Anzia Yerzierska, a Jewish immigrant who came to the United States from Poland around 1890, wrote about the struggles of immigrant families in adjusting to their new world. Her novel Bread Givers focuses on the conflict of a Jewish daughter, Sara Smolinski, patterned after herself, and the girl’s father, Reb Smolinski, a Talmudic scholar. Intent on taking advantage of new opportunities in America, Sara resists her father’s attempts to impose his Old World beliefs about the traditional duties of a subservient female.
As I came through the door with my bundle, Father caught sight of me. “What’s this?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going back to work, in New York.”
“What? Wild-head! Without asking, without consulting your father, you get yourself ready to go? Do you yet know that I want you to work in New York? Let’s first count out your carfare to come home every night. Maybe it will cost so much there wouldn’t be anything left from your wages.”
“But I’m not coming home!”
“What? A daughter of mine, only seventeen years old, not home at night?”
“I’ll go to Bessie or Mashah.”
“Mashah is starving poor, and you know how crowded it is by Bessie.”
“If there’s no place for me by my sisters, I’ll find a place by strangers.”
“A young girl, alone, among strangers? Do you know what’s going on in the world? No girl can live without a father or a husband to look out for her. It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence. Only through a man can a woman enter Heaven.”
“I’m smart enough to look out for myself. It’s a new life now. In America, women don’t need men to boss them.”
“Blut-und-Eisen! [“blood and iron”] They ought to put you in a madhouse till you’re cured of your crazy nonsense!” . . .
Wild with all that was choked in me since I was born, my eyes burned into my father’s eyes. “My will is as strong as yours. I’m going to live my own life. Nobody can stop me. I’m not from the old country. I’m American!”
“You blasphemer!” His hand flung out and struck my cheek. “Denier of God! I’ll teach you respect for the law!”
I leaped back and dashed for the door. The Old World had struck its last on me.
Source: Anzia Yerzierska, Bread Givers (New York: Persea Books, 1975), 136–38.
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