The Rise of David Levinsky: A Novel |
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afternoon American Anna answered Antomir Anyhow asked atheism Bender called Chaikin CHAPTER cheder cloak cloak-makers course daughter dollars Dombey and Son Dora dress East Side educated English eyes face father feel fellow felt gave Gentile girl Gitelson Gussie hand happy head hear heard heart Hebrew husband interest Jewish Jews joke kind kiss knew Kulm laugh Levinsky listened live look Lucy Margolis marriage married Matilda matzo Max Margolis mind minutes Miss Tevkin mother Naphtali necktie never Nodelman once passion Passover paused play poor question real-estate Reb Sender Russian seated seemed Shiphrah smile socialist speak spoke street synagogue tailor talk Talmud Talmudist Tannersville tell things thought tion told took voice watched What's whispered wife woman women words Yiddish young Zionism
Popular passages
Page 87 - I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live : I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.
Page 86 - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment : who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain : Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters : who maketh the clouds his chariot : who walketh upon the wings of the wind...
Page 86 - O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! In wisdom hast thou made them all: The earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, Wherein are things creeping innumerable, Both small and great beasts.
Page 94 - Yiddish as well as English, so I understood the phrase at once, and as a contemptuous quizzical appellation for a newly arrived, inexperienced immigrant it stung me cruelly. As I went along I heard it again and again. Some of the passers-by would call me "greenhorn" in a tone of blighting gaiety, but these were an exception. For the most part it was "green one" and in a spirit of sympathetic interest.
Page 529 - World, or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American songwriters and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to play the Maecenas. I had a similar experience...
Page 528 - Though an atheist, I belong to one of their synagogues. ... I am a member of that synagogue chiefly because it is a fashionable synagogue. I often convict myself of currying favor with the German Jews.
Page 110 - If you are a Jew of the type to which I belonged when I came to New York and you attempt to bend your religion to the spirit of your new surroundings, it breaks. It falls to pieces. The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate had a fatal effect on my religious habits.
Page 3 - America—in 1885—with four cents in my pocket. I am now worth more than two million dollars and recognized as one of the two or three leading men in the cloak-and-suit trade in the United States. And yet...
Page 169 - humble spires" of a City College building, he thinks to himself: "My old religion had gradually fallen to pieces, and if its place was taken by something else . . . that something was the red, church-like structure on the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third Street. It was the synagogue of my new life."12 This last phrase epitomizes the transfer of a traditional value on learning from religious to secular education, which, according to the conventional wisdom, accounts for the rapid...