Book description
Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Rise of David Levinsky as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Immigration has been (and is) one of the most important themes in US history, and this book (written in English by the editor of New York City’s Yiddish newspaper at that time) is an engrossing story of the experience of a Russian Jewish immigrant, who fled pogroms in Russia to seek his fortune in America. It is a classic.
Early on David Levinsky, the immigrant Yeshiva boy, the budding intellectual, learns that America is the land of winners and losers, and if he is to be the former, he has to abandon his old self like the ear-locks he left on a barbershop floor in his first days in this new world. To be an alrightnik he must learn to dance the American dance. And dance he does, but his fabulous success as a garment manufacturer has left something unresolved in himself. His search for love at a Jewish resort in the Poconos is a chapter better than anything…
From Zeese's list on about borders you haven’t read.
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