Abraham Cahan – A Ghetto Wedding

Having to confront the imperatives of both Jewish and American culture, life was too hard for anything but the immediacy of need. Cahan’s text brings about within this context an important issue: is it marriage a necessity, as perceived by the Jewish tradition? The answer seems to spring from the implied belief that marriage represents the driving force of what is considered to be normalcy, of progress, of personal and spiritual fulfillment, of everything important in one’s existence, being the cumulus of both spiritual and material dimensions of life – that is of the two definitory components of Jewish culture. Therefore, in this short story, getting married is an important decision to make, because a normal life is meant to start growing. Nathan and Goldy are being retained to advance to the next existential stage as long as they cannot make this step: “Both longed for the bliss and economy of married life.” Unconsciously going against everything the status of a Jewish girl presupposed, Goldy is the one to take the decisive action towards the fulfillment of their dream. She makes the decision to spend everything they have on “a wedding they can ill afford, in the expectation that the value of the gifts they receive will exceed what they have laid out”. Goldy’s attitude is rather striking if considered from the perspective of the traditional Jewish community, that kept for its women a shaded place endowed with a mixture of social inferiority and business activity, from where they were not supposed to have opinions and/or to voice them. The contact with the American world brings changes at this level, too, women like Goldy starting to take the initiative and voice their opinions. Goldy’s fascination and subjective beautifying of a “tenement house” they are going to live in stands for thousands of other young immigrant women who were eager to meet and face a new life in a new place, to have a room (read “a life”) of their own, which they could manage according to their own rules. When she realizes that all her plans are shuttered, that everyone is as poor as they are and do not have the resources to provide the customary substantial gifts, Goldy breaks down into sheer desperation. She fears that they have failed materially, as well as spiritually. She is already under the influence of a mixture of typical American ideas and Jewish ones, considering that they are not going to make it in the New World, on one hand, and that her inability to create a home, on the other hand, would affect their future life as a married couple. The Jewish idea of well-doing aligns itself with the Protestant conception. For Puritans, material success meant grace from God, idea similar to the Jewish perception of every aspect of material life imbued with a spiritual joy in contingent existence.

Relying only on their relatives and community friends, Nathan and Goldy suffer from the Jews’ habit of not socializing with the Americans. The ghetto wedding demonstrates this lack of social aspect, as the two protagonists discover they have no other support when those from their world are unable or too blasé and indifferent to attend this event. Because of poverty or assimilation the community is falling apart.

Jewish immigrants – especially at the beginning of the migration movements – underwent acute poverty. Nathan and Goldy are placed within the atmosphere of the ghetto, representing the Diaspora facing a new wor

Some topics in this essay:
Nathan Goldy, Goldy’s Nathan’s, Nathan’s Goldy’s, God Marriage, York Ghetto, Goldy Nathan, Jewish American, Ghetto Wedding, Erick Erickson, Song Songs”, nathan goldy, ghetto wedding, short story, ethnic identity, ardent desire, traditional values, jewish culture, inner world, getting married, american world,