by Ezra Glinter
That record took on greater meaning as the paper’s readers became entrenched in America, and as they watched from a distance as their former world burned to the ground. The First World War and the Russian Civil War began the physical destruction of Eastern European Jewish life, complete with massacres on the Jewish home front and the mass conscription of teenagers into the jaws of violent death. One of the most wrenching stories here is “The Jewish Soldier” by the renowned writer Sholem Asch, about a company anticipating a battle. The company replicates the civilian Jewish world by including religious soldiers, secular soldiers, those in-between, and anti-Semites who harass them all. The battle itself is a horror, involving crushed bodies and severed limbs, the agony compounded as the amputees return home to find their parents murdered in pogroms. Like the facts of mass migration, we “knew” all this already. But we didn’t know what it was like for Asnat, a young man whose assimilated Russian childhood leaves him desperately searching for honor, whose friendship with a religious Jewish soldier burdens him with regret, whose ultimate attempt at heroism vaults over tragedy into utter devastation. Stories here by the literary masters David Bergelson and Israel Joshua Singer achieve something similar with the Russian Civil War, a conflict whose numbing details come alive in stories that are not merely about trauma, but about what it means to live with humiliation; they serve as a guide to human dignity.
These and many other stories take us back to Europe, including gems like a never-before-translated tale by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, a beautiful fable by the eminent poet Kadya Molodowsky, and a standout by the literary giant Chaim Grade. Yet these fictional return trips to the old country, written by world-class talents traumatically severed from the world that formed them, are themselves American documents, reflecting the American Jewish community’s absorption of refugees who could not entirely embrace the American credo of reinvention. These are not sentimental works based on nostalgia for a world destroyed. Instead these stories squarely face a reality that is far too dark for English-speaking American life.
There is a deep despair in Grade’s “Grandfathers and Grandchildren,” a story about a dying synagogue where elderly men resort to ruses to attract young students, or Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn’s story “Compatriots,” about two men who meet at the fiftieth reunion of their much-diminished landsmanshaft, a once-crucial organization supporting immigrants from a single European hometown. The Forward had been conceived as a newspaper for the future. But by dint of its language, the successful assimilation of its earliest readers, and the mass murder of the majority of the world’s Yiddish speakers, within fifty years it had become a newspaper of the past. This is true even for the remarkable stories included here from the paper’s recent years, like Blume Lempel’s erotic “A Journey Back in Time” and Boris Sandler’s unexpected “Studies in Solfège,” both of which explore sexual affairs defined by their expiration dates. It may surprise Americans that there are no stories here that directly address the Holocaust, which for many Forward writers and readers was much too immediate for fiction. Instead, these post-Holocaust stories address something almost as wrenching and eternally relevant, a subject that American literature in English tends to avoid: mortality.
Ezra Glinter points out in these pages that “the American Jewish experience was largely a product of trauma.” But this trauma goes much deeper than the cataclysms of the last century. It includes the fundamental tension between American and Jewish culture. America’s founding legend insists that it doesn’t matter who our parents or great-great-great-grandparents are, that what matters is what we do with the opportunities this country gives us, that we are meant to be self-made men or women without a past. This is what we call the American dream, and its promise is precisely what brought so many of our ancestors to this country. But Judaism has a very different founding legend. When God gave the Torah to the Israelites, it was received not only by that generation, but by all of their future descendants, who were also present at Sinai. This legend is exactly the opposite of the American dream. It insists that it indeed matters who one’s great-great-great-grandparents were, and that one is entirely defined by the past. The central challenge of American Jewish life, one now shared by many other groups in this marvelously complicated country, is to thrive within this tension, to live one’s life in a place where only the future matters in a community suffused by the shadow of eternity.
You may think you know the story of the American Jewish experience, its facts and timelines and famous figures and major events. But without this emotional record, the “living novel” of American Jewish life, you missed the part about what it means to be alive. So keep reading. We’ve got a story for you.
HAVE
I GOT A
STORY
FOR YOU
SECTION ONE
Immigration and Its Discontents
BETWEEN 1881, when the assassination of Czar Alexander II set off waves of pogroms across the Russian Empire, and 1924, when the Johnson-Reed Act shut down open immigration to the United States, nearly 3 million Jews made their way to America. These Yiddish-speaking immigrants came for many reasons. Some were fleeing pogroms; others, like Forward editor Abraham Cahan, came to avoid arrest for their political activities—or had already served time in jail. Many simply sought to escape poverty and to seek new opportunities in the “Golden Land.”
Yet every immigrant experienced similar challenges. For each “greenhorn,” the first order of business was to “ungreen” themselves—that is, to acculturate to American life. New arrivals had to learn a language, find a way to support themselves, and rebuild the communities they had left behind.
As a newspaper that catered to Yiddish-speaking immigrants, the Forward made it its business to smooth this transition. It advised its readers on American manners and fashions; it educated them in the country’s history, geography, and political systems; it encouraged them to learn English as soon as they could. Perhaps most important, in its literary offerings the Forward gave them consolation; it assured them that others had gone through the same struggles and that the confusion and ambivalence they felt was entirely normal.
As a socialist newspaper, the Forward also sought to unify its readers politically and economically. For many of its readers immigration was not just an individual experience, but a collective opportunity. Whereas in the Russian Empire political activism was illegal, in America you could think, say, and vote for whomever you liked. Thus, the Yiddish intelligentsia turned itself into a generation of activists, lecturers, and labor organizers. Many of the stories published in the Forward reflected efforts at union organizing, labor conditions, and the economic ups and downs of American life.
Not all immigrants greeted their new experiences with enthusiasm, however. Although the United States was a haven from the violence and oppression of Europe, the perceived vulgarity and opportunism of America disappointed many new arrivals. And, as they discovered, immigration was not a one-time event, but a continuing experience. While parents aspired to their children’s success, many of the stories that appeared in the Forward dealt with the frustration of older immigrants who become estranged from their Americanized children and grandchildren.
Viewed in hindsight, the Jewish immigration experience in America seems like a great success. But at the time, that success was hardly assured. Emotional trauma and material privation were not an exception, but a rule. For the immigrants struggling to find their footing in a new country, there was at least something to cling to when times got tough: a newspaper that told them they were not alone.
Rokhl Brokhes
1880–1945
ROKHL BROKHES WAS a short-story writer of depth and sophistication whose true contribution to Yiddish literature may never be known.
Born in Minsk to educated parents, Brokhes was taught to read Hebrew at a young age and immersed herself in works of Hebrew and world literature. When her father died when she was nine years old, Brokhes was forced to go to work as a seamst
ress, and she later taught needlework at the Minsk Jewish Vocational School for Girls.
Brokhes began writing fiction as a teenager and published her first story, “Yankele,” in 1899. As a young woman, Brokhes married a dentist and moved with him to Saratov before returning to Minsk around 1920. After the Russian Revolution she continued to publish short stories in Soviet Yiddish periodicals, along with plays and children’s stories.
Although two collections of Brokhes’s work appeared in her lifetime, many of her stories remain uncollected. An eight-volume edition of her writing was being prepared by the state publishing house of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in the early 1940s when the German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the project to a halt. Brokhes died in the Minsk Ghetto during the Holocaust.
In her fiction Brokhes often addresses the plight of women during times of political and social upheaval. “Golde’s Lament,” which appeared in the Forward on May 9, 1907, treats the subject of immigration from the perspective of a woman whose husband travels to America with another woman posing as his wife. The story was considered so important that the paper ran advertisements for two days announcing its publication and followed it with an essay by editor Abraham Cahan in which he declared it to be “the poetry of a suffering human heart.”
Golde’s Lament
(MAY 9, 1907)
Translated by Myra Mniewski
HE WAS SUPPOSED to leave this evening, but because of Peshke, their departure was put off until tomorrow’s train.
The lamp burns brightly on the balcony. Everyone sits around the table talking.
Small talk. In the adjoining room Golde decides it’s not worth paying attention, and stops listening.
She sits in her room. The beds are a tumble, disarranged. It’s no small thing, this packing. The quilt and pillow have already been rolled up into a bundle. The children have passed out, asleep wherever—who has the wherewithal to keep an eye on them? The baby, with no one to comfort her, screamed her head off all evening. Golde’s aged mother, also passed out on the hard bench behind the stove, is restlessly sighing and moaning.
Golde can’t get comfortable either. She’s already moved herself every which way on the bed, tossing and turning in all directions, unable to settle down.
A harrowing cry pushes to the surface. It recedes and pines. Her grief is huge and her pain immeasurable. He was supposed to leave today. But the delay is only until tomorrow.
How has it come to this, his going away? Does he really have to go? They’d been discussing it all winter, packing and repacking, trying to raise money for the trip—pleading and begging wherever possible, pawning or selling whatever was worth anything. He must go because all winter and all summer and all the previous winter and summer, and many summers and winters before that—entire years he’d searched for something of a concern, a position, some way to make a living, and couldn’t find anything. He must go! The plans have already been made.
She feels herself aging—the emptiness of his absence, the fear of uncertainty, the distance their separation will bring. He is leaving tomorrow. Bundles are being carried out. The house is growing empty. Leybe is already gone. What is she worth without him? What does God have in store for her? She throws herself on the bed and bangs her head on the bedpost. She’s finished—desperate, defeated. The bitter idea fills its measure, veils her eyes with a mournful gloom, pummels her mind as if with a cudgel—the unbearable thought of Peshke traveling along with him.
Golde knows this is an ugly thought. It’s foolish; Leybe must not know of it. She must stop provoking herself. No one must suspect what lurks in her heart. She would herself like to deny it, not think about it, forget that Peshke is listed on his provincial visa as his wife.
Everything else recedes into the background. All the troubles she’s been through—her worn-down sick children, the poverty that for the last few years has permeated every crevice—all of it is disappearing, withdrawing to a faraway place. The constant dread of not having bread for tomorrow is being displaced by the journey ahead. All she sees is a big ocean, heaving in its magnificence, stretching endlessly before her, with the blue firmament drawn out above it. And then the ship, with scores of portholes and numerous smokestacks. And who is sailing on that boat? Leybe and Peshke, totally different than they were at home, remade as new people. There they are, together, for everyone to see, the whole world thinking they are man and wife. And they’re chatting and enjoying each other—having a good time. Peshke is laughing like a seduced woman, loud and boisterous, just like now, there, in the other room, where they all are.
The sounds from the balcony stimulate Golde’s senses. The conversation, the singing, the laughter, sharpen the distressing images before her eyes. The horrific pain in her heart is growing unbearable. A murderous outrage is getting the better of her. If she could only find the strength, she would burst through the curtain and grab Peshke by the hair, hurl her to the ground, stomp on her. Leybe must not go with her! They can go without each other. How can you even compare them! Peshke is going to her husband, whom she has longed and pined for—a husband who’s already sent her hundreds. And she’s spent it. But he, Leybe, is going in search of bread, a piece of bread to nourish his poor, neglected health. He is leaving his wife and children aching and alone. Why is she laughing and afflicting his head with her yammering, garbling his feelings about his family?
Leybinke, she wants to say, you don’t need her money. You don’t need the twenty rubles she’s lending you to make this journey possible. Is that why you’ve put her on your visa instead of your wife? Leybinke, in our poverty, money is certainly valued, and the twenty rubles will sustain you during the journey, but pay attention to my heart, what it’s going through—how great my anguish is.
This is the chatter going on inside her—without words, soundless; just her choked sighs as she heaves and tosses in bed.
She is not going to share her lament with Leybe. He must not know of it. It’s rash—crazy! She perceives the ugliness of her thoughts, their smallness, and wants to tear at her own flesh. Is this why her grief at Leybe’s departure is so great? Who is this Peshke anyway? She’s going to her husband. Did Leybe know her before? An unknown woman from another world? What a fine how-do-you-do! Had he ever mentioned her name before? Golde just talked about her in passing, counted her money and measured her fortune. She was jealous of her, begrudged her. When someone suggested Peshke sign on to Leybe’s visa, they both, in their poverty, gleefully anticipated the twenty rubles. When everything had already been removed from their house, pawned and sold, when they had already exasperated and borrowed from everyone, Leybe was still discontent. He was despondent—a strange, unfamiliar person would get on his nerves on such a long journey. “When someone’s heart aches he just wants to be alone, he doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone,” he said. And Golde tried to console him, saying, “Don’t worry Leybinke, it will all work out.”
But when Peshke came to bargain and negotiate a deal, when it was time to decide when and how they would go, on what day, through where and on what, that’s when she suddenly felt all those other emotions. The conversations seemed to be only between the two of them—Leybe and Peshke. They were bound together, made sense only to each other. Her presence didn’t matter one way or another. She was superfluous, unneeded. So she left the room, saying she had to check on the baby.
As she pressed up against the cradle, she felt her anguish for the first time, and since then it has not let up. Since then she’s been continuously fighting back the tears that clutch at her throat. Whenever she gets a chance to get away from everyone, step away for just a little while, the tears pour out, pour out without letting up. Silken, bitter, hostile tears.
And when Leybe expounds on all the benefits of traveling with Peshke, a strange chill passes through her, taking over her whole being.
“You realize,” he says, “how advantageous it is for me to travel with her. It even pays to wait for her until she has a
rranged everything. If it’s to be her way, then so be it. My concerns are purely parsimonious, while she is a woman with money, with prospects. I cannot latch onto what she has, but when times are hard it will work in my favor to be connected to her. Her husband has already been there for a while. He is experienced and familiar with the conditions there. He will be able to advise me, point me in the right direction for work. And I’ll have a hospitable place to come home to in a foreign land.”
All that talk made good sense—she understands it, but searches for hidden meaning in his words nonetheless. She watches his facial expressions and listens to his cheerful banter, all the while not believing him, suspecting him.
She should have discussed everything with Peshke before their departure, but she didn’t. While packing his things for the journey she was silent. Soaking some of his things in her tears, she hid them in his suitcase in her wild, insane fright. His departure hovered over her in a habitual nightmare and she became anxious and skittish—afflicted.
