SOURCE: "The 'Discrepancies' of the Modern: Towards a Revaluation of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky," in Studies in American Jewish Literature, edited by Daniel Walden, Vol. 2, 1982, pp. 36-60.

In the following essay, Engel interprets Levinsky's inability to integrate the dichotomies in his life—including the differing cultures of Europe and America—as his greatest flaw.

The life of Abraham Cahan bears witness to a significant chapter in modern history, the massive immigration of the east European Jews to the United States in the years between the Russian pogroms (1882) and the start of World War I. Born in a Lithuanian shtetl and raised for the most part in Vilna, Cahan himself immigrated in 1882. In his long and protean American career Cahan distinguished himself as a journalist and writer of fiction (in Yiddish and English), translator, Socialist, and union organizer. Above all, his reputation in American Jewish culture...