Essay: Attitudes Toward Assimilation in 20th Century Jewish-American Literature

Throughout the twentieth century, the assimilation of Jews in America underwent a transformation. Mary Antin's The Promised Land, written in 1912, shows a young immigrant's desperate struggle to learn English and prove herself worthy of the country, its people, and its language, while repressing every relic of the Old World, its language, and its customs. Lamed Shapiro's New Yorkish shows the beginning of a shift of power relations between non-Jewish American society, but to another, equally unhealthy extreme: the story's protagonist has powerful conflicting feelings toward gentiles, betraying the gap that still exists between Jews and non-Jews. Finally, Grace Paley's The Loudest Voice relates the experiences of a second-generation Jewish American child, in a loving mockery of both gentile and Jewish America that shows that self-aware assimilation in America is entirely possible; the intense emotions and conflicts that surrounded Jew-Gentile interactions are gone, replaced with easygoing, gently self-mocking humor.

In her autobiography The Promised Land, Mary Antin relates the story of her immigration from the Pale in Russia to America. Her desire to assimilate is so fierce and desperate that she presents her immigration and acculturation to rebirth. "I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over… I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell." For Mary Antin, assimilation necessitates suicide, almost: the excision of the part of herself that was Russian and Jewish and Old World. Antin uses extremely high, scholarly language with grave preciseness that betrays her anxiety regarding her Americanization. Throughout the autobiography, she stresses over and over her aptitude as a scholar, both in The Pale and in America. She is highly philosophical, and her word choice is deliberately highly sophisticated. "A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to demark as physical ones." No reader can have any doubt that she has an exquisite grasp of the English language.

Once in America, Mary Antin throws herself into studies of English with fervor, advancing quickly through the classes. She repeatedly mentions her teachers' admiration of her and the impression she made on them. She relates the manner in which she published poems and stories in the district newspaper; she mentions how her parents' friends use her as role models for their children; she relates her correspondence with politicians and her affiliation with well-known American artists and writers.

Although ostensibly Antin has assimilated to the point of exorcism of her old self, she remains anxious regarding her integration in society until the very end of the autobiography. Her friend makes fun of her at the seashore for speaking with an accent and she never forgives him. "I learned at least to think in English without an accent," she says, thus betraying her powerful desire to speak as well as dream without an accent. "In after years, when I passed as an American among Americans" – her use of the word "passed" indicates insecurity regarding the completeness of her transformation.

This anxiety of fitting in and assimilating is somewhat abated in Lamed Shapiro's New Yorkish. The very fact that a story set in America is originally written in Yiddish is an indication that Shapiro and his readers embrace, to some extent, the lingual component of their home culture. The content of the story supports this idea. The protagonist, the self-nominated "Manny", is a man of probably Eastern European origins as Mary Antin was. He is attracted to his Gentile waitress. He does not see her as she is. Instead, his perception of her necessitates his exoticizing her: "you would see clearly that she was from another world: Spanish, perhaps, with a mixture of Indian blood". The exotic for Manny has the scent of forbidden about it, and it is this that attracts him to her. Later he will admire the red flower in her hair, and equate her in his mind to a famous movie star. Whereas in The Promised Land gentile Americanism is seen as an ideal to strive to, in New Yorkish it is something forbidden, and in order to interact with it must be perceived as something else.

Manny does not only exoticize the woman – he also derides and patronizes her. Although Manny is not very attractive, described as having a "grouchy face" and "stooped shoulders", he allows himself to suggest the name "Jenny" for her – the generic title of a whore – and to condescend to her: "excuse me. If I weren't so smart, would I be such an idiot [as yourself]?" He aggravates his already-horrid treatment of her by insisting on paying for intercourse.

Later, after they sleep together, Manny finds he has genuine feelings for Jenny, whom he also calls Dolores."That human being there on my bed," he muses, "apparently love that is bought is also love". He does not embrace these powerful feelings he has for the woman, however, instead questioning them and wondering at them: "How was one to know that? … What does it mean?" When he bids her goodbye, he is struck by the intensity of his experience. This happens when they are each on a different side of the door: "She stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind her. He rushed toward the door – and stopped in his tracks. 'My god! What happened here?' " Their physical placement is representative of the attitude of American Jewry in that period – the 1930s – toward American gentiles. They interact; they appreciate the possibility of powerful experiences with one another, that is, they concede to the humanity and similarity of gentiles; but ultimately, the threshold remains standing, and the Jewish-gentile barrier is, at this point in time, not yet unbroken.

Grace Paley's 1959 short story The Loudest Voice is vastly different in its tone and than both Antin and Shapiro's works. The Loudest Voice is similar to both other works in several ways. Like Shapiro's, The Loudest Voice is humorous, but whereas Shapiro's humor was cynical, distant, and patronizing in The Loudest Voice it is self-derisive and free of bitterness and anxiety. Just like The Promised Land, Paley's story features an extremely intelligent, strong female child figure. Unlike Mary Antin, however, The Loudest Voice's protagonist, Shirley, does not hide behind her intelligence to assimilate into society. Instead, Shirley harnesses her intelligence to make herself prominent and distinct from her peers, and not in the safest, mildest, least obtrusive way possible. Instead, Shirley embraces her stereotypical Jewishness, represented by her loud voice, and uses it to reign over her friends and family with pride.

As opposed to the previous two works, in the Loudest Voice, there is no careful, tip-toeing integration of Jewish with gentile. Instead, Christianity and Judaism are clumped together with very little care and sensitivity. Jewish elementary-school-aged children are given parts in a school production of the story of the nativity. Shirley, with her loud voice, narrates the play; "Celia Kornbluh lay in the straw with Cindy Lou, her favorite doll" as Mary and Jesus. The Jews in the narrative abundantly joke about Christianity, with Shirley's father asking Mrs. Kornbluh "how's the virgin?"

Typical Jewish fears about integration into Christian society are explored and dismissed. Shirley's mother is concerned about the repercussions of the children's participation in such a play, and Shirley's father replies that Christian plays are better than pogroms. When Shirley considers that her neighbors walk around the block to avoid seeing the Christmas tree, or that they take issue with its presence near the kosher chickens at the Jewish deli, Shirley sends the tree "a kiss of tolerance".

Thus the narratives, which all depict Eastern European Jewish American immigrants, show the evolution of the assimilation of Jews in America. From treating American gentiles with deference and respect to gradual integration but no real assimilation, to joking about integration via self-parody and mockery of American Christianity, Jews in America have come a long way. The pressing need to prove oneself in foreign surroundings has abated as gradually America has become not foreign to Jews at all, but intimately familiar.

Photo by Joseph Chan @yulokchan