1954.

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Bibliography ———. Nokh alemen. In Ale verk. Vol. 1. Buenos Aires: ICUF, 1961. Translated as When All Is Said and Done. Trans. Bernard Martin. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977. ———. Opgang. Ed. with intro. by Joseph Sherman. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1999. Translated as Descent. Trans. with intro. by Joseph Sherman. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1999. ———. Yoysef Shur. In A shpigl oyf a shteyn. Ed. Khone Shmeruk. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1987. Translated as Joseph Schur. Trans. Leonard Wolf. In Ashes Out of Hope, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg. New York: Schocken, 1977. Dinezon, Yankev. Falik un zayn hoyz. In Ale verk. Vol. 4. Warsaw: Akhisefer, 1929. ———. Der krizis. In Yosele, Der krizis. Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur. Vol. 6. Buenos Aires: Kultur-kongres, 1959. ———. Der shvartser yungermantchik. Vilna: Rom, 1877. ———. Yosele. In Yosele, Der krizis. Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur. Vol. 6. Buenos Aires: Kultur-kongres, 1959. Haimowitz, Morris Jonah. Oyfn veg. In Naye heym, no. 1. New York: Literarisher farlag, 1914. Ignatov, David. In keslgrub. New York: Indzl, 1918. Kobrin, Leon. Di imigrantn, a roman oys dem lebn fun rusishe yidn in Amerike. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1909. ———. Ore di bord, roman oys dem lebn fun yidishe imigrantn, vos hobn oyfgeboyt a naye shtot in Amerike. New York: Forverts, 1918. Lurye, Note. Der step ruft. Moscow: Emes, 1932. Moykher Sforim, Mendele [S. Y. Abramovitsh]. “Hakdome tsu Dos kleyne mentshele.” In Dos Mendele-bukh, edited by Nachman Mayzel. New York: IKUF, 1959. ———. Di klyatshe. In Geklibene verk. Vol. 2. New York: IKUF, 1946. ———. Masoes Binyomin hashlishi. In Geklibene verk. Vol. 2. New York, IKUF, 1946. Translated as The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third. Trans. Hillel Halkin. In Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler, edited by Dan Miron and Ken Frieden. New York: Schocken, 1996. ———. Shloyme reb Khayims. In Ale verk. Vol. 18. Warsaw: Mendele, 1928. ———. Dos vintshfingerl. In Geklibene verk. Vol. 4. New York: IKUF, 1946. Opatoshu, Joseph. Aleyn. New York: Naye tsayt, 1919. ———. 1863. Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1926. ———. Fun nyu-yorker geto. In Untervelt. Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1929. ———. In poylishe velder. New York: R. Novak, 1947. ———. A roman fun a ferd-ganef. New York: Literarisher farlag, 1917. Translated as Romance of a Horse Thief. Trans. David G. Roskies. In A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, edited by Ruth R. Wisse. New York: Behrman House, 1973. Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush. “Bay nakht oyfu altn mark.” In Khone Shmeruk, Peretses yeush-vizye: interpretatsye fun Y. L. Peretses “Bay nakht oyfn altn markt” un kritishe oysgabe fun der drame. New York: YIVO, 1971. Translated as “A Night in the Old Marketplace.” Trans. Hillel Halkin. Prooftexts, vol. 12 (1992), pp. 1–70. ———. Mayne zikhroynes. In Ale verk (Collected works). Vol. 13. New York: Yidish, 1920. Translated as My Memoirs. Trans. Seymour Levitan. In The I. L. Peretz Reader, edited by Ruth R. Wisse. New York: Schocken, 1990.

Bibliography Raboy, Isaac. Herr Goldnbarg. Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur. Vol. 19. Buenos Aires: Yoysef Lifshits-fond fun der literatur-gezelshaft baym YIVO, 1969. Reuveyni, Aharon. Gezamlte dertseylungen. Ed. Arie Pilowsky. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991. Sholem Aleichem. Blondzhende shtern. 2 vols. Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1922. ———. Funem yarid. In Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem. Vols. 15, 16. New York: Folksfond, 1927. Translated as From the Fair. Trans. and ed. Curt Leviant. New York: Penguin, 1986. ———. Gants Tevye der milkhiker. In Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem. Vol. 1. New York: Folksfond, 1927. Translated as Tevye the Dairyman. Trans. Hillel Halkin. In Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories. New York: Schocken, 1987. ———. Der mabl. In Di varhayt (New York), Mar. 29–June 30, 1907. Translated into Hebrew as Hamabul. Trans. Arye Aharoni. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat pocalim, 1991. ———. “Mechtateli.” In Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1971. ———. Menakhem-Mendl. In Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem. Vol. 2. New York: Folksfond, 1927. ———. Motl Peyse dem khazns. Ed. Khone Shmeruk. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997. ———. Sender Blank un zayn gezindl. In Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem. Vol. 21. New York: Folksfond, 1927. ———. Stempenyu: a yidisher roman. In Ale verk fun Sholem Aleykhem. Vol. 21. New York: Folksfond, 1927. ———. “Tipy ‘maloi birzhi.’ ” In Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1971. Spektor, Mordkhe. Avrom Zilbertsvayg. In Ale verk fun Mordke Spektor. Vol. 2. Warsaw: Tsentral, 1913. Weissenberg, Itche-Meir. A Shtetl. In Geklibene verk, vol. 1. Chicago: Zelechow Society of the World, 1959. Translated as A Shtetl. Trans. Ruth R. Wisse. In A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas, edited by Ruth R. Wisse. New York: Behrman House, 1973. ———. Dos valdmeydl. In Shriftn. Warsaw: Velt-bibliotek, 1909.

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Bibliography Niger, Shmuel. Dertseylers un romanistn. New York: CYCO, 1946. ———. Shmuesn vegn bikher. New York: Farlag yidish, 1922. ———. Sholem Ash, zayn lebn un zayne verk. New York: Sh. Niger bukh-komitet, 1960. ———. Vegn yidishe shrayber. 2 vols. Warsaw: Tsentral, 1914. ———. Y. L. Peretz: zayn lebn, zayne firndike perzenlekhkayt. Buenos Aires: Argentiner opteyl fun alveltlekhn yidishn kultur-kongres, 1952. ———. “Yankev Dinezon.” Literarishe bleter, no. 41 (1929), p. 799. ———. “Yankev Dinezons briv.” Di Tsukunft, vol. 34, no. 9 (1929), pp. 620–24. ———. Yidishe shrayber in Sovet-Rusland. New York: Sh. Niger Bukh-komitet, 1958. Norich, Anita. “Portraits of the Artist in Three Novels by Sholem Aleichem.” Prooftexts, vol. 4 (1984), pp. 237–51. Novershtern, Avraham. “Aspektim mivniim baproza shel David Bergelson mereshitah ad ‘midas ha-din.’ ” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1981. ———. “Der held un zayne handlungen in Dovid Bergelsons frie dertseylungen.” Di goldene keyt, vol. 94 (1977), pp. 132–43. ———. “Menahem Mendl leShalom Aleikhem: beyn toldot hatekst lemivne hayetsirah.” Tarbits, vol. 54, no. 1 (1985), pp. 103–46. Oyslender, Nokhem. “Der yunger Sholem Aleykhem un zayn roman Stempenyu.” Shriftn, vol. 1 (1928), pp. 1–72. Rivkin, Borukh. Grunt-tendentsn fun der yidisher literatur in Amerike. New York: IKUF, 1948. Rontsh, Yitskhok Elkhonon. Amerike in der yidisher literatur. New York: Y. E. Rontsh Bukh-komitet, 1945. Roskies, David G. Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. ———. A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. ———. “The Maskil as Folk Hero.” Prooftexts, vol. 10 (1990), pp. 219–35. ———. “S. Ansky and the Paradigm of Return.” In The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, edited by Jack Wertheimer. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992. ———. “A shlisl tsu Peretses zikhroynes.” In Vidervuks. New York: Yugntruf, 1989. ———. “Unfinished Business: Sholem Aleichem’s From the Fair.” Prooftexts, vol. 6 (1986), pp. 65–78. ———. “Yiddish Culture at Century’s End.” La rassegna mensile di Israel, vol. 62, nos. 1–2 (1996), pp. 467–82. Shmeruk, Khone. Peretses yeush-vizye: interpretatsye fun Y. L. Peretses “Bay nakht oyfn altn markt” un kritishe oysgabe fun der drame. New York: YIVO, 1971. ———. “Sholem Aleichem and America.” Trans. Beatrice Silverman Weinreich. YIVO Annual, vol. 20 (1991), pp. 211–38. Shteynberg, Noyekh. Yung Amerika. New York: Lebn, 1917. Shulman, Elias. Portretn un etyudn. New York: CYCO, 1979. Slotnik, Susan Ann. “The Novel Form in the Works of David Bergelson.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978. Stern, Michael. “Tevye’s Art of Quotation.” Prooftexts, vol. 6 (1987), pp. 79–96.

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Bibliography Trunk, Y. Y. Idealizm un naturalizm in der yidisher literatur. Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1927. ———. Sholem Aleykhem, zayn vezn un zayne verk. Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1937. ———. Tevye un Menakhem Mendl in yidishn velt-goyl. New York: CYCO, 1944. Tsinberg, S. [Israel]. “Zhargonnaia literatura i ee chitateli.” Knizhki Voskhoda, no. 3 (1903), pp. 45–71; no. 4 (1903), pp. 35–55. Turnyanski, Khave, ed. Di yidishe literatur in nayntsntn yorhundert: zamlung fun yidisher literatur-forshung un kritik in ratn-farband. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993. Warnke, Nina. “Of Plays and Politics: Sholem Aleichem’s First Visit to America.” YIVO Annual, vol. 20 (1991), pp. 239–76. Weinreich, Uriel. “I. M. Vaysenbergs nit-dershatst Shtetl: vegn bafrayen a maysterverk fun zayn mekhabers biografye.” Di goldene keyt, no. 41 (1961), pp. 135–43. Wiener, Meir. Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur in 19tn yorhundert. Vol. 2. New York: IKUF, 1946. Wisse, Ruth R. I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. ———. A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988. ———. “1935/6—A Year in the Life of Yiddish Literature.” In Keminhag Ashkenaz uPolin: sefer yovel leH . one Shmeruk, edited by Israel Bartal, Khava Turnyanski, and Ezra Mendelson. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1993. ———. “Not the ‘Pintele Yid’ but the Full-Fledged Jew.” Prooftexts, vol. 15 (1995), pp. 33–61. ———. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. ———, ed. A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas. New York: Behrman House, 1973. ———. “Di Yunge: Immigrants or Exiles?” Prooftexts, vol. 1 (1981), pp. 43–61. Wolitz, Seth. “Language as Ideology in Nokh alemen.” Yiddish, vol. 5, no. 1 (1982), pp. 56–64.

General Literary Theory Bakhtin, Mikhail. Voprosy literatury i estetiki. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. Erlich, Victor. Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Ginzburg, Lydia. On Psychological Prose. Trans. and ed. Judson Rosengrant. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Girard, René. Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. Howe, Irving. “Anarchy and Authority in American Literature.” In Decline of the New. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970.

Bibliography Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Jameson, Fredric. “Beyond the Cave.” In The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971–1986. Vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. ———. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981. ———. The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Kadish, Doris Y. Politicizing Gender: Narrative Strategies in the Aftermath of the French Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Kermode, Frank. The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. ———. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Lotman, Yurii. “Proiskhozhdenie siuzheta v tipologicheskom osveshchenii.” In Izbrannye stat’i (Selected essays). Vol. 1. Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992. Lukács, George. The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971. Medvedev, P. N. Formal’nyi metod v literaturovedenii: Kriticheskoe vvedenie v sotsiologicheskuiu poetiku. Moscow: Labirint, 1993. Translated as M. M. Bakhtin / P. N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. Trans. Albert J. Wehrle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. London: Verso, 1987. Neubauer, John. “Bakhtin versus Lukács: Inscription of Homelessness in Theories of the Novel.” Poetics Today, vol. 17, no. 4 (1996), pp. 531–44. Riffaterre, Michael. Fictional Truth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Shell, Marc. Money, Language, and Thought: Literary and Philosophic Economies from the Medieval to the Modern Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Todorov, Tzvetan. Literature and Its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-Century Criticism. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987. Trotter, David. The English Novel in History, 1895–1920. London: Routledge, 1993. Tynianov, Yurii. Poetika, istoriia literatury, kino. Moscow: Nauka, 1977. Vernon, John. Money and Fiction. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. Voloshinov, V. N. Marksizm i filosofiia iazyka. Leningrad: Priboi, 1929. Translated as Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. ———. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Historical and Cultural Background Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Routledge, 1991. Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin, 1968.

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Bibliography Katz, Jacob. Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986. ———. Out of the Ghetto. New York: Schocken, 1973. Krutikov, Mikhail. “Briv fun Sh. An-ski tsu Khayim Zhitlovski.” YIVO Bleter, vol. 2 (1994), pp. 281–313. Lotman, Yurii M. Pushkin. St. Petersburg, Russia: Iskusstvo, 1995. ———. “Simvolika Peterburga i problemy semiotiki goroda.” In Izbrannye stat’i. Vol. 2. Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992. Lvov-Rogachevsky, V. A History of Russian Jewish Literature. Trans. and ed. Arthur Levin. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1979. Mahler, Raphael. Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Markish, Shimon. “Stoit li perechtyvat’ L’va Levandu?” (Is Lev Levanda worth rereading?) Vestnik evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve, no. 3 (1995), pp. 89–140. Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Trans. Martin Milligan. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988. Mendelson, Ezra. Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Worker’s Movement in Tsarist Russia. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Menes, Abraham. “The Am Oylom Movement.” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Sciences, vol. 4 (1949), pp. 9–33. Nadiarnykh, N. S. “Nastraivaias’ na geroicheskii lad.” In Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 i literatura, edited by B. A. Bialik. Moscow: Nauka, 1978. Neugroschel, Joachim, trans. and ed. The Shtetl. New York: Richard Marek, 1979. Opalski, Magdalena, and Israel Bartal. Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992. Paperno, Irina. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Pike, David. German Writers in Soviet Exile, 1933–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Richards, Bernard G. Introduction to Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of Yiddish New York, by Abraham Cahan. New York: Dover, 1970. Sadeh, Pinh.as. Sippurey haBesht. Jerusalem: Karta, 1987. Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. London: Fontana Press, 1995. Shanin, Teodor. Russia, 1905–07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth. Vol. 2. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Sologub, Fiodor. Tvorimaia legenda. 2 vols. Moscow: Kniga, 1991. Solov’ev, Vladimir. “Smysl liubvi.” In Sochineniia. Vol. 2. Moscow: Mysl’, 1990. Stampfer, Shaul. “Patterns of Internal Jewish Migration in the Russian Empire.” In Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, edited by Yaakov Roci. Ilford, Essex, Eng.: F. Cass, 1995. Stanislawski, Michael. For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. ———. Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983. Szajkowski, Zosa. “The Impact of the Russian Revolution of 1905 on American Jewish Life.” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. 17 (1978), pp. 54–118.

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Index

Abarbanel, Don Isaac, 192f Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev (Mendele Moykher Sforim): The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third, 53f, 70, 223; as classical author, 1, 60, 123, 130f, 189, 211; early period, 14, 53, 161; Fishke the Lame, 167; intellectualism, 19; The Little Man, 18; The Magic Ring, 18, 53, 169; The Mare, 53, 70, 162, 169; The Meat Tax, 46; Mendele as character, 168, 191, 229; representation of shtetl, 28; Shloyme Reb Khayims, 28, 201, 208, 220 Aharoni, Arye, 102, 226 Aizman, David, 72, 224 Aksenfeld, Israel, 14, 37, 53, 59f, 64, 161; The Headband, 17f, 37, 50, 58, 67, 71, 73, 116, 137, 169, 221 America, 1, 40, 59f, 63, 75, 92, 100f, 105f, 117–25, 138,177; in Yiddish literature, 126–29, 133, 137, 146–59,180, 187, 213. See also Immigration American-Jewish literature in English, 131, 137, 213 American literature 66, 130, 142 Am Olam, 142, 149 Anderson, Benedict, 31, 106, 227 Ansky, S., 84, 87ff, 108f, 190, 205, 224, 227, 232; In Stream, 79–83, 89, 116, 212; Pioneers, 73f; polemics with Dubnov, 75

Anti-Semitism, 75, 96, 101, 103, 119, 139, 148, 187 Arendt, Hannah, 83, 225 Asch, Sholem, 1, 8, 14f, 34, 57, 69, 107, 120, 205, 215, 219; East River, 107, 163, 187, 216; Kiddush Hashem, 107, 157; Meri, 5, 37, 108–15, 164, 168f, 181–91, 198, 200, 212, 215; “Moments of the Days of Freedom”, 107–8, 111, 113f, 227; The Mother, 126; Motke the Thief, 187; The Nazarene, 126; Reb Shloyme Noged, 34–37, 114, 163, 179, 211, 213, 221; The Road to the Self,108, 189; Salvation, 31, 38, 126, 216; as sentimentalist neo-romantic, 28, 45, 64f, 117, 145; A Shtetl, 28–38 passim, 56, 87, 107f, 114, 163, 171, 179, 184, 211, 213, 220; Three Cities, 37, 75, 107, 163, 187; To America, 124–28, 213; Uncle Moses, 126, 137, 140; The Witch of Castille, 107, 114 Austen, Jane, 161 Ayzland, Reuven. See Iceland, Reuven Bakhtin, Mikhail, 2f, 10, 90, 217 Bal-Makhshoves (Elyashev, Isidor), 19, 32, 131, 220f, 228 Balmont, Konstantin, 152 Balzac, Honoré de, 90, 132f, 161 Bartal, Israel, 68, 71f, 223f Belorussia, 70

244

Index Bergelson, David, 1, 8, 14f, 57, 64, 182, 215–21 passim; At the Depot, 38–45, 47; At the Dnieper, 75, 216; Descent, 39; early works, 38–39, 49, 135, 163, 210; In a Backward Town, 39, 45–48; Joseph Shur (In Darkened Times), 39, 48–49; When All Is Said and Done, 5, 39, 44, 164, 169, 181, 190–200, 231 Berlin. See under Haskalah: in Berlin Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 93, 103 Bin-Gorion (Berdyczewsky) Micha-Yosef, 205, 232 Birzhe, 80f, 89, 116 Blok, Alexander, 200 Bloody Sunday (January 9, 1905), 93, 102, 105, 115, 117 Bronx, 148, 156 Brooklyn, 138, 156 Brownsville, 138–40, 142, 148 Buber, Martin, 205, 232 Bund, Bundists, 80f, 88, 110, 134 Byron, Lord, 69 Cahan, Abraham, 123, 130–31, 137, 143, 227f Chekhov, Anton, 130, 132, 199 Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, 73, 224 Chirikov, Evgenii, 72 Chmielnicky, Bogdan, 175 Coney Island, 139 Connecticut, 150 Danzig (Gdansk), 29 Der fraynt, 20, 76, 79 Der Nister, 216 Der tog, 155 Dik, Isaak Meir, 14, 19, 64, 72, 169 Dinezon, Yankev, 18–26 passim, 45, 64, 123, 220, 227; The Black Young Man, 18, 20, 24, 4; The Crisis, 20–26, 33, 61, 213; Falik and His House, 20, 123–24, 213; Hershele, 127; Gitele’s Holiday, 20; Yosele, 20f, 24, 102, 124–25, 127, 171, 176 Di tsukunft, 141, 170 Di varhayt, 91, 132, 155, 226 Di Yunge, 7f, 144–45 Dnieper, 184 Dobrushin, Yekhezkl, 8, 43f, 193–97, 199, 219, 221, 231 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 71, 85, 132

Dubnov, Simon, 75, 80, 230 Dubnova-Erlich, Sofia, 80, 82, 109, 225, 227 Eco, Umberto, 2f, 217 Economy: capitalist, 47, 65; feudal, 68; representation in literature, 14, 16, 32, 36, 42, 46, 49; in traditional Jewish society, 15, 20, 27, 39, 58. See also Money in fiction; Shetl Ehrenburg, Ilya, 205–6, 232 Einhorn, David, 74 Elyashevich, Dmitry, 223 Emigration. See Immigration English language, 140, 152. See also English literature English literature, 4, 38, 86, 216. See also English language Entin, Yoel, 141, 228 Erik, Max (Merkin, Zalmen), 8; on Asch, 32ff, 112–13, 126, 181, 187f, 219f, 227, 231; on Sholem Aleichem, 52, 57, 222 Erlich, Victor, 226 Etinger, Solomon, 137 Etkind, Alexander, 199–200, 231 Exodus, 103–5 Fedin, Konstantin 103 Finland, 183 Flaubert, Gustave, 132, 169 Forverts, 131, 138 Frankel, Jonathan, 219, 224 Fraye arbeter shtime, 155 French language, 173, 211. See also French literature French literature 86, 130, 132ff, 158, 161. See also French language Freud, Sigmund, 9 Frey, William, 143 Frieden, Ken, 55, 165, 210, 222ff, 230, 232 Fridländer, David, 185 Galicia, 67, 146 Gapon, Georgii, 97, 101, 226 German language, 67, 140, 161, 211 Germany, 61, 112, 172 Ginzburg, Lydia, 170, 230 Girard, René, 190, 231 Glatshteyn, Yankev, 157 Gogol, Nikolai, 101 Gomel, 80ff, 109

Index Goncharov, Ivan, 85 Gordin, Jacob, 131, 136 Gorin, B. (Goydo, Isaac), 129, 136 Gorky, Maxim, 72, 85 Gottlober, Abraham Ber, 72 Greenberg, Eliezer, 221 Hadda, Janet, 168, 230 Haimowitz, Morris Jonah, 8, 145; On the Way, 155–57, 229 Halevi, Judah, 192f Halkin, Hillel, 167, 231 Hamsun, Knut, 199 Hapgood, Hutchins, 130, 228 Harshav, Benjamin, 225, 230 Hasidism, 7, 17, 30f, 35, 67f, 122, 125, 154, 203, 205, 223 Haskalah: in Berlin, 34, 37, 185; as movement, 67–71, 82, 203, 207, 223; period in Yiddish literature, 7f; 14, 17, 47, 50, 53, 55, 63–5, 86, 137f, 141, 202. See also Yiddish literature: nineteenth-century Hatsefirah, 21,176 Hebrew language, 67, 84–85, 93, 98, 161. See also Hebrew literature Hebrew literature, 68, 71ff, 86f, 202. See also Hebrew language Heine, Heinrich, 172 Howe, Irving, 120, 138, 142, 221, 227f Howells, William Dean, 131 Huberman Schkolnik, Sylvia, 137, 228 Iceland (Ayzland), Reuven, 144, 229 Ignatov, David, 1, 8, 145, 155f, 210; In Whirlpool, 150–55, 169, 177, 196, 198, 215, 229 Immigrant audience, 99, 102, 104 Immigration, 75, 118–21, 129, 210, 227; representation in literature, 5, 119, 121, 123, 128, 136, 144–59, passim “In Winter Storms” (Kabak), 83–85, 154, 225 Ivanov, Viacheslav, 152 Jameson, Fredric, 10, 90, 132, 143, 158, 219, 225, 228f Jewish self-defense, 81, 95 Jung, Carl Gustav, 9 Kabak, Aaron Abraham. See “In Winter Storms” Kadish, Doris, 86, 225

Kahan, Arcadius, 20, 118–20, 129, 219f, 227f, 230 Kaliaev, Ivan, 97, 101, 226 Kastorskii, S. V., 224 Katz, Jacob, 27, 220, 231 Katznelson, Rachel, 85 Kermode, Frank, 4, 216, 218, 232 Kiddush hashem motif, 81, 112f, 121, 175, 179, 181, 187, 189 Kiev, 48, 56, 58, 91f, 112, 133, 135, 166, 208 Kobrin, Leon, 129–30, 132, 136, 145, 213, 228; The Golden Stream, 138; The Immigrants, 132–39, 150, 169, 213; Ore the Beard, 138–44, 150 Korbn minkhe prayerbook, 174 Kraszewski, Jozef Ignacy, 174 Krutikov, Mikhail, 222, 224 Kulbak, Moyshe, 216 Kuprin, Alexander, 72, 132 Land of Israel. See Palestine Leskov, Nikolai, 71 Lestschinsky, Jacob, 8, 14f, 219f Levanda, Lev, 71, 224 Levinzon, Isaac Ber, 14 Levitan, Isaac, 183 Libin, Z., 129, 136 Lichtenfeld, Gavriel Yehuda, 207 Linetski, Isaac Yoel, 14 Liptzin, Sol, 7, 155, 218, 229 Lithuania, 70, 93, 196, 204 Lodz, 20 London, Jack, 148 Lotman, Yurii, 3, 69, 161, 163, 213, 217, 223, 226, 232 Lower East Side, 130, 133f, 136, 138, 148, 155–56 Lukács, George, 2, 9f, 132, 217, 232 Lurye, Note, 86, 225 Luxemburg, Rosa, 204–5 Lvov-Rogachevsky, Vassilii, 224 Madison, Charles, 7, 218 Mahler, Raphael, 67f, 223 Manzoni, Alessandro, 90 Mapu, Abraham, 72 Markish, Shimon, 224 Marx, Karl, 16, 53, 219 Marxist theory, 15; of history, 83; of literature, 2, 217; in Soviet Yiddish

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Index criticism, 8f, 33, 44, 51, 112, 194, 199, 215, 219, 222; Western, 10, 90 Maskil as character, 46, 58, 73–74. See also Haskalah Maupassant, Guy de, 132, 199 Mayzel, Nachman, 7f, 19, 32, 34, 44, 199, 218, 220f, 226, 228, 231 Mazepa, 69 Medvedev, P. N., 2, 217 Mendele Moykher Sforim. See Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev Mendelson, Ezra, 81, 89, 225 Menes, Abraham, 228 Mensheviks, 80 Mickiewicz, Adam: “The Monument to Peter the Great”, 184; Pan Tadeusz, 175–76, 230 Miron, Dan, 9f, 17f, 27, 50–55 passim, 102, 127–28, 137, 166f, 218–32 passim Misnagdim, 30, 203 Modernism, 122, 144, 153–58 passim, 188, 197, 199, 206, 211, 215 Modernity, 1, 4ff, 165, 168, 188, 192, 210 Money in fiction, 16–45 passim, 52f, 57, 59, 63–66, 100 Moretti, Franco, 133, 160–61, 169, 229–32 Moscow, 20, 48, , 58, 97 Myth, 24, 28, 52–65 passim, 105, 161–62, 165, 208, 212; American Jewish, 126, 157; and revolution, 86, 115 Nachman of Bratslav, 162 Nadiarnykh, N. S., 224 Napoleon, 173 Narodnichestvo, narodnik. See Populism Naye heym, 155 Neubauer, John, 217 New England, 148 New Jersey, 154 New York, 60, 63, 91, 123, 125, 130–38 passim, 146, 150–55 passim Nicholas II, 95, 105 Niger, Shmuel, 7f, 218; on Asch, 32, 113–14, 181, 188, 221, 227f, 231; on Dinezon, 19, 220; on Kobrin, 132, 142; 228 Nomberg, Hirsh David, 14 Norich, Anita, 57–60 passim, 222f North Dakota, 148 Novershtern, Avraham, 38, 42, 45f, 49, 182, 218f, 221, 230f

Nusinov, Isaac, 9, 219 October Manifesto of 1905, 79, 88, 94, 112, 115, 117 Odessa, 54, 139f Opalski, Magdalena, 71, 223f Opatoshu, Joseph, 1, 8, 50, 66, 69, 145, 156; Alone, 5, 146, 154, 164, 168–81, 184, 189, 198, 200, 215, 229f; 1863, 171, 191, 210, 223; From New York Ghetto, 146–48, 150, 155; In Polish Woods, 171; Romance of a Horse Thief, 61–63, 146, 169f Oyslender, Nokhum, 8, 69, 74, 223ff Pale of Settlement, 13, 60, 74, 113, 185 Palestine (Land of Israel), 48, 75, 95, 106, 149f, 167 Paperno, Irina, 224 Paris, 132f, 173 Peretz, Yitskhok Leybush, 1, 8, 14, 18f, 28, 32, 131, 162f, 178, 189, 196, 211, 218, 228; “Between Two Mountains”, 197; My Memoirs, 5, 164, 201–7, 209, 232; A Night in the Old Marketplace, 194–95 Peter the Great, 69 Pike, David, 219 Pinski, David, 14, 129, 131 Podhoretz, Norman, 149–50, 229 Podolia, 67 Pogrom, 157; in Kishinev (1903), 1, 93, 112, 139; pogroms of 1905, 79, 91, 95, 105, 108, 135; representation in literature, 78, 106, 112, 153, 189 Poland, 1, 17, 36, 37, 58, before partitions, 67–71, 87, 97, 103, 171, 173f, 178f, 182, 187, 204, 213; under Russian rule, 71; uprising of 1863, 70f, 170, 172 Poles, 28, 33, 37, 72 Polish language, 78, 183, 211 Populism (narodnichestvo), 74, 109f, 122, 143, 190 Prussia, 61, 172, 185 Przybyszewsky, Stanislaw, 175–76 Pushkin, Alexander, 69f Rabon, Israel, 216 Raboy, Isaac, 8, 145, 155f; Herr Goldenbarg, 148–50, 196 Realism, 13, 33, 64, 98, 100, 129–32, 141,

Index 144f, 158, 161, 211; mimetic, 19, 27, 52; social, 6, 121, 131 Reisen, Abraham, 14f Rembrandt, 182, 186 Reuveyni, Aharon, 122 Revolution: of 1905 in Russia, 1, 5, 28, 33, 61, 72–76, 82–88 passim, 92, 101, 106–17 passim, 139, 188, 200, 210, 215; representation in literature, 6, 75, 83–89 passim, 114–17, 153, 198 Rhine, 172 Riffaterre, Michael, 13, 219 Rivkin, Borukh, 122, 142, 227f Rontsh, Isaac Elhonon, 148, 150, 229 Rosenfeld, Morris, 15 Roskies, David, 9f, 28, 51ff, 57, 73f, 86f, 89, 91, 105, 205–8, 211, 217–25, 230ff Russia, 17, 20, 58, 75f, 80, 101, 116, 149, 153, 185, 204. See also Economy; Immigration Revolution: economic and political crisis, 5, 12f, 33, 61; Jewish condition in: 5, 12, 52, 61, 63, 90, 106, 109, 118f, 192; representation in literature: 69–74, 99, 112f, 117, 129, 134, 139, 153, 165, 172, 187 Russian authorities, 36, 47, 68, 71, 78 Russian language, 77f, 82, 84f, 96, 135, 140, 183, 192, 198, 211. See also Russian literature Russian literature, 72f, 84ff, 102, 106, 130f, 152, 156, 158, 184, 199, 212. See also Russian literature Russian-Jewish literature, 72 Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), 1, 5, 13, 20, 22, 61, 135, 139 Russo-Swedish War (Great Northern War,1700–1721), 69 Ryleev, Kondratii, 69 Sadeh, Pinhas, 205, 232 St. Petersburg, 20, 48, 92–102, 104, 108, 111–15, 132, 182–88, 226 Sergey Aleksandrovich, Prince, 94, 97 Schnitzler, Arthur, 155, 215 Shama, Simon, 230 Shanin, Teodor, 12, 219 Shekhtman, Eli, 75 Shell, Marc, 50, 63, 221, 223 Shevrin, Aliza, 102, 226 Shmeruk, Khone, 60, 194–95, 218, 221f, 228, 231

Sholem Aleichem (Rabinovitsh, Sholem), 1, 14, 33, 37, 50f, 98, 117, 120, 178, 189, 218; as classical author, 8, 19, 32, 123, 131, 211; The Bloody Hoax, 90; “Characters from the ‘Small Bourse’ ”, 54; The Flood, 90–108, 111, 116, 127, 133, 184, 212, 226; From the Fair, 5, 18; 53, 90, 201, 208–9, 232; In Storm, 102; Menakhem-Mendl, 55ff, 66, 90, 105f, 162, 168, 208, 212; Motl the Cantor’s Son, 105, 127–28, 162, 208, 212, 228; as mythologist, 9, 28, 51–53, 56, 65; Sender Blank and His Household, 55; and shund, 18, 100; Stempenyu, 57–58, 60, 62, 69, 74, 116, 141, 164, 208, 222; Tevye the Dairyman, 5, 55ff, 66, 90, 105f, 145, 162, 164–68, 208, 212, 222, 230; “A Treasure,” 53; Wandering Stars, 57, 59–60, 65, 90, 186, 223; Yosele the Nightingale, 57–58, 62, 164, 208 Shomer (Shaykevitsh, N. M.), 19 Shtetl: decline of, 38, 47, 63, 76, 87, 89, 105, 121, 123; economy of, 36, 40, 48, 58, 61, 193; literary image of, 27–33 passim, 46, 75,140; revolution in 74, 87–89. See also Economy; Revolution Shteynberg, Noyekh, 145, 148f, 229 Shulman, Elias, 222 Shund, 98, 100, 129, 141 Siberia, 84, 98, 101, 165 Singer, Israel Joshua, 75, 216 Slotnick, Susan, 190–91, 195, 219, 231 Socialist Revolutionaries, 80, 226; ideology of, 83, 85, 97 Social-Democrats, 80, 85,110 Sologub, Fiodor, 152 Solovyov, Vladimir, 200, 231 Spain, 192 Spektor, Mordkhe, 33, 84, 87f, 104, 108, 190, 225; Arom Zilbertsvayg, 76–79, 212 Stampfer, Shaul, 119–20, 227 Stanislawski, Michael, 68, 70, 223f Stendhal, 161 Stern, Michael, 165, 230 Stolypin, Piotr, 192 Switzerland, 196, 205 Talmud, 22 Tashrak (Zevin), 129, 136 Todorov, Tzvetan, 217 Tolstoy, Leo, 130, 200; Anna Karenina, 183, 196

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Index Torah, 21f, 81ff, 125, 178 Treasure motif, 18, 28, 50, 53–65 passim, 83, 100, 186, 209, 213. See also Money in fiction Trollope, Anthony, 161 Trunk, Y. Y., 9, 51f, 102, 218f, 222, 226, 230 Tsinberg, Sergei (Israel), 228 Turgenev, Ivan, 85, 132; A Nest of the Gentry, 193, 200, 223 Tynianov, Yurii, 102, 224, 225 Ukraine, Ukrainian, 8, 38–39, 48, 68–70, 92, 97, 108f, 182f, 185, 191 Uvarov, Count Sergey, 67–69 Varshavsky, Oyzer, 216 Vernon, John, 17, 25, 220 Vilno (Vilna), 71 Vistula, 29, 171–72, 175, 177, 184 Vitebsk, 79f, 139 Volhynia, 67 Voloshinov, V. N., 2 Volynsky, Akim (Flekser, Khayim) 230 Warnke, Nina, 91, 226 Warsaw, 88, 97, 107, 114, 175 Weinreich, Max, 21 Weinreich, Uriel, 89, 162, 225 Weissenberg, Isaac Meyer (Itche Meir), 1, 8, 15; A Forest Girl, 178–79, 215, 230; A Shtetl, 87–89, 116, 162–63, 171, 215, 225 Wiener, Meir, 8, 51, 218, 222 Williams, Raymond, 10, 20, 38, 219, 221, 232 Winchevsky, Morris, 130 Wisse, Ruth, 6, 39, 56, 62, 87, 145, 148f, 204, 218–25 passim, 229, 232

Wissenschaft des Judentums, 113 Woman: and modernity, 165, 168ff; representation in literature, 116, 130, 164; in revolution, 86, 89, 116, 174, 190 Wolfssohn, Aaron, 137 Wolitz, Seth, 196, 231 World War I, 1, 4, 10, 48, 75, 145, 167; World War II, 74 Yiddishkayt, 6, 122f, 125, 134, 152, 170, 181 Yiddish language, 77f, 82, 84f, 96, 122, 125, 137, 146f, 151ff, 157ff, 183, 211. See also Yiddish literature Yiddish literature, 6f, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 50, 85–86, 135, 138, 211; in America, 5, 7f, 99, 120, 122, 130–33, 137, 141–48 passim, 157–59, 180, 213, 228; early twentieth century (before 1914), 26, 50, 68, 90, 115, 149, 160–64 passim, 169f, 181, 210; nineteenth century 19, 33, 50, 60, 67–75 passim, 120, 161, 164, 168f, 202, 210, 213; politics in, 67, 102; twentieth century, 27, 34, 63, 74f, 87, 106, 117, 163, 180, 215; in Russia (before 1917), 14, 37, 67, 70, 130f; in the Soviet Union, 6, 86, 122; theater, 59, 91, 132, 156. See also Yiddish language Yushkevich, Semion, 72, 224 Zamosc, 202, 204–6 Zevin. See Tashrak Zhitlovsky, Khayim, 224 Zionism, Zionists, 48, 80, 85, 93, 102, 105, 113, 117, 150, 154, 176 Znanie, 72 Zola, Émile, 90, 132f, 136