Plot summary
The story starts with Jake, three years after he first stepped foot in America. In that time, he has embraced American culture as much as possible, so much so that he no longer goes by his given name, Yekl. When he’s not working in the sweatshop, he spends much of his time at Joe Peltner’s dance hall, where he becomes close with Mamie and Fanny.
One day, he receives a letter from home informing him of his father’s death. While he has enjoyed his time pretending to be a bachelor, the news prompts him to make good on his promise to buy a ticket for his wife (Gitl) and son (Yossele) to join him in New York.
Upon their arrival, Jake is embarrassed by his wife’s appearance and ignorance of the English language. He tries to correct this behavior and even gets Mrs. Kavarsky (his neighbor) to help turn Gitl into a more American woman. Gitl tries, but struggles to throw away her traditional beliefs and customs.
Mamie, one of Jake's dance partners, then pays a visit to Jake and he starts to fall for her. Mamie, unlike Gitl, has changed herself to become a proper American woman, at least in the context of the Jewish ghetto they inhabit. Jake pays her a visit, which Fanny (one of Jake's dance partners and coworkers) witnesses and reports back to Gitl.
Gitl runs to Mrs. Kavarsky with the news and Mrs. Kavarsky removes Gitl’s handkerchief from her head and cuts her hair in order to make her more appealing to Jake. However, this is not enough for Jake, so he leaves and runs to Mamie. Finding her, he declares his love and they conceive a plan to get him and Gitl a divorce, so the two can get married.
The divorce gets finalized, allowing Gitl to marry Mr. Bernstein (their neighbor and Jake's coworker) and Jake to marry Mamie. Jake then leaves with Mamie and they head to the mayor's office to get married. On their way, Jake begins to feel that he has made a mistake and wishes that he didn’t have to get married again. [3]
Themes
Immigration and Assimilation
This story is ultimately about immigrants, immigration, and assimilation. The narrative takes place in the New York ghetto and there is not a single "American" character present. Jake's (Yekl's) desire for assimilation clear from the very beginning of the novella. He has Americanized his name to Jake, he talks about American sports, and seems overall uninterested in practicing his Jewish faith. While he tries to push his old Russian life behind him, the arrival of his wife and son prevent that. Gitl, unlike Jake, is unwilling to throw away her Old World morals and behavior for the sake of being an American. These two characters go down to completely different paths at the end of the novel, leaving Gitl happy with a man who respects the Old World as she does and Jake with dreading the future he chose. [3]
Language
All of the dialogue in Yekl is a mix of English translated Yiddish and English spoken with a Yiddish accent. By exposing readers to Yiddish, Cahan more concretely roots the story in the Jewish ghetto its set it. In many ways, the inclusion of this type of language helps preserve the culture existing at the time, which is what characterizes Yekl as an example of regionalism.
Within the narrative, language plays a critical role. Jake (Yekl) uses it to show how much he has embraced American culture, by using English words as much as possible. He also uses his knowledge of the English language to both impress and ridicule Gitl for his knowledge and her ignorance. Mamie is another character who knows English quite well, which is a sign of her Americanization. Additionally, Mamie uses English to alienate Gitl during their first meeting. [3] In many ways, knowledge of English operates as a symbol of power in this story.
Masculinity
Throughout the novella Jake (Yekl) repeats the phrase "Dot'sh a' kin' a man I am!," however, it's never clear what kind of man he actually is. Jake presents himself as a bachelor before his wife and son's arrival to New York and then can't seem to decide if he has enough love to stay with them or not. In the end, he decides to leave them for the Americanized Mamie and finds himself dreading that decision. [3] Given the contrast between Jake's declaration and his actions, Cahan seems to imply that Jake's presentation of masculinity is far different from his understanding of it.
Education
The issue of education is raised early on in the novella. Jake (Yekl) is an uneducated man, whose English is derived from his desire to become an American. Mr. Bernstein, on the other hand, spends his time reading newspapers with an English dictionary in order to get a proper understanding of the language. Literary critic Lori Jirousek-Falls describes Yekl's education style as "incidental" and Mr. Bernstein's as "intentional." [4] As a result, the two characters embark on different trajectories as the story develops. In the end, Mr. Bernstein and Gitl end up happily married, while Jake hopes that the ride to the court house will last indefinitely so he can remain a bachelor forever. [3] Jirousek-Falls concludes that "Berstein represents the immigrant who prizes scholarship highly and discovers ways to incorporate Old World traditions with New World success," whereas Jake casts his Old World traditions aside, in favor of embracing American culture in an impulsive, unproductive way. [4] Both characters have authority over their choices, but it's clear that Cahan suggests that "intentional" education is more rewarding path. [4]
Publication and critical reception
After completing the manuscript, Abraham Cahan and William Dean Howells worked to find a publisher, which would be a difficult task. [2] Much of this was to do with the literary market of the time that had not fully embraced realism and poorly concealed anti-Semitism present in the publishing industry. [2] As a result, Cahan and Howells were rejected by a number of publishers including Harper's Weekly and McClure's . [2] Frustrated, Cahan decided to translate Yekl into Yiddish and published it in his own paper under the original title, Yankele the Yankee. [2] Howells was initially upset learning about this, but considered that the book was not published because it wasn't in English. [2] Eventually, Howells would get the novella published with D. Appleton and Company, where it would be published in 1896. [2]
Despite finding a publisher and the glowing review Howells gave the novella, Yekl was not a commercial success. [5] Literary realism was still growing as a genre and contemporary readers seemed to want "their fiction to include beautiful people, attractive objects, and happy endings." [5] As a result, some critics today feel that Yekl is a "neglected masterpiece", much like Kate Chopin's The Awakening , because of its examination of how dominant cultures impact minority groups; a problem that is still present in the United States. [2]
The Forward, formerly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is an American news media organization for a Jewish American audience. Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily socialist newspaper, The New York Times reported that Seth Lipsky "started an English-language offshoot of the Yiddish-language newspaper" as a weekly newspaper in 1990.
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Abraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born Jewish American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician. Cahan was one of the founders of The Forward, an American Yiddish publication, and was its editor-in-chief for 43 years. During his stewardship of the Forward, it became a prominent voice in the Jewish community and in the Socialist Party of America, voicing a relatively moderate stance within the realm of American socialist politics.
Israel Joshua Singer was a Polish-Jewish novelist who wrote in Yiddish.
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Jewish American literature holds an essential place in the literary history of the United States. It encompasses traditions of writing in English, primarily, as well as in other languages, the most important of which has been Yiddish. While critics and authors generally acknowledge the notion of a distinctive corpus and practice of writing about Jewishness in America, many writers resist being pigeonholed as "Jewish voices." Also, many nominally Jewish writers cannot be considered representative of Jewish American literature, one example being Isaac Asimov.
Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath is a Yiddish-language poet and author.
Hester Street is a 1975 romantic film based on Abraham Cahan's 1896 novella Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, and was adapted and directed by Joan Micklin Silver. The film stars Steven Keats and Carol Kane, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role of Gitl.
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Louis E. Miller (1866–1927), born Efim Samuilovich Bandes, was a Russian-Jewish political activist who emigrated to the United States of America in 1884. A trade union organizer and newspaper editor, Miller is best remembered as a founding editor of Di Arbeiter Tsaytung, the first Yiddish-language weekly published in America, and a co-founder with Abraham Cahan of the Jewish Daily Forward, the country's first and foremost Yiddish-language daily.
Jules Chametzky was an American literary critic, writer, editor, and unionist. His essays in the 1960s and 1970s on the importance of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to American literary culture anticipated the later schools of New Historicism and Cultural Studies in American letters. Chametzky was a founder and long-time editor of the Massachusetts Review, an editor of Thought and Action, the journal of the National Education Association, as well as the third President of the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the faculty/library union at the University of Massachusetts. He was also a founding member of the Coordinating Committee of Literary Magazines and its first secretary. Chametzky was married for over fifty years to the writer, editor, and educator Anne Halley (1928–2004).
Yente Serdatzky was a Russian-born American Yiddish-language writer of short fiction and plays, active in New York City.
Fradl Shtok was a Jewish-American Yiddish-language poet and writer, who immigrated to the United States from Galicia, Austria-Hungary, at the age of 18 or 19. She is known as one of the first Yiddish poets to use the sonnet form; and her stories, which were less well received than her poems in her lifetime, have since been recognized as innovative for their exploration of subjectivity, and, in particular, for their depiction of Jewish female characters at odds with traditional roles and expectations.
Jacob Adler, also known by his pen name B. Kovner, was a Galician-born Jewish-American Yiddish writer, poet, and humorist.
