Rose Cohen and Bella Spewack: The ethnic child speaks to you who never were there

College Literature, Winter 2002 by Muir, Lisa

By dint of close observation I had made up the main difference between Krisht and Jew. Whereas the one wore gloves, the other did not; whereas one always had clean nails, the other had not; whereas the one never argued about paying children's fare on the trolley, the other always did; whereas one spoke perfect English, using long words whose meaning was difficult to render, the other did not. (Spewack 1995, 29)

Bella views these disparities as though set down in as indisputable a source as an American dictionary. But whereas Spewack strives to represent unrealistic divisions and characterizations in her maturity, the American reader wanted to perceive a girl moving from squalor to cleanliness, from hesitation to articulation, from peasant vulgarity to American cultivation.

The attainment of Krisht status is not for all, however, and perhaps only for new thinkers like herself. Clearly Bella does not see her mother as capable of escaping the same ethnic labels, being what Mary Antin called one of the "ungroomed mothers of the East Side" (1914, 71). She cries over the fact that there will be a separation between mother and daughter once she becomes Christian, leaving her Jewish mother behind.

Bella's religious explorations and curious conclusions lie throughout her work. She admires the Bible chiefly for its dialogue and chooses a church in great part because a friend had told her of receiving ice cream there on several summer occasions. Spewack's goal, however, is not to seem foolish or juvenile. Instead, Bella's personal turmoil mirrors the lack of clarity with which Americans viewed Judaism and Jews. In one small section Bella repeats the word God five times, varying the use of capital and small letters in each instance. Five of the words look just fine apparently-GOD, God, god, and goD-but she inexplicably crosses out the version gOd, dissatisfied with its appearance. Just as most dominant Americans were repelled by their perceptions of the immigrant Jew without really understanding tradition and culture, Bella is concerned with infusing herself with the impressions she has of Christianity, not its teachings and underlying faith. As with Judaism, these features hardly concern her. For Bella, Christianity is a way of looking and acting.

Bella's religious questions form only once in America, having arrived in the country at too young an age to form any religious opinions. The adolescent Rose Cohen has already been a model of Russian piousness before her encounter with America. The last words the departing Rose hears when leaving her Russian village are those of her uncle: "Don't forget God," he repeats, worried that secular America will change his niece (1995, 48). In her village home young Rose had aligned herself with her grandmother, calling herself the most pious and superstitious member of her Russian family, so her disappointment with America is nearly immediate when she arrives at Castle Garden and finds her father, already in America some months, notably changed. Now without earlocks, and having shaved his once long beard more closely to his face, he is hardly recognizable. His use of money on the Sabbath sends Rose running wildly through the streets. When a young friend later calls her an "old woman" and a "little village maiden," Rose realizes that her Old World pious nature does not fit the new American lifestyle of the rising Jewish immigrant. The young Rose begins to question her own religion and comes to perceive it as a form of ethnic captivity in America when at sixteen she is engaged to marry Israel, a market-owner's son. Initially agreeing to the union, she realizes the severity of her fate as she peers into the bedroom the two will share in Israel's parents' home, its only small window high and barred. She had dreamed of a "new bright home," but the room represents only the past: "dust," "cobwebs," and "iron barred windows," with the "deep monotonous voice" of her mother-in-law as accompaniment, like a religious chant underscoring the meaning of life (1995, 218-219). Her whirling feelings come to a head as she finally comprehends that marriage to Israel means confinement in ethnicity, and she cannot be the Jewish daughter who aspires only to the kitchen and the marriage bed.