SOURCE: "The Yiddish Fiction of Abraham Cahan," in Yiddish, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall, 1975, pp. 7-22.

In the following essay, Chametzky provides an overview of Cahan's writings in Yiddish.

Cahan began to write fiction cautiously—that is, in Yiddish, in the pages of the Arbeiter Zeitung, where critical tastes in literature were as yet largely unformed. Nevertheless, his first story, "Motke Arbel and His Romance" (1892), was a more than respectable performance, embodying a new literary voice and sensibility. The story tells of a low-bred fellow whose modest business success in America enables him to contract to marry the daughter of his former employer and social superior in Russia, but who is frustrated in the end because the young woman becomes engaged to another man on the journey to America. Even this cursory summary shows the undercutting of "romance" suggested in the title; "Motke Arbel" displays a sure sense of the...