{"id":1668,"date":"2019-08-01T08:44:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1668"},"modified":"2019-08-01T08:44:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:44:37","slug":"rose-cohen-on-the-world-beyond-her-immigrant-neighborhood-ca-1897-1918","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/18-industrial-america\/rose-cohen-on-the-world-beyond-her-immigrant-neighborhood-ca-1897-1918\/","title":{"rendered":"Rose Cohen on the World Beyond her Immigrant Neighborhood (ca.1897\/1918)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rose Cohen was born in Russia in 1880 as Rahel Golub.\nShe immigrated to the United States in 1892 and lived in a Russian Jewish\nneighborhood in New York\u2019s Lower East Side. Her, she writes about her encounter\nwith the world outside of her ethnic neighborhood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although almost\nfive years had passed since I had started for America, it was only now that I\ncaught a glimpse of it. For though I was in America I had lived in practically\nthe same environment which we brought from home. Of course there was a\ndifference in our joys, in our sorrows, in our hardships, for after all this\nwas a different country; but on the whole we were still in our village in\nRussia. A child that came to this country and began to go to school had taken\nthe first step into the New World. But the child that was put into the shop\nremained in the old environment with the old people, held back by the old\ntraditions, held back by illiteracy. Often it was years before he could stir\naway from it, sometimes it would take a lifetime. Sometimes, too, it happened\nas in fairy tales, that a hand was held out to you and you were helped out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my own case it\nwas through the illness which had seemed such a misfortune that I had stirred\nout of Cherry Street. But now that I had had a glimpse of the New World, a\nrevolution took place in my whole being. I was filled with a desire to get away\nfrom the whole old order of things. And I went groping about blindly,\nstumbling, suffering and making others suffer. And then through the experience,\nintelligence and understanding of other beings a little light came to me and I\nwas able to see that the Old World was not all dull and the new not all\nglittering. And then I was able to stand between the two, with a hand in each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing\nthat I can recall after I came from the hospital, is a feeling of despondency.\nThe rooms seemed smaller and dingier than they had\nbeen. In the evening the lamp burned more dimly. And there was a general look\nof hopelessness over everything. It was in every face, it was in every corner\nof our dull home as well as in all the other homes that I saw. It was in every\nsound that came in from the street, in every sigh that I heard in the house. I\nsaw the years stretching ahead of me, always the same, and I wept bitterly. I\nhad never been so aware of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the shop where\nI found work now it was as at home. As I looked at the men I could not help\ncomparing them with those other men. To the little insinuating jokes and\nstories I listened now, not with resignation as before but with anger. \u201cWhy\nshould this be? Why should they talk like that?\u201d And I was filled with a\nblinding dislike for the whole class of tailors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I did not\ngive my entire thought to what I saw about me. As the days passed I became\naware that I was waiting for something, for what I could scarcely say. Away in\nthe back of my head there was this thought, \u201cSurely this would not end here.\nWould this be all I would see of that other world outside of Cherry Street?\u201d\nAnd I waited from day to day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime I\nfilled up the days at work with dreaming of that other life I had seen. I\nthought a good deal about that fine old man the minister. His words and his\nvoice had remained fresh in my mind. Of course I must not breathe a word at\nhome about him, about the New Testament. This necessity for secrecy soon led to\nother little secret thoughts and actions. It soon occurred to me, \u201cWhy should I\nnot read the New Testament if I want to? Why should I not do anything I like?\nIf four months ago father thought me old enough to get married, then I am\ncertainly old enough now to decide things for myself.\u201d So I stopped consulting\nmother and began to do little things independently. It was not hard to do this\nfor during the three months I had grown away from home a good deal and now with\nthe thought of my experience in which they had no part, every day I was\nslipping away little by little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mother noticed\nand her eyes looked troubled but I did not understand their meaning. Father had\ntightened the reins of authority and I only tried the harder to writhe myself\nfree. My only thought now was of myself and the world outside of home and\nCherry Street. But underneath all this perversity and selfishness I can see\nnow, as I look back, a deep longing to see, to know, to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Rose Cohen, Out\nof the Shadow<\/em> (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918), 246-248. Available\nonline via Google Books (https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=rGZmAAAAMAAJ<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rose Cohen was born in Russia in 1880 as Rahel Golub. She immigrated to the United States in 1892 and lived in a Russian Jewish neighborhood in New York\u2019s Lower East Side. Her, she writes about her encounter with the world outside of her ethnic neighborhood. Although almost five years had passed since I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":400,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1668","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1668\/revisions\/1669"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}