The Rise of David Levinsky [Paperback]

The Rise of David Levinsky, written by the legendary founder and editor of theJewish Daily Forward, is an early Jewish-American classic. According to the scholar Sam B. Girgus, "The novel is more than an important literary work and cultural document. It forms part of the traditional ritual of renewal of the American Way."

First published in 1917, Abraham Cahan's realistic novel tells the story of a young talmudic scholar who emigrates from a small town in Russia to the melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York City. As the Jewish "greenhorn" rises from the depths of poverty to become a millionaire garment merchant, he discovers the unbearably high price of assimilation."It is one of the best fictional studies of Jewish character available in English, and at the same time an intimate and sophisticated account of American business culture."
--Isaac RosenfeldSeth Lipsky is the founding editor of the Forward, the English-language successor to the Jewish Daily Forward. He edited the newspaper for ten years and is now a contributing editor ofThe Wall Street Journal. He lives in Brooklyn.

1. The novel opens with David Levinsky?s declaration that ?the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothing short of a miracle.? What motivates the narrator?s transformation from devoted Talmudic scholar to passionate student to his final incarnation as a driven businessman? What additional themes contribute to Levinsky?s dramatic metamorphosis?

2. How would you characterize the differences between the Orthodox Jews and westernized Jews of Antomir? Later, when the story moves to America, how does Cahan contrast Eastern European Jews with German Jews? And what may be gleaned from Cahan?s depiction of the relationship between turn-of-the-century Jews and gentiles?

3. ?The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, of fantasl-