Anna Lisa Thomas
LITR. 4333
Craig White  

A Father, A daughter and Traditions

            Through out history, fathers and daughters have had an existing tie that fathers are responsible for their daughter’s. This seems to be a tie found thru most ethnic cultures, Jewish, Hispanic, African-American and starting from the origins of their cultures for example: as far of as Africa with native-Indians like the Kung. Sara Smolinsky and her father Rabbi Smolinsky in Bread Givers our no exception to this rule. However, I found it extremely interesting that Rabbi Smolinsky brings his family to America for a more prosperous life both opportunity wise and religious. “The new golden country, where milk and honey flows free in the streets, you’ll have new golden dishes to cook in, and not weigh yourself down with your old pots and pans. But my books, my holy books always were, and always will be, the light of the world. You’ll see yet how all America will come to my feet to learn.” (p.9) I would like to attempt to examine Sara Smolinsky, the youngest of his four daughters, and shows the struggles that her and her father endure after immigrating to America.  

            At the beginning of Bread Givers, Sara Smolinsky is a ten year old, already feeling the stress and responsibilities of her family as each of her sisters come back home with no success of finding a job in an over populated city overflowing with families hungry and seeking jobs to put food on their tables for their own. “Always it was heavy on my heart the worries for the house as if I was a mother”. (p. 1) Sara’s strong will like her fathers love for the Torahn beings to show when Sara asks for the money left to peddle in the street’s. Her mother reminders her how stubborn she is, “No wonder your father named you ‘Blut-und-Eisen.’ When she begins to want a thing, there is no rest, no let-up till she gets it.” (p.20) This quote begins to show the similarities between Sara and her father they both are ambitious enough to go after what they want. Rabbi Smolinsky believes that a man studying the Torah should be taken care of because his faith is sacred and his dream is to one day teach the Torah in America. At this point, Sara’s dream is not to be poor, hungry and she wants and believes she can help the family in this time of need. She does not want to “hunt through ash cans for unburned pieces of coal, and search through empty lots for pieces of wood. I’m not going to let them look down on me like dirt, picking people’s ashes.” (p.8) 

At this point, the reader begins to see significant changes displayed from all of the girls showing more Americanized attitudes. Rabbi Smolinsky wants to live a traditional life as he would have in the Old World but his want for a better life brought him to America. His greed begins to show with Bessie when Berel Bernstein asks for her hand in marriage and he what’s Bernstein to give him an unreasonable amount of his wages to him for taking his best bread giver, “ Has a father no rights in America? Didn’t I bring my children unto the world? Shouldn’t they at least support their old father when he’s getting older? Why should children think only of themselves? Here I give up my whole life, working day and night, to spread the light of the Holy Torah. Don’t my children owe me at least a living?” (p.45) He also insinuate that moving to the New World has not worked out exactly as planned and now this young man will only make it more difficult to follow his dream/ religious vocation if he does not compensate for the wages he will lose and a little more. Rabbi Smolinsky also acknowledges that, as the children from the old world come over, their thoughts of supporting their father’s and families become altered of thought of themselves and self-satisfaction. 

As Sara watched “each time he killed the heart from on of his children” (p.65) by chasing off her sister’s lover’s and hope for love and happiness. Sara becomes aware of feelings of hatred of her father. This realization makes her more aware that she is feeling as if she is different and she wants more out of her life than to sell herring in the street. She also starts to question whether or not she is a good daughter. “I began to feel I was different from my sisters. They couldn’t stand father’s preaching any more than I, but they could suffer to listen to him, like dutiful children who honour and obey and respect their father, whether they like him or not.” (p.65) Her desire to become more triggers a hatred for her father that is frightening and an awaking and/or beginning of a new road. “My gall in me! For seventeen years I had stood his preaching and his bullying. But now all the hammering hell that I had to listen to since I was born cracked my brain. Should I let him crush me as he crushed them? No. This is America, where children are people.” (p.135) Sara then comes to the conclusion that she wants to become a teacher and want to find “an American-born man who was his own boss. And would let me be my boss.” (p.66)

Rabbi Smoinsky agues with Sara the way he knew best through the Torah and the old ways (traditions). “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. The crime of crimes against God-daring your will against your father’s will. In olden times the whole city would have stoned you!” (p.136-37) At this point the reader sees Sara’s father losing his argument. From this point on you see Sara becoming independent and struggling to accomplish her American Dream to become a teacher. In some way, Rabbi Smolisky and Sara have changed characters or simply showing their similarities in being strong willed, stubborn, and ambitious.

Once, Sara becomes a teacher she finds herself questioning her happiness and whether or not her father was right? She felt as if she lost sight of herself somewhere along the way. Even thought she thought her American Dream to become a teacher was what she was and wanted, something was missing. Her father’s words came back to her, the Torah read, “A woman without a man is less than nothing. No life on earth, no hope of heaven.” (p. 270) At this point Sara has realized that along time ago she left part of herself back in the streets of Hester Street and this is part of who she is, a Jewish-American!

As for Rabbi Smolisky, after his wife died, his new wife sent him out to work in the pushcart. His dream to teach the Torah vanished until his daughter Sara brings home Hugo Seelig a young man from the old country that is a principal and that is continuing to fulfill his American dream. He in turn wants to learn Hebrew and asks Sara’s father if he would be his teacher. At this point Rabbi Smolisky’s dream will in turn come true. “The old dream look came back into his glowing eyes. I thought that in America we were all lost. Jewishness is no Jewishness. Children are no children. Respect for fathers does not exit. And yet my own daughter who is not a Jewess and not a gentile- brings me a young man-and whom? An American. And for what? To learn Hebrew. From whom? From me.” (p.294)

Through out the immigrant narrative stages that Sara and her father struggled thru the conclusion that I came to was that both of them where struggling to complete their American dream. Sara tried to forget about where she came from and the old world but found that did not make her happy with the end result. Something very important was missing her family and heritage. Rabbi Smolisky on the other hand came to the conclusion that the Old World and the New World can work together and people can assimilate and keep their religion and traditions.

Work Cited

Yezierska, Anzia. “Bread Givers”. New York: Persea Books, 1925.