The Rise of David Levinsky

“The far end of our street was part of a squalid little suburb known as the Sands. It was inhabited by Gentiles exclusively. Sometimes, when a Jew chanced to visit it some of its boys would descend upon him with shouts of ‘Damned Jew!’ ‘Christ-killer!’ and sick their dogs at him. As we had no dogs to defend us, orthodox Jews being prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a custom amounting to a religious injunction, our boys never ventured into the place except, perhaps, in a spirit of dare-devil bravado.”

Antomir as the opening setting illustrates the anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia at that time. The backdrop of this discrimination grounds the immigrant’s story in the reasons for his eventual move to America. He must leave Russian to escape this violent antisemitism.

“To read these books, to drink deep of their sacred wisdom, is accounted one of the greatest “good deeds” in the life of a Jew. It is, however, as much a source of intellectual interest as an act of piety. If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.”

David spent the first two decades of his life in rigorous study of the Talmud. His perspective here shows his belief in the importance of that study on Jewish people, practices, and traditions. The Talmud is central to his life and his people’s culture.

“Attending divine service is not obligatory for her, and those of the sex who wish to do so are allowed to follow the devotions not in the synagogue proper, but through little windows or peepholes in the wall of an adjoining room. In the eye of the spiritual law that governed my life women were intended for two purposes only: for the continuation of the human species and to serve as an instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the stronger sex to sin. Marriage was simply a duty imposed by the Bible. Love? So far as it meant attraction between two persons of the opposite sex who were not man and wife, there was no such word in my native tongue. One loved one’s wife, mother, daughter, or sister. To be ‘in love’ with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was something unseemly, something which only Gentiles or ‘modern’ Jews might indulge in.”

David’s mother and women in general are limited in their power and possibility in Orthodox Judaism. The women in David’s life grow more liberated over the course of the novel as the role of women in Judaism grows with assimilation into American culture. David’s views of women change as he assimilates more.