Books by Abraham Cahan

The Rise of David Levinsky is a novel by Abraham Cahan. It was published in 1917.The book is told in the form of a fictional autobiography of David Levinsky, a Russian Jew who emigrates to America and rises from rags to riches.

The Rise of David Levinsky, written by the legendary founder and editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, is an early Jewish-American classic. According to the scholar Sam B. Girgus, "The novel is more than an important literary work and cultural document. It forms part of the traditional ritual of renewal of the American Way."First published in 1917, Abraham Cahan''s realistic novel tells the story of a young talmudic scholar who emigrates from a small town in Russia to the melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York City. As the Jewish "greenhorn" rises from the depths of poverty to become a millionaire garment merchant, he discovers the unbearably high price of assimilation.

"Yekl" (1896), the first novel upon which the much acclaimed film "Hester Street" was based, was probably the first novel in English that had a New York East Side immigrant as its hero. Reviewing it, William Dean Howells hailed Cahan as "a new star of realism."