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Ida Nasatir book review
East River by Shalom Asch
March 6, 1947—Book Review: East
River by Shalom Asch—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 6: Sholom
Asch has done it again. This time it is his East River adopted as a
selection of the Book of the Month Club, and a very popular book it has become,
provoking many a review and comment. It induced Ludwig Lewisohn to call it a
"movie book," saying it would make a fine Metro-Goldwyn-Myer
production. He was quite right, since production rights to the book have
already been bought. In a measure, it is a revised "Abie's Irish
Rose." It is well written, it could hardly be less, since Asch is one of
our major narrators. It is equally well translated, since Asch always writes
through the medium of Yiddish. It is graphic and exciting, but withal, it is
completely muddled in its Jewish thinking. Against a background of New York's
Ghetto, prior to the First World War, Asch gives a dramatic sketch of the lives
of several people held within the walls of the ghetto, a whole world complete
unto itself. His major concern is with a Jewish family headed by Moshe
Rabinowitz, and the pursuits of his two sons, Irving and Leonard. Irving, the
eldest, seeking escape from the poverty and squalor of his environment,
dedicates his body and soul to the making of money, and succeeds, becoming one
of the scions of the garment industry. He tolerates, but cannot understand his
pious, orthodox father. He dearly loves his younger, crippled brother, Leonard,
as he does his mother. Leonard, a victim of polio, is a brilliant, militant
fighter against the gross injustices aimed at, and suffered by the people who
surround him in the ghetto. He even rises against his brother's
"sweat shops," going about in his wheel chair, making speeches against
his brother's "human machines." There had been a tacit understanding
of long duration that Irving would eventually marry the beautiful young Jewish
sweetheart of his childhood days, one whose family lived on the same block as
the Rabinowitz family, but he falls in love with Mary, the kindly Catholic girl,
who also was a neighbor, whom he marries when he discovers she is to bear his
child. His father, Moshe, "tears his coat," and sits the proclaimed
days of "Sheva," for to him, his son is dead. All seems to proceed in
an orderly fashion, and then, Asch decides to give the cure-all for racial mis-understandings.
Live like good brothers, he says, and then, poof...all will be fine! But his
logic is twisted. For example: Mary and Irving had agreed that their small son,
also named Leonard, would not be brought up in either of their faiths. However,
as time goes on, Mary nearly loses her sanity at the horrible thought of her
child not being baptized by the priest, and hence be doomed to hell and
damnation all the days of his life. She is so torn and agonized at this thought,
that she takes Leonard to the priest, who gives the child the sacred baptismal
rites. Her soul is now at peace. Asch, who so severely criticizes the
"narrow, rigidity" of orthodox Jewish life does not in the least
condemn this strangle hold of Catholicism. On the contrary, the priest is
presented as a fine, noble person, who makes long speeches on the universality
of man. The characters in "East River" are brought through the
ebb and flow of life, and in the end, are peacefully and neatly placed in the
valley of everyone's Shangri-La. Mary returns to her husband, whose love she is
reassured of; because of Leonard, Irving abolishes his evil practices in his
sweat-shops, raising wages, and shortening hours, turning, as it were, in the
flash of an eye, from oppressive employer to raising the oppressed. Very
nice. Reb Moshe goes off a Sabbath to attend services in his beloved
Chassidic schul, and there, amidst holiness and piety his soul is returned to
the land of his forefathers. The dramatic tale of the restless, swirling
East River, which borders the east side of New York, has been told often before.
But Asch's retelling it, does not lessen the never-ending drama. Asch himself is
dramatic; he is an excellent teller of tales...his East River will
be a thriller in the movies!