Chapter XIV: Prose Writers Since 1881: in America

Many years before the great immigration of the Jews had begun, there was a sufficiently large community of Russian Jews resident in New York to support a newspaper. In the seventies there existed there a weekly, _The Jewish Gazette_, and there was at least one book store, that of the firm of Kantrowitz, that furnished the colony with Judeo-German reading matter. The centre of that Jewish quarter was then as now on Canal Street, where there was also the Jewish printing office of M. Topolowsky, from which, in 1877, was issued a small volume of Judeo-German poetry by Jacob Zwi Sobel, probably the first of the kind in America. His few songs are all in the style of Goldfaden. One, entitled 'The Polish Scholar in America,' is especially interesting, not from a literary standpoint, but from the light it throws on the condition of the Jews before the eighties. Whether they wished so or not, they were rapidly being amalgamated, on the one side by the German Jews, on the other by the American people at large. Many tried to hide their nationality, and even their religion, since the Russian Jews did not stand in good repute then. The vernacular was only used as the last resort by those who had not succeeded in acquiring a ready use of the English language, and its approach to the literary German was even greater than that attempted by Dick at about the same time in Russia. However, English words had begun to creep in freely and to modify the Germanized dialect. It is evident that the seeds of the American Judeo-German, as it may now be found in the majority of works printed in New York, had been sown even then. The proneness to use a large number of German words is derived from the time when the smaller community had been laboring to pass into American Judaism by means of the German Jewish congregations.

Suddenly, in 1881, began the great forced emigration of the Jews from Russia, and in the same year the main stream of the unfortunate wanderers commenced to flood the city of New York, and from there to spread over the breadth and the length of the United States. At present there are, probably, not less than three hundred thousand Russian Jews to be found in New York alone. The aspect of the Jewish colony was at once changed. It was thrown back into conditions resembling those in congested Russian cities. There came misery, poverty, and squalor. The struggle for existence was even harder than it had been at home. They had exchanged the tyranny of the autocracy for the liberty of the republic, but they did not at the same time better their material well-being. It was then that the sweat-shop with all its horrors had its beginning, or at least found its most objectionable development. And they were not all laborers who were forced to tread the sewing-machine, or roll cigars and fill cigarettes. Many of them had seen better days at home, some had even been students at gymnasia and at universities. Without any previous training in their particular occupations, forced to do ten and twelve hours' work of the hardest labor, they had no time to think of any but the most sordid, more immediate physical needs. Some indeed succeeded in establishing themselves permanently, but the majority groaned under a heavy yoke. Only by degrees did more and more of them issue from the sweat-shops, to take up other occupations; but few of them ever forgot the horrors of their first years in America. The whole course of the Judeo-German literature is a reflex, on the one side, of their sufferings, on the other, of the greater liberty, the slowly increasing well-being.

With the large immigration came also some of the literary men: Zunser, Schaikewitsch, Seiffert, Goldfaden. They at once set about to produce books with the same vim that they had developed at home. But the field was not so profitable, and they had to turn to other work. Schaikewitsch and Zunser have become printers instead of writers of books, and Goldfaden gave up his attempt in despair and returned finally to Europe. However, in the short time that they have been active in America, they have succeeded in doing immeasurable harm not only to Judeo-German literature, but to the people for whom they wrote as well. They have corrupted the language in accord with the forms which they found in vogue among the Jews who had been here before them, and they started out to minister to the sensational tastes of the masses who received their nourishment from the lower English press of New York. The amount of many-volumed so-called novels that they have produced is simply appalling. These are mainly adaptations of the most sensational novels in whatsoever language they could lay their hands on. Goldfaden also started _The New York Illustrated Gazette_, the first of the kind in Judeo-German, but it lived only a short time. In spite of the mass of printed matter in the vernacular, literature did not pay in America, and Goldfaden left the country in disgust.

But the eighties were not by any means devoid of interest and far-reaching importance to Jewish letters. During that time Judeo-German journalism received its fullest development. In Russia a daily press could not exist at all, and the few weeklies that had been issued from time to time had to move in such closely circumscribed limits that journalism ever remained there in its infancy. But on the other side of the Atlantic, the first thing the Jews learned to value and to make free use of was the newspaper. A large number of these were started in the first ten years of the great immigration, but most of them have been of short duration. In the struggle for existence the oldest newspaper, that had had its beginning in 1874, came out victorious. It bought out and consolidated twenty Jewish dailies and weeklies and now appears in the form of _The Jewish Gazette_, as the representative of the more conservative faction of the Russian Jews of America. But the most active in that field of literature were those who at the end of the eighties clustered around the newspapers that were published in the interest of the Jewish laborers. Of these _Die Arbeiterzeitung_ was the most prominent.

A number of causes united in making the socialistic propaganda strongest among the Russian Jews. They had come from a country where all the elements of opposition naturally gathered around the political parties that stood in secret conflict with the Government and also the social order of things. In America, they came at once in contact with the sweat-shop and similar industrial oppressions, which only sharpened their dislike of the social structure. Intellectually they stood higher than those of their brethren who persevered with the conservatives, for they had at least come to think about their condition and the affairs of the world, while the others clung to old superstitions and did nothing to drag themselves out from the slough of ignorance into which they had fallen in Russia. At the same time the many intelligent men who had been driven to the United States nearly all had belonged to the opposition parties at home, and it was from them alone that the masses could be saved from the clutches of the sensational novelists. This struggle between Schaikewitsch and his tribe on the one side and the intelligent writers on the other began towards the end of the last decade, and the older men are being as surely driven to the wall here as they have been in Russia by Rabinowitsch and the newer school of writers. These younger men have, with but one exception, been driven to Judeo-German letters as their last resort. Some of them had never before published anything in any language, and none of them had ever practised writing in their vernacular. They all belonged to that class of Jewish young men who had received their instruction in Russian schools, or who had in any way identified themselves completely with their Gentile comrades. They had all reached their school age in the seventies, when everybody was as eager to become Russianized as two decades before their parents had been to oppose the new culture. Either as belonging to the Jewish race, or because of their sympathies with the Nihilists, they had to flee from the country. These form to a great extent the basis for the Russian intelligence in the United States.

They brought with them the idea of the Narodniks, which was that their energies ought to be devoted to the uplifting of the masses. They could not hope to become in any way influential among the native population in the American cities. They, consequently, directed their attention to their own race. One of the first to arrive in America with the great immigration, was Abraham Cahan. He was born in the year 1860 in Podberezhe, in the government of Wilna. His early years had been passed in a Jewish school perfecting himself in Jewish lore. At the age of fourteen he entered the Hebrew Teachers' Institute at Wilna, from which he graduated in 1881. He was appointed a teacher in a government school in a small town in the province of Witebsk, but he had soon to flee, having been discovered by the police as a participant in the nihilistic movement. The next year he arrived in New York penniless. He had a hard struggle for three or four years. Since that time he has been active as the founder of several excellent Judeo-German periodicals, as a writer in the dialect himself, as a contributor to the English press, and, finally, as a writer of English books. Of the latter, 'Yekl' was published a short time ago by Appleton & Co., and 'The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories,' by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. He has also contributed to the _Cosmopolitan_, _Short Stories_, and the _Atlantic Monthly_.

His Judeo-German activity began with the foundation of the _Arbeiterzeitung_, devoted to the interest of socialism and enlightenment among the Jewish masses. To this gazette he contributed largely. Most of his articles are popularizations of sciences, but he has also written several books of stories, mostly from the life of the New York Ghetto. Like his English stories, they are composed in a good literary style, and present vivid pictures of Jewish life as it is modified under American conditions. It may be safely asserted that his English sketches are conceived by him first in the Judeo-German, after which they are adapted for an American public. While showing great merit, it cannot be said of his novels that they equal those of the writers in Russia. In fact, there has not arisen in America any author who has shown the same degree of originality as those of the mother-country, even though they frequently surpass them in regularity of structure, and in the fund of information they possess. Among the large number of writers in New York who have contributed to the literature, it can hardly be said that any individual style has been developed. They resemble each other very much, both in the manner of their compositions, and the subjects they treat. Nor could it be otherwise. They nearly all are busy popularizing science in one way or other, or they write novels from the life of the Jewish community, which, in the less than two decades of its existence, has not developed, as yet, many new characteristics. They imitate Russian models for their stories and novels, mainly Chekhov. They are all of them realists, and some have carried their realism to the utmost extent.

One of the most fruitful popularizers of science has been Abner Tannenbaum. His works have all the merit of being based on real facts, though these are presented in the attractive form of novels, whether original or translated. He is now exerting an influence also on the Jews of Russia, where his works are much valued. He was born in 1847, and, up to the year 1889, was a wholesale druggist. In that year he arrived in America, and, for the first time, began writing in the vernacular. At first, he translated novels from German and French, especially the works of Jules Verne. Later, he wrote some novels after the fashion of the German pedagogue, J. H. Campe, in his works 'Robinson the Younger' and 'The Discovery of America.' Since 1893, he has been a permanent contributor to _The Jewish Gazette_, where he has been writing and popularizing encyclopedic items.

The early history of J. Rombro, who is writing under the pseudonym of Philip Krantz, does not differ much from that of Abraham Cahan, with whom he has been active in the publication of the same periodicals. He had to flee from Russia about the same time. He went to London and Paris, from which place he contributed to various Russian magazines. In London he met Winchevsky, who, at that time, had been editing a Judeo-German newspaper, _The Polish Jew_. He was asked by him to write a description of the riots against the Jews. "It was a hard job for me," so writes the author, "and it took me a long time to do it. I never thought of writing in the Jewish Jargon, but fate ordered otherwise, and, contrary to all my aspirations, I am now nothing more than a poor Jargon journalist." The author's evil plight has, however, been the people's gain, for to his untiring activity is due no small amount of the enlightenment that they have received in the last ten years. In 1885 he was invited by a group of Hebrew workingmen, rather anarchistic than social-democratic, to edit a socialistic monthly, _The Workers' Friend_. Against his will, for he was a social-democrat, he accepted the offer. This monthly became the next year a weekly. Later, he translated Lassale's 'Workingmen's Program' into Judeo-German. About that time, in 1890, he was invited by the Jewish socialists of New York to come to the United States and edit a strictly social-democratic paper. He gladly accepted this invitation, and March 6, 1890, the first number of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ was issued; since 1894 it has been appearing under the name of the _Abend-Blatt_ as a daily, and it is now the official Jewish organ of the socialist labor party. He was also the first editor of the _Zukunft_, started by the Jewish socialist sections of the United States in 1892. Now he is contributing to the monthlies _Neuer Geist_ and _Neue Zeit_. His articles are all characterized by great earnestness, and by a good flowing style. He is far from being a blind partisan, and he knows how to treat impartially questions of a general import.

The nineties have passed in the United States in the often-repeated attempt to establish permanent Judeo-German magazines. There have been a large number of them in existence, and one after the other has met with financial failure. Now, however, there are several that promise to last a longer time. Never before has the periodical press in Judeo-German been brought to such a perfection as regards its outward form and the variety of subjects that it has incorporated in its pages. The first of the kind was the _Zukunft_ just mentioned. It lasted until the year 1897, when it gave way to the _Neue Zeit_, which is practically a continuation of the first. It differs little from similar popular science magazines in other languages. We find in it such articles as, What is Socialism? Philosophy and Revolution; A Dog's Brain, by John Lubbock; Shakespeare, his Life and his Works; Pasteur and his Discoveries; and similar scientific articles. To these must be added many literary articles, stories, poems, reviews, and the like. Among the several good contributors of the latter class of literature we shall dwell at a greater length on B. Gorin and Leon Kobrin.

B. Gorin is the pseudonym of J. Goido, of whose activity in Russia we have spoken before. After the failure of his undertaking in Wilna, mainly through the interference of the censor, who delayed his publication in every possible way, he went to Berlin to attend lectures at the University. He soon went to America, where shortly after, in 1895, he became the editor of a Philadelphia Judeo-German newspaper. From there he went to New York, where he published the 'Jewish American Popular Library,' a collection of short stories in the manner of his Wilna edition; but its life was cut short after the seventh number. He has since been the editor of the _Neuer Geist_. The most of his sketches were published in the _Arbeiterzeitung_ and in the _Abend-Blatt_, when it was still edited by A. Cahan. At first he confined himself exclusively to short sketches in the style of the Russian writer, Shchedrin, but soon he followed the example of all of those who have written in America, and has translated foreign authors, has written reviews, and popularized science. In Russia he had begun the translation of 'David Copperfield.' In America he has translated Chekhov, and has in one way or other introduced the Russian Jews to the works of Daudet, Maupassant, Sienkiewicz, Korolenko, Dostoyevski, Bourget, Garshin, Potapenko, and many German and English novelists.

One of the most original writers of the realistic school in the manner of the Russian Chekhov is Leon Kobrin. He has lately started the publication of a 'Realistic Library,' of which the first number so far issued contains several sketches that have been written by him in the last two years. One of the best in that volume is the first, 'Jankel Boile,' a story from the life of Jewish fishermen. One is rather inclined to doubt that his Jewish characters really exist as he has depicted them; it almost seems as if they were a transference of Russian men to Jewish surroundings, for they seem to do things that are not met with as peculiarities of the Jews in the many novels by Judeo-German writers. But it may be that he speaks from intimate acquaintance with a class of people that is not generally accessible to the average writer. Barring this, the story is very vividly told. It is a sketch of a Jewish boy who has grown up with the village boys, and who has but the faintest idea of his Jewish faith. He falls in love with one of the peasant girls of his acquaintance, whom he courts, and for whom he is about to give up the faith of his fathers. In the last moment, when out in the night on a fishing tour on the stormy lake, he is caught with remorse at his impending apostasy, and he commits suicide by jumping in the lake. This is but a bare outline of a most excellently developed story, in which realism has been carried to a _ne plus ultra_. His portrayal of the lower classes with their indomitable passions reminds one very much of the remarkable sketches of the Russian Gorki.

At this juncture mention must be made of the many short sketches by Gurewitsch, who writes under the pseudonym of Z. Libin. They belong among the best Ghetto stories that have been written in New York, and they display undoubted talent. Cahan, Goido, Kobrin, and Libin are all young men yet, and from them alone a regeneration of the Jewish novel may be expected.

In 1893 Krantz and Sharkansky started a monthly magazine, _The City Guide_, but only two numbers of it appeared. Two years later Winchevsky began issuing in Boston _The Emeth_, a weekly family paper for literature and culture. It is a pity it was stopped before the year was out, for of all the magazines that have seen daylight in America, it was by far the most ably edited. Among his contributors of belles lettres we find the names of the authors just mentioned, and also several others. Nearly everything else is from the pen of the editor. While in many of the leaders his socialistic bias is pronounced, yet most of his articles deal with subjects of a general interest. Of his poetry we have spoken before. His prose style is even better. It is smooth, idiomatic, and carefully balanced. He is one of the few authors who bestow great care on a good Judeo-German style, and file and finish it. Most interesting are his epigrams and philosophical reflections, and his satirical sketches, which he generally ascribes to the 'Insane Philosopher.' Winchevsky has been very productive. Outside of his many original stories and sketches, his poetry, and sociological articles, he has translated a number of works, among others the Russian Korolenko and Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables.' His translations are the very best in the Judeo-German language. Few have equalled him in the art of translation. The distinguishing characteristics of all his productions are dignity and refinement. Although he frequently depicts Jewish life, the Jew is but an accident of his themes, for he has ever in mind the social questions at large, as they affect the whole world.

The year before Schaikewitsch began the publication of the _Hebrew Puck_ in imitation of the English _Puck_. Being of a humorous nature, that magazine does not show the glaring defects of his other works to any great extent. In the same year Alexander Harkavy started _The American People's Calendar_, which in addition to the matter that more strictly belongs to an almanac contains also several useful articles of a literary value. Harkavy has developed an untiring activity in the publication of books by which his countrymen should be introduced to the English language and to a right understanding of American citizenship. He has written all kinds of text-books, has translated the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and published _The Hebrew American_, an English weekly with footnotes in Judeo-German. He has also written a large number of popular articles on linguistic subjects. Many of these contain valuable matter, but it is often difficult to disentangle the facts from his personal speculations, which are not always based on scientific truths. He lacks training, and his style is otherwise colorless. But for all that, his deserts in the education of the Russian Jews of New York must not be undervalued. Of his translations we might also mention the 'Don Quixote,' of which so far only the first part has appeared in Judeo-German. Among the writers of historical essays, the most promising is the Roumanian, D. M. Hermalin, whose 'Mohammed' and 'Jesus the Nazarene' are not only fair and unbiassed statements of the foreign religious teachings, but also belong among the very few books in Judeo-German that are supplied with a critical apparatus.

The best magazine now in existence is the _Neuer Geist_, of which the first seven numbers were edited by Harkavy, but which now appears under the editorship of Gorin. It is a periodical of science, literature, and art, and has no special political bias. We find here the same contributors as in former monthlies. To those mentioned before may be added the names of Budianov, Feigenbaum, and Solotkov, who have written many good articles on sociological and philosophical matters, and Katz, who is an astute critic. Here has also appeared the best translation in verse of one of Shakespeare's dramas, 'The Merchant of Venice,' from the pen of the poet Bovchover. Another, smaller magazine, _Die Zeit_,[110] is published by the Hebrew poet M. M. Dolizki. Another well-conducted monthly is the _Neue Zeit_, issued by the Jewish-speaking sections of the Socialist Labor Party of the United States. There is no material difference in the composition of the contributors' staff. A few more names might be added to the list of men who have been active in spreading information among the Russian Jews, such as Feigenbaum, Wiernik, Bukanski. Seiffert has written some interesting accounts of the Jewish stage in America, but his language is of the order of Dick or even worse; Rosenfeld and Sharkansky have at various times produced some sketches and even dramas, but they are more strictly poets, as which alone they will survive.

The time is not far away when there will not be a Judeo-German press in America. The younger generation never looks inside of a Jewish paper now, and the next following generation will no longer speak the dialect, unless something unforeseen happens by which the existence of that anomaly shall be made possible. Already _The Jewish Gazette_, taking time by the forelock, has begun issuing an English supplement to its Judeo-German weekly. It wants to secure its lease of life by passing over by successive steps to a periodical published entirely in English, without a violent loss of its subscribers. Several of the intelligent writers in the vernacular are at the same time contributing to the English press, while some have entirely abandoned their Judeo-German. In the meanwhile that literature is developing a feverish activity. From its ashes will rise new forces in the English literature of America that will add no small mite to its pages. In the short time of the existence of the Judeo-German in America, it has passed through three distinct stages: the first was the era of the sensational novel; then followed the socialistic propaganda, coupled with the evolution of the press, but particularly the magazine. Now, without abandoning entirely the social and political ideals, the writers are combining to popularize science and to produce a pure literature. The latter is more or less under the sway of the Russian writers Chekhov, Korolenko, and Garshin. What Russia has done for the Jews in the seventies is reaped by the masses in the nineties in America.