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Ida Nasatir book review

East River by Shalom Asch

March 6, 1947—Book Review: East River by Shalom Asch—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 6: Sholom Asch has done it again. This time it is his East River adopted as a selection of the Book of the Month Club, and a very popular book it has become, provoking many a review and comment. It induced Ludwig Lewisohn to call it a "movie book," saying it would make a fine Metro-Goldwyn-Myer production.  He was quite right, since production rights to the book have already been bought. In a measure, it is a revised "Abie's Irish Rose." It is well written, it could hardly be less, since Asch is one of our major narrators. It is equally well translated, since Asch always writes through the medium of Yiddish. It is graphic and exciting, but withal, it is completely muddled in its Jewish thinking. Against a background of New York's Ghetto, prior to the First World War, Asch gives a dramatic sketch of the lives of several people held within the walls of the ghetto, a whole world complete unto itself. His major concern is with a Jewish family headed by Moshe Rabinowitz, and the pursuits of his two sons, Irving and Leonard. Irving, the eldest, seeking escape from the poverty and squalor of his environment, dedicates his body and soul to the making of money, and succeeds, becoming one of the scions of the garment industry. He tolerates, but cannot understand his pious, orthodox father. He dearly loves his younger, crippled brother, Leonard, as he does his mother. Leonard, a victim of polio, is a brilliant, militant fighter against the gross injustices aimed at, and suffered by the people who surround him in the ghetto.  He even rises against his brother's "sweat shops," going about in his wheel chair, making speeches against his brother's "human machines." There had been a tacit understanding of long duration that Irving would eventually marry the beautiful young Jewish sweetheart of his childhood days, one whose family lived on the same block as the Rabinowitz family, but he falls in love with Mary, the kindly Catholic girl, who also was a neighbor, whom he marries when he discovers she is to bear his child. His father, Moshe, "tears his coat," and sits the proclaimed days of "Sheva," for to him, his son is dead. All seems to proceed in an orderly fashion, and then, Asch decides to give the cure-all for racial mis-understandings. Live like good brothers, he says, and then, poof...all will be fine! But his logic is twisted. For example: Mary and Irving had agreed that their small son, also named Leonard, would not be brought up in either of their faiths. However, as time goes on, Mary nearly loses her sanity at the horrible thought of her child not being baptized by the priest, and hence be doomed  to hell and damnation all the days of his life. She is so torn and agonized at this thought, that she takes Leonard to the priest, who gives the child the sacred baptismal rites. Her soul is now at peace.  Asch, who so severely criticizes the "narrow, rigidity" of orthodox Jewish life does not in the least condemn this strangle hold of Catholicism. On the contrary, the priest is presented as a fine, noble person, who makes long speeches on the universality of man.  The characters in "East River" are brought through the ebb and flow of life, and in the end, are peacefully and neatly placed in the valley of everyone's Shangri-La. Mary returns to her husband, whose love she is reassured of; because of Leonard, Irving abolishes his evil practices in his sweat-shops, raising wages, and shortening hours, turning, as it were, in the flash of an eye, from oppressive employer to raising the oppressed.  Very nice.  Reb Moshe goes off a Sabbath to attend services in his beloved Chassidic schul, and there, amidst holiness and piety his soul is returned to the land of his forefathers.  The dramatic tale of the restless, swirling East River, which borders the east side of New York, has been told often before. But Asch's retelling it, does not lessen the never-ending drama. Asch himself is dramatic; he is an excellent teller of tales...his  East River will be a thriller in the movies!