1 янв 1917 г. - The Rise of David Levinsky

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In the same decades, many prosperous native-born Jews embraced Reform Judaism, abandoning such religious practices as keeping a kosher kitchen and conducting services in Hebrew. This was not the way of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe, who arrived in large numbers after the 1880s. Generally much poorer and eager to preserve their own traditions, they founded Orthodox synagogues, often in vacant stores, and practiced Judaism as they had at home.

But Eastern European Judaism had been an entire way of life, not easily replicated in an American city. “The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate had a fatal effect on my religious habits,” confessed the hero of Abraham Cahan’s novel The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). “If you … attempt to bend your religion to the spirit of your surroundings, it breaks. It falls to pieces.” Levinsky shaved off his beard and plunged into the Manhattan clothing business. Orthodox Judaism survived the transition to America, but like other immigrant religions, it had to renounce its claims to some of the faithful. Synagogues, like Catholic parishes, faced some of the same challenges that distressed Protestants: poverty and overwork interfered with working-class people’s practice of their faith, while new consumer pleasures enticed many of them to skip worship.

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