The Rise of David Levinsky

“To read these books, to drink deep of their sacred wisdom, is accounted one of the greatest “good deeds” in the life of a Jew. It is, however, as much a source of intellectual interest as an act of piety. If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.”

David spent the first two decades of his life in rigorous study of the Talmud. His perspective here shows his belief in the importance of that study on Jewish people, practices, and traditions. The Talmud is central to his life and his people’s culture.

“Attending divine service is not obligatory for her, and those of the sex who wish to do so are allowed to follow the devotions not in the synagogue proper, but through little windows or peepholes in the wall of an adjoining room. In the eye of the spiritual law that governed my life women were intended for two purposes only: for the continuation of the human species and to serve as an instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the stronger sex to sin. Marriage was simply a duty imposed by the Bible. Love? So far as it meant attraction between two persons of the opposite sex who were not man and wife, there was no such word in my native tongue. One loved one’s wife, mother, daughter, or sister. To be ‘in love’ with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was something unseemly, something which only Gentiles or ‘modern’ Jews might indulge in.”

David’s mother and women in general are limited in their power and possibility in Orthodox Judaism. The women in David’s life grow more liberated over the course of the novel as the role of women in Judaism grows with assimilation into American culture. David’s views of women change as he assimilates more.

“It was not until I found myself lying on this improvised bed that I realized the full extent of my calamity. During the first seven days of mourning I had been aware, of course, that something appalling had befallen me, but I had scarcely experienced anything like keen anguish. I had been in an excited, hazy state of mind, more conscious of being the central figure of a great sensation than of my loss. As I went to bed on the synagogue bench, however, instead of in my old bunk at what had been my home, the fact that my mother was dead and would never be alive again smote me with crushing violence. It was as though I had just discovered it. I shall never forget that terrible night.”

In this moment, David experiences an epiphany, a sudden realization, that he is alone in the world. The only comfort he has is the synagogue that takes him in and protects him. This moment is a defining one for David’s character.

“The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, of fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations. To leave my native place and to seek my fortune in that distant, weird world seemed to be just the kind of sensational adventure my heart was hankering for.”

Adventure defines David’s character. He seeks the challenge of conquering a new task, whether immigration or business. His life, and therefore the novel, centers on his adventures. He will attempt to pursue the American dream.

“Who can depict the feeling of desolation, homesickness, uncertainty, and anxiety with which an emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? […] When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, on his first great voyage, his men doubted whether they would ever reach land. So does many an America-bound emigrant to this day. Such, at least, was the feeling that was lurking in my heart while the Bremen steamer was carrying me to New York. […] Day after day passes and all you see about you is an unbroken waste of water, an unrelieved, a hopeless monotony of water. You know that a change will come, but this knowledge is confined to your brain. Your senses are skeptical.”

In this section, David draws a parallel between himself and all other immigrants. The vivid imagery of this quote grounds the reader in David’s experience and the experience of all who seek their fortunes in a new world. He describes America as an ideal, a place of opportunity, although this myth will later be dispelled.

“Imagine a new-born babe in possession of a fully developed intellect. Would it ever forget its entry into the world? Neither does the immigrant ever forget his entry into a country which is, to him, a new world in the profoundest sense of the term and in which he expects to pass the rest of his life. I conjure up the gorgeousness of the spectacle as it appeared to me on that clear June morning: the magnificent verdure of Staten Island, the tender blue of sea and sky, the dignified bustle of passing craft—above all, those floating, squatting, multitudinously windowed palaces which I subsequently learned to call ferries. It was all so utterly unlike anything I had ever seen or dreamed of before. It unfolded itself like a divine revelation. I was in a trance or in something closely resembling one.”

David’s metaphor of rebirth draws the reader into the experience of awe, fear, and credulity that are experienced by a new immigrant. The comparison allows one to experience David’s emotional response to the sight of America. He continues to engage in the ideal of America as a land of opportunity.

“I visioned myself a rich man, of course, but that was merely a detail. What really hypnotized me was the venture of the thing. It was a great, daring game of life.”

David’s adventurous nature defines his character and drives him to take risks that other people might not. Chaikin seems content to work in the same role, but David’s call to adventure drives him to start a new business, which ultimately leads to his fortune. David’s rise comes from his desire for adventure, not his desire for wealth.

“We are all actors, more or less. The question is only what our aim is, and whether we are capable of a ‘convincing personation.’ At the time I conceived my financial scheme I knew enough of human motive to be aware of this.”

David’s cynical view of others allows him to continue to exploit and manipulate those around him. He believes that all men are manipulating each other to some extent, so his manipulation is not a sin or a flaw. He uses this to justify his exploitation of others, which makes him lose his identity and his traditions.

“That I was not born in America was something like a physical defect that asserted itself in many disagreeable ways—a physical defect which, alas! no surgeon in the world was capable of removing.”

David tries desperately to assimilate completely into America. He sacrifices his faith and his culture to be more American. His regret in this assimilation is not realized until much later in life. The tension of maintaining one’s culture in the face of pressure to assimilate comprises one of the central thematic arcs of the novel.

“There was no other to take its place. There was not a single family in New York or in any other American town who would invite me to its nest and make me feel at home there. I saw a good deal of Meyer Nodelman, but he never asked me to the house. And so I was forever homesick, not for Antomir—for my native town had become a mere poem—but for a home.”

David’s search for a home drives him through the latter half of the novel. Once he completes his adventures, the idea of someone or something to work for becomes his primary motivator. He ends up losing his home, his cultural identity, however, as he assimilates more into American materialism.

“The amusing part of it was that in 1894, for example, I found that in 1893 my judgment of men and things had been immature and puerile. I was convinced that now at last my insight was a thoroughly reliable instrument, only a year later to look back upon my opinions of 1894 with contempt. I was everlastingly revising my views of people, including my own self.”

In this moment, David owns his hypocrisy and naiveté. He constantly changes his opinion in seeming contradiction to his own beliefs, but Cahan’s greater point is that all people’s perspectives change with new experiences and information. David by the end goes back on his thoughts on the American dream even.

“I saw that Americans who boasted descent from the heroes of the Revolution boasted, in the same breath, of having spent an evening with Lord So-and-so; that it was their avowed ambition to acquire for their daughters the very titles which their ancestors had fought to banish from the life of their country. I saw that civilization was honeycombed with what Max Nordau called conventional lies, with sham ecstasy, sham sympathy, sham smiles, sham laughter.”

David acknowledges his hypocrisy and calls out the hypocrisy of upper-class American culture. His cynicism, a belief that people are motivated by self-interest, colors his interactions with others and supports his actions toward his interests. He uses others’ exploitation of people to justify his own exploitation of people, which he comes to regret at the novel’s end.

“‘It simply means that at the bottom of our hearts we Jews are a sad people,’ Miss Tevkin interceded. ‘There is a broad streak of tragedy in our psychology. It’s the result of many centuries of persecution and homelessness. Gentiles take life more easily than we do. My father has a beautiful poem on the theme. But then the Russians are even more melancholy than we are. Russian literature is full of it. My oldest brother, who is a great stickler for everything Russian, is always speaking about it.’”

Anna captivates David with her education, family, and heritage. David sees her as the perfect marriage of secular knowledge, bustling home life, and Russian Jewish culture. In this passage, all these traits are on display. He believes he can locate his culture through her.

“He played selections from ‘Aïda,’ the favorite opera of the Ghetto; he played the popular American songs of the day; he played celebrated ‘hits’ of the Yiddish stage. All to no purpose. Finally, he had recourse to what was apparently his last resort. He struck up the ‘Star-spangled Banner.’ The effect was overwhelming. The few hundred diners rose like one man, applauding. The children and many of the adults caught up the tune joyously, passionately. It was an interesting scene. Men and women were offering thanksgiving to the flag under which they were eating this good dinner, wearing these expensive clothes. There was the jingle of newly-acquired dollars in our applause. But there was something else in it as well. Many of those who were now paying tribute to the Stars and Stripes were listening to the tune with grave, solemn mien. It was as if they were saying: ‘We are not persecuted under this flag. At last we have found a home.’ Love for America blazed up in my soul. I shouted to the musicians, ‘My Country,’ and the cry spread like wildfire. The musicians obeyed and we all sang the anthem from the bottom of our souls.”

Though David and the novel’s author, Cahan, register criticism against some aspects of American culture, this moment illustrates the deep affection the two immigrants have for their new home. America offers the Jewish immigrants a land where they are equal under the law. This idealism will be played with and investigated throughout the novel, however.

“What was the power behind this sublime spectacle? Where did it come from? What did it all mean? I visioned a chorus of angels. My heart was full of God, full of that stately girl, full of misery.”

David draws a connection between the beautiful setting in the Catskills and Anna. His obsession comes to life at this moment. He decides that Anna must be the answer to his loneliness and disconnection.

“The question, ‘Who are you living for?’ reverberated through the four vast floors of my factory, and the image of Miss Tevkin visited me again and again, marring my festive mood. My sense of triumph often clashed with a feeling of self-pity and yearning. The rebuff I had received at her hands in the afternoon of that storm lay like a mosquito in my soul.”

David cannot enjoy the life he built for himself because he has no one with whom to share it. Once he fixates on Anna, he must have her. The action of conquest defines David’s character. He also follows an action of conquest in his pursuit of the American dream.

“‘The children of Israel have been pent up in cities,’ it ran. ‘The stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to them. But then there is more beauty in a heaven visioned by a congregation of worshipers than in the bluest heaven sung by the minstrel of landscapes. They are not worshipers. They are poets. It is not God they are speaking to. It is a sublime image. It is not their Creator. It is their poetic creation.’”

This passage shows David’s shift away from religion and his growing affinity for the Tevkin family. He sees in them the life he wants, where the divine exists in the abstract but the family and traditions remain. He will have trouble obtaining these things, however, as he increasingly assimilates into secular materialism.

“There is more poetry there, more music, more feeling, even if our people do suffer appalling persecution. The Russian people are really a warm-hearted people. Besides, one enjoys life in Russia better than here. Oh, a thousand times better. There is too much materialism here, too much hurry and too much prose, and—yes, too much machinery. It’s all very well to make shoes or bread by machinery, but alas! the things of the spirit, too, seem to be machine-made in America. If my younger children were not so attached to this country and did not love it so, and if I could make a living in Russia now, I should be ready to go back at once.”

The thematic core of David’s immigrant story lies in the tension between assimilation and retention of tradition. Tevkin advocates for a return to the hard work in Russia that allowed him time to write and create. Tevkin argues that the freedom to create came from a lack of socioeconomic mobility.

“They were as uncompromising in their atheism as Moissey, but they had consented to attend the quaint supper to please their parents. As to Anna, Sasha, and George, each of them had his or her socialism ‘diluted’ with some species of nationalism, so they were here as a matter of principle, their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. But even they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all partly as a joke. In the case of the poet, however, it was quite obvious that his levity was pretended. For all his jesting and frivolity, he looked nervous. I could almost see the memories of his childhood days which the scene evoked in his mind. I could feel the solemnity that swelled his heart. It appeared that this time he had decided to add to the ceremony certain features which he had foregone on the previous few Passover festivals he had observed. He was now bent upon having a Passover feast service precisely like the one he had seen his father conduct, not omitting even the white shroud which his father had worn on the occasion. As a consequence, several of these details were a novel sight to his children. A white shroud lay ready for him on his sofa, and as he slipped it on, with smiles and blushes, there was an outburst of mirth.”

This glimpse into the celebration of Passover at the Tevkin house illustrates the complex layering that takes place in a multigenerational home with religious and cultural disparities. David and Abraham bring faith and tradition to the table, and while the family respects their father and their Jewish tradition, they do not have the serious religious background their elders received in Russia. The contradiction makes the dinner a balance for which Cahan argues throughout the narrative.

“Some time later I was returning to my office, my heart heavy with self-disgust and sadness. In the evening I went home, to the loneliness of my beautiful hotel lodgings. My heart was still heavy with distaste and sadness.”

David’s failure to secure Anna as a wife causes him to lose both his new family and his idealized wife. He continues to take big risks, but this one does not pay off. David does not cope well with this failure, resigning himself to a life of loneliness rather than seeking out a new family.

“Socialism, which used to be declared utterly un-American, had come to be almost a vogue. American colleges were leavened with it, while American magazines were building up stupendous circulations by exposing the corruption of the mighty. Public opinion had, during the past two decades, undergone a striking change in this respect. I had watched that change and I could not but be influenced by it. For all my theorizing about the ‘survival of the fittest’ and the ‘dying off of the weaklings,’ I could not help feeling that, in an abstract way, the socialists were not altogether wrong.”

Early-20th-century America saw a rise in worker organizations and socialist movements. As David matures, he realizes the importance of collectives and begins to sympathize with the unions he fought for so long. At the novel’s end, he will see the error of his ways of pursuing the American dream of unregulated capitalism.

“I am lonely. Amid the pandemonium of my six hundred sewing-machines and the jingle of gold which they pour into my lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude.”

David works for more than 20 years to build a large prosperous business, but he finds no joy or companionship in it. After all the money and work, he has no one with whom to share his life. The lack of family haunts him and defines his character in the closing of the novel.

“Many of our immigrants have distinguished themselves in science, music, or art, and these I envy far more than I do a billionaire. […] I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to play the Maæcenas. I had a similar experience with a sculptor, also one of our immigrants, an East Side boy who had met with sensational success in Paris and London. I had him make my bust. His demeanor toward me was all that could have been desired. We even cracked Yiddish jokes together and he hummed bits of synagogue music over his work, but I never left his studio without feeling cheap and wretched.”

With the gift of hindsight, David wishes that he never started the business. He thinks that he could have contributed to his culture and built a family and a home had he chosen that route. His discontent infects his interactions with others. The conclusion of the novel shows Cahan’s argument for the importance of community, culture, and art over materialism.