Jewish Americans: Moving from Exile to Authorship, Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska

Abstract

An 1893 cartoon published in the popular magazine Puck (Figure 4.1) pictures two Jewish men having “a pleasant social chat” about nothing but money, dollar signs emanating from their mouths as they ride the train. As in the cover art for “All Coons Look Alike to Me” (see Chapter 2), the drawing renders these men ludicrous in their failed imitation of proper American behavior and dress. Their large noses, bulging eyes, and dark unshaven faces look incongruous in comparison to the more refined features of the non-Jewish man sitting next to them with his small nose, barely detailed eyes and cleanly shaven face. Further marking them as outsiders, their strange clothing ridicules their inability to become modern. Their capitalist display of ostentatious fur coats renders them out of place in this train car, particularly in relation to the more dignified white American man, who does not wear a heavy coat. Similar to the clothing of Zip Coon and Dandy Jim, which showed African Americans unable to become modern, they wear gaudy evening top hats in contrast to his tasteful derby; one wears jarring plaid pants in contrast to the Euro-American’s under-stated light-colored pants. These Jews are both exoticized and debased: Their language is materialistic, speaking only in dollar signs, and foreign, portrayed in symbols of gibberish rather than intelligible English.