Bread Givers - Synopsis

Synopsis

Bread Givers, a Jewish-American female coming-of-age story written by Anzia Yezierska, begins with a 10-year old Sara Smolinsky. Sara lives with her mother, Shenah, her father, Reb, and her three sisters, Bessie, Fania, and Mashah in the Lower East Side tenement of New York City. As the story opens, the Smolinskys are destitute, with the five women struggling for money to simply survive and Reb concerned only with the study of the Jewish sacred texts. The opening chapter depicts the family's financial struggles and the Smolinsky family dynamics. Additionally, this chapter hints at the struggle between Sara, who yearns for American ideals independence, and her father, who clings obsessively to traditional Jewish culture.

The following three chapters center on Reb's complete domination of Sara's three sisters as they each fall in love, have their suitors rejected by their father, and end in arranged marriages. These marriages, arranged by Reb for his financial comfort, bring the three daughters great misery. Bessie marries Zalmon the fish-peddler seemingly because she pities his children. Mashah is wedded to Moe Mirsky, a man pretending to be a diamond dealer, but is actually just a middle man. He spends all of his money on showy clothes and lets his family go hungry. Fania ends up marrying a gambler, Abe Schmukler, who buys her affection and shows her off to appear rich. Sara witnesses the devastation her father causes her sisters and vows that she will not follow in their footsteps; she will marry only a man she loves.

The next chapters detail the family's further financial misfortune as Reb struggles to understand American business practices and is continually hoodwinked. The tension between Reb and Sara escalates quickly when she is forced to move to a new town and work in her father's store, where he constantly displays his inaptitude for business yet refuses to take advice from his wife and Sara. Eventually, Sara moves back to New York City and decides she wants to become a teacher.

While living with her parents, Sara primarily experienced Jewish-American culture. However, her college experience is where she first interacts solely with the predominantly American culture. In order to pay for school and get good grades, Sara must ignore everything else, including her family, to work and study. Slowly and painfully, Sara learns to talk, dress and act like her American peers. She leaves college with her teaching degree and $1,000 which she won in an essay contest.

Feeling successful, Sara returns home (only a short distance physically, but light-years apart otherwise) to find her mother fatally ill. After her mother's death, her father remarries only to find his new wife, Mrs. Feinstein, is a gold-digger after his late wife's lodge money. Sara and her sisters, still furious over their father's treatment of them, become enraged at his quick marriage after their mother's death and refuse to help him when his new wife spends all his money and refuses to work. Sara goes back to New York and finds a teaching job.

Mrs. Feinstein is not satisfied with Reb's money and wants more from his daughters. She is angry that Sara is avoiding her father, so she writes a nasty letter to the principal of the school where Sara is teaching, Hugo Seelig, in an effort to give her a bad reputation. Instead, the principal sympathizes with Sara and feels Mrs. Feinstein is desperate and pathetic. Sara is relieved and eventually she and Hugo, who is also a Polish-American, start dating.

Sara feels she has left her old life completely behind and wants to find a way to give back to the community. While pondering this, she finds her father practically on his deathbed, literally lying in the gutter selling chewing gum. Sara asks her father to come live with her and Hugo. Reb is concerned whether he can share the same roof with Sara. He says he will come if they "promise to keep sacred all that is sacred to ." In the end, Sara is still haunted by her father and his old-fashioned culture.