Bread Givers

I bought this book for my Jewish Lit class, and it quickly became my new favorite book! Maybe a week after I read it, my boyfriend was looking for something to read and I loaned him this book and now it is his favorite as well. We both love how human the book is. It is crafted with real emotions, and such genuine family dynamics. Each and every one of the characters became like a member of my own family to me. I am sure... Read Full Review

for being such a tyrant, for spoiling his daughters' wedding plans, and for RUINING their lives -- and believe me-- that kind of stuff REALLY went on in those days! And I wanted to shake some sense into her mother for PUTTING UP WITH THIS!!! Sara Smolinsky's life most probably parallels Anzia's real life. And if that is true, then I have the UTMOST respect for Sara/Anzia who against all odds, and especially as a woman back... Read Full Review

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in America. Told at a time when America was more innocent yet the dark clouds, the roots of todays hegenomy, were gathering. Bread Givers is a largely autobiographical story of one woman's struggle to make a life for herself despite a time and place that conspire against her. Like the author Anzia Yezierska, Sara Smolinsky, the daughter of poor Russian-Jewish... Read Full Review

It is difficult to read BREAD GIVERS by Anzia Yezierska and not feel the same barrage of competing emotions that afflict nearly everyone in the book. On a literal level, Yezierska writes of the struggle of Russian/Polish Jews to assimilate in the New York just before the First World War. The action is narrated over a period of some dozen years by Sara Smolinsky, who begins the novel as a ten year old girl, one of three other... Read Full Review

Even though this book is probably set anywhere from the late 1890's to early 1920's--as the book was first published in 1925--as a woman it is hard not to be totally offended by Reb. Smolinsky's attitudes towards women. He says: "A woman without a man is less than nothing. A woman without a man can never enter Heaven." As a Christian, I obviously find this belief to be totally untrue, but it is the statement that a woman... Read Full Review