The Rise of Abraham Cahan (Jewish Encounters Series) - Hardcover

Guest Review by Lucette Lagnado

Lucette Lagnado is the author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years.

Seth Lipsky has written a vivid and engaging biography of Abraham Cahan, the journalist and social activist, and the hero and icon to legions of Jewish immigrants who treated the Forward, the Yiddish-language daily newspaper he led for several decades, almost as their bible. Under Cahan, the Forward became the largest and most powerful Jewish newspaper in the world, so this is at one level a fascinating journalistic story about the influence one paper can wield, at a time when newspapers are increasingly looked upon as ineffective and bound for extinction. In Lipsky’s hands, the story of Cahan—an immigrant from Russia who arrives here, true to immigrant lore, with nothing, and works his way up to a position of extraordinary power and prestige—becomes a way to recount the sweep of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Jewish history in all its drama, heartbreak, promise, and disillusionment. Cahan’s journey takes us from the small Russian villages where faith is central and life is precarious, to the revolt against the Czars and the longing for revolution, to the pogroms and anti-Semitic outbursts that make it clear that neither the old Russia nor the new Soviet Union has room for Jews. Cahan’s true greatness emerges as he and his paper serve as beacons to the waves of Eastern European immigrants to the U.S., many of whom land on the Lower East Side, steps away from the Forward’s headquarters. There begins “the seduction of America.” Cahan urged the readers of the Forward to master English and embrace American ways; he pushed them to integrate and assimilate and merge and blend, if need be by ruthlessly casting aside their past. His entreaties worked, perhaps too well. His immigrant readers worked hard and reveled in their new land, becoming active in labor unions and fighting for the freedoms and opportunities denied to them in the Old World. It is perhaps too late when Cahan recognizes that he has accomplished his mission beyond his wildest imaginings—generations of Jewish immigrants have come into their own, reinventing themselves as Americans.

But the price of Americanization turns out to be steep—steeper than even Cahan had anticipated. In casting aside their roots, their language, their religious convictions, their familial bonds, and their most sacred and precious traditions, some of these immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren, lost their identity and perhaps even their soul.

At a time when America confronts a new immigration crisis and debates what to do with newcomers, including whether to force them to learn English or even whether to let them in; during a period when appalling sweatshop conditions that produce the clothes we wear (no longer on the Lower East Side but now in Asia) dominate the headlines, Lipsky’s work has much to teach us about these old dilemmas, which suddenly seem new and critical again.

A lively, absorbing, and important work.

SETH LIPSKY is the founding editor of the Forward and of The New York Sun. He is a former foreign editor of The Wall Street Journal and served as a member of its editorial board. He served as a combat reporter in Vietnam for Pacific Stars and Stripes and is the author, most recently, of The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide. He lives in New York City.