The Rise And Fall Of Davis Levinsky

The story of The Rise of David Levinsky is the quintessential story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant. David goes from a Talmud student in a Russian shtetl, to a tradesman in a New York ghetto, to a successful American businessman in the garment district.

To begin, David lives in a Shtetl somewhere in rural Russia. David lived with his mother in extreme poverty, and yet they found comfort in each other. He was also a successful Talmud student-a fact that his mother was very proud of. David found great pleasure in pleasing his mother with his Talmud academic abilities. These were the very things that defined David’s character. When David’s mother is murdered, he no longer found any satisfaction in his religious studies, and he began looking for other things to take their place. Ameri

meaning. Life was devoid of savor, I was thirsting

with my inner identity than David Levinsky, the well

David attributes these American qualities to his success in the business world. He began as a lowly peddler, and was, after many years of hard work, a respected and wealthy businessman. In the process of all of this David was forced to give up his dream of a college education. He loses respect for himself for the type of success he had. He felt that any fool could make a million dollars, and therefore he didn’t feel any real accomplishment in his success. At the time when David felt that his most esteemed American identity was realized, was the same time that he felt he recognized the man that he had become, the least. His foundation for his sense of self lay in his pre-America days:

Only in hindsight does David acknowledge that greatness of his loss.

David does attempt to reassert his Jewish identity by marrying into a traditional Jewish family, but he finds that even this is no replacement for the emptiness from his loss of identity. His efforts to remember the things he had tried so hard to forget were to no avail. He was doomed to ignore his traditional loyalties which deep down inside of him remained intact, and to forever face the man in the mirror that he no longer knew.

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