AMAZING ABE

A Yiddish-speaking visionary improved Jewish immigrants’ lives in early-20th-century New York.

Born in 1860 Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), Abe Cahan was a gifted linguist who learned Russian in addition to his native Yiddish. Abe taught school and ardently supported political and labor causes—dangerous in czarist Russia. Fearing for his life, Abe fled his country and, on the long journey to America, taught himself English. Upon arriving in New York, Abe labored in factories by day and improved his English by night, eventually teaching English to other Jewish newcomers. Soon, he became so proficient that he reported on Jewish immigrants’ lives for English-language newspapers and wrote stories and novels in English. In 1897, Abe helped found and then became editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, a seminal Yiddish-language newspaper that acclimated generations of Jewish immigrants to American life, teaching them, among many things, about the rules of baseball; American history, government, and the importance of voting; and health and hygiene. Abe also added an enormously popular personal-advice column called the “Bintel Brief” (“Bundle of Letters”). This well-written, stimulating picture-book biography brings much-deserved attention to an important person who highlighted and respected the lives not only of Jewish immigrants but of all immigrants, as well as workers and the poor. The colorful, attractive gouache illustrations capture period settings very capably.

An influential figure receives the admiring treatment he’s earned.