THE PRESSURES FACED BY JEWISH IMMIGRANTS IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY
NAME:
DATE:
INSTRUCTOR:
The Pressures on Jewish Immigrants
The Jewish immigration began due to the need for freedom which saw them move to other parts of the world such as United States. The immigration beginning early in the eighteenth century, was due to the need for social, religious, political and economic freedom that the Jews were in search off and they moved from other European countries and even Russia. With other immigrants from other races moving into United States, they brought along prejudices against the Jewish community which continued to grow into the twentieth century. During the Second World War, the Germans were overly determined to do away with all Jews where a wave of anti-Semitic attitude was prevalent, leading them to try escape to the United States. The immigrants were however also subjected to several pressures even in the new land as historic records show. Some of these pressures are as discussed in the rest of the paper.
Despite the United States seeming like the only safe place for the Jewish immigrants, they continued to experience the anti-Semitic discrimination that they had faced in Europe and in their own land. Following the killing of Jews in Europe by the Germans, most immigrants tried to move to the United States to seek refuge since they could not keep staying in their homes which had been destroyed by the war and the daily reminder of the pain they suffered while their fellow Jews were killed. A sonnet by Emma Lazarus, titled “The New Colossus,” written at an age where the United States was receiving a huge number of immigrants, shows that immigrants who were moving in to the new lands were mainly running from persecution and were homeless in search of new hope. In her sonnet, Emma whose origin is Jewish, wrote lines that imply the state of the immigrants and the pains they must be experiencing, in the lines reading; “ Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door” (Jardins, 2003). These lines imply that the United States was offering a place safe for the immigrants who were facing discrimination in other parts of the world, and having been included in the Statue of Liberty, shows that immigrants would be welcome there. Thee sonnet clearly relates that people coming into the United States would find peace away from any discrimination.
Another pressure that the Jewish immigrants faced in the 20th century were that they clearly feared to identify themselves as Jews for fear of have been discriminated against not only while trying to gain employment and opportunity, but also in their quest to gain social relations. This was clearly illustrated by Bernard Malamud in his short story- “Lady of the Lake,” where one of the characters chooses to conceal his identity as of Jewish origin in order to gain his romantic interest. By the time he is fully confident to reveal his true self, it’s too late and he loses his love. In that scene, Levin, who is of Jewish origin is seen to change his name to Henry R. Freeman when he moves to Europe for the same reason that he might be limited by his origin. While in Europe, Levin meets Isabella who he falls in love with but fails to reveal his Jewish origin for fear that she may lose interest. Isabella however, is keen on knowing if he is Jewish and tries to find out on her own.
In their story, Isabella finally reveals that she is Jewish too and had hoped that he was too, which is where Levin tries to tell the truth but it’s too late and he loses his only love. The reason for this is that he denied his origins while Isabella was proud to hold on to them (Levin, 2016). This scene shows how the Jewish immigrants were scared of revealing their identity for they were so used to been turned down based on their origin which clearly shows people still had anti-Semitic tendencies and to avoid this most had to change their names to those that had little or no connection to their origin.
The change of name that Henry Levin in the story by Malamud shows the pressure that the Jewish immigrants had when trying to generally assimilate into the new society that they had moved to in the United States. Assimilation for them meant gaining freedom to be like every other citizen and having a name that suggested been Jewish posed a challenge to that. Like most immigrants, the character in the story opted to act like he had no Jewish affiliations since they viewed their history as imprisoning in the new land of opportunities. From the same story, it is clear that the American immigrants had a hard time accepting their past compared to those in other regions of the world such as those in Europe.
The change of name was also furthered by the need to distance themselves from their history as slaves where the rest of the world was aware of their predicament. The Jews who hoped to get a new chance to freedom and equal treatment from people opted to use other names so they could get ahead in life.
The Jewish immigrants also faced the pressure of abiding to their Jewish traditions when they got to the new land in the United States. This means that they were to follow the same values they have learnt and that move from generation to another. This was real challenge in a bid to be assimilated some members of the Jewish community were disowned when they seemed to veer out of the practices of their people. This is clearly illustrated in the story “The Magic Barrel, “by Bernard Malamud, where the match maker, Salzman, clearly disowns his daughter in the claims that she had gone against the Jewish tradition, to an extent of reciting a song for the dead as a mark for his cutting links with the daughter. Finkle on the other hand is also considered to have gone against the Jewish values by agreeing to be in a relationship with Stella (The Magic barrel, 1958). The whole story gives a view of the struggles that the Jewish communities had to live with; one where they could defy their culture and get disowned or live in the strict values of the Jews which many considered to take away their freedom despite been in a free world.
The Jewish people also seemed to suffer from self-imprisonment where they viewed themselves as limited by their ancestry which in itself made them question themselves as free people. In his short stories Malamud, he continuously paints the Jewish characters in a way that shows that they lived in a fear of their own and despite been fully Americanized; they still felt tied to their Jewish origin. For example; in The Assistant, Frank Alpine wonders out loud what type of a man is born to shut yourself in a coffin of which he answers that only Jews fall in that class of people. This implies how they had a hard time feeling free in the new world despite escaping the troubles in Europe (Alter, 1956).
The Jews also had a hard time finding romantic love unlike other groups of people where they had a challenge in finding the right mate. In Malamud’s short stories for example, he illustrates cases of men who had to seek for wives far like in the case of Henry in “Lady of the Lake,” he had to travel to Europe to find romantic love and freedom. In the “Magic Barrel,” we read about a man who had to access a match makers magic to get a wife. These two cases illustrate how hard it was to find a suitable mate. One there was fear that the Jewish origin may interfere with their luck in finding love, while in the second story we see a man who is search of a perfect Jewish woman for a wife but falls in love with one who has apparently gone against her Jewish values.
Malamud also depicts the Jewish immigrants as a people who had their own struggles and pains and a sense of loss for things they felt they could not have. in his stories the Jewish characters go through many sorts of struggles where in one there is a shopkeeper who dies due to lack of enough money to see a doctor, in another story a business man losses everything he had through a fire and his insurance covers the medical cost for two burnt customers leaving him with nothing of his own. These incidences present the Jews as miserable and continuously experiencing loss despite having found a new place to live in.
In the story “The Lady of the Lake,” we also see that despite having found a place to live the Jews continued to live with the scars of the wars and the pains their people lived with. This history is not something they can do away with nor can they hide it and so have to associate with people who have accepted their past and appreciated it. In the story, Isabella reveals the scars that she carries on her breasts from the way and is a daily reminder of who she is, which she can never hide. In her case, she can only be with a fellow Jew who understands and appreciates the past history. Her case can be seen where she tells Levin; “when I was a little girl, the Fascists sent us there. The Nazis did it.” This shows that she is a holocaust survivor and is proud of her history (Lahiri, 2016).
Finally, the Jewish immigrants faced persecution and betrayal by their own people as shown in Malamud’s story “The Jewbird” where the older immigrants appear to be so assimilated in the American culture that they begin to hate their own culture. The story talks of Cohen a Jew, who was so geared to be American that he even turned anti-Semitic. He is seen to torture a fellow Jew since in his view he is now American. This illustrates the struggles that the immigrants had to face not only with other racial groups but also their own (Banks, 2006).
References
Margot H. Banks (2006). “The Jewbird” Malamud Bernard. Comment and Controversy in Today’s World: Ed: Boston: Pearson Custom, 583-590
Malamud, B. (1958).
The magic barrel. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.
Robert Alter (2016), Malamud as a Jewish Writer.
Jhumpa Lahiri (2016), Bernard Malamud Centenary: The Magic Barrel Stories
Julie Des Jardins (2003), “The New Colossus:” Emma Lazarus and the Immigration Experience
Neil W. Levin (1985), Lady of the Lake
zoudike17
the_pressures_on_jewish_immigrants.docx
0
