Migration and familial duty

On June 25, Gabriella Safran, the Eva Chernov Lokey Professor of Jewish Studies at Stanford University, presented Give Alms to the Jewish King Lear: Eldercare in Yiddish Literature. It was the last of four online public talks from the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture’s latest Zhargon Speaker Series, which “offers the opportunity for leading figures in Yiddish studies and contemporary Yiddish arts and culture to share their work,” said Jess Goodman, who co-organizes the series and introduced the speaker.

Safran has published articles and books on Russian and Yiddish literature and intellectual history prior to 1917. She recently has turned her attention to the literature of eldercare and Jewish migration. In her June talk, she discussed the various ways popular culture and the arts have reflected and responded to family eldercare challenges faced by Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

She shared a photograph that appeared in a 1925 edition of the Yiddish newspaper Forverts (Forward). It was part of a series the paper commissioned from photographer Alter Kacyzne to show Polish Jewish life in the 1920s and ’30s, which offered a glimpse of the people the recent Jewish emigrés left behind in the “old country.” The picture shows an elderly woman wearing a headscarf and holding a siddur as she peers out a window, which illuminates her face. The caption says she is Hannah Kolsky, a 106-year-old widow living in Warsaw, who maintains a simple daily routine. It also states that “she has an 80-year-old son in America who does not believe that she is alive.’’ Safran commented that “this photo and its caption ask us to think about questions of care and the obligations of children to parents, and it also asks us to think about how those duties and their fulfilment are affected by distance, by migration.”

She said the Forverts editors “knew their readers were interested in and could somehow be helped by representations of other people’s experiences and the choices they made around aging and eldercare in situations of migration.” 

The mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe began around 1875 and ended with the closure of the United States border in 1924, said Safran. She pointed out that, by the end of that period, more than 2.7 million Jews had left Eastern Europe, including one-third of the Jews living in the Russian Empire. Compared with other groups, the Jewish migrant population consisted of more working-age women, children and elders, but many elders did remain behind, she said, noting that the term “elderly” officially referred to anyone older than 44.

Safran played a recording of a 1907 song that was popular for many years, called “A Abrivele der Mamen” (“A Little Letter to Mama”). It “suggested some migrants responded to the plight of their elders back in the old country by shirking their duty,” she said. The lyrics tell of a mother who patiently awaits a letter from her son who has gone to America – she writes frequently, but he never responds. Eventually, the mother dies, but not before expressing hope that her son will at least say Kaddish for her.

This “schmaltzy” song is part of “a genre of pop songs about letters,” although some have happier endings, said Safran. She pointed out the shame- or guilt-inducing aspects of this song and said they also occurred in many other cultural presentations, perhaps to motivate immigrants “to do the right thing,” as “some of the popular culture that they produced and consumed made it seem that they were at risk of making some bad mistakes.”

During this era, Yiddish newspaper advice columns were an outlet for new immigrants and their families. The heartfelt letters, sent anonymously, allowed the writers to unburden themselves emotionally, as well as receive advice on a range of issues, including complex family obligations and the emotional cost of distanced relationships.

“Like the rabbis of the Talmud, the newspaper editors understood eldercare issues needed case-by-case pragmatic solutions, not necessarily one-size-fits-all rules,” said Safran. Often a more nuanced approach was needed, she said, not just guilt and/or shame, as the letter songs depicted.

Safran also described two popular plays by Yiddish playwright and social reformer Jacob Gordin. The plays are similar, in that they are based on Shakespeare’s King Lear and were adapted to explore themes related the obligation of Jewish children to support their parents, in this case the  family patriarch. However, they are dissimilar in how they explore the complexities of eldercare. In the earlier play, Der Yidisher Kenig Lir (The Yiddish King Lear), written in 1892, the daughters had to be shamed into using some of the money their father had given to them earlier to help him when his health declined. The later play, from 1898, is Mirele Efros (often called The Jewish Queen Lear) and, like the newspaper advice columns, takes a more nuanced approach to filial responsibility, stressing individual ethical decision-making and responsible behaviour. It touches on the topic of shame by having one character warn others not to make decisions based on fear of public criticism, but to rely on their own judgment.

Safran concluded with a warning about making assumptions today about eldercare in the past. She advised people to avoid the tendency to “idealize the family relations of the past,” which can happen “because today’s adult children sometimes feel shame … about not doing enough for elderly parents.

“We think that, in the past, things were easier,” she said. “There were clear norms – everyone knew what they were supposed to do and they did it – but this was not always the case.”

For more information about the Peretz Centre or the next Zhargon series, visit peretz-centre.org. 

Ann Daskal is an independent writer and retired social worker.